May 20, 2026
Conference agendas are easy to scroll past. Session titles blur together, time slots fill up, and before long, you’re just figuring out where lunch is.
But if you read the agenda as a whole—not session by session, as a document—it can tell you a whole story. So today, we’re looking at MMC+Tech to see what it tells us about where the association profession actually is right now. Not where thought leaders say it’s going. Where the people doing the work are spending their energy.
As someone who can’t attend (but has colleagues going), here’s what stood out to me.
AI is Everywhere. And I Mean That Literally.
Scroll through the MMC+Tech session list, and AI is a topic in nearly every session block. But what’s interesting isn’t the volume—it’s the range. There are sessions for people who haven’t started yet, sessions for people experimenting, and sessions for people ready to build agents and automate workflows.
That’s a pretty big knowledge gap to cover, but it’s intentional. It means associations are navigating this without a shared starting line. Some have been running AI experiments for years. Others are still figuring out where to begin. Both are in the same room.
The question the agenda is really asking isn’t “are you using AI?” It’s “do you know which problems you’re actually trying to solve with it?”—and that’s a harder question than it looks.
Lean Teams Are the Norm, Not the Exception
Multiple sessions at MMC+Tech are dedicated to doing more with less. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a reflection of what most association operators are actually dealing with day to day (And honestly, it’s the same in marketing).
Teams are staying the same size or getting smaller, while expectations are growing. And the gap between what needs to get done and who’s available to do it keeps widening.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t framed as a small-staff problem on the agenda—it’s just the baseline condition. Sessions on lean marketing stacks, tech efficiency, and capacity aren’t niche programming. They’re in the main rotation because most people in the room are living it.
Membership Itself Is Being Questioned
This one’s been showing up in industry reports for a couple of years now, but the number of times it came up in the agenda caught my attention. Sessions on belonging, value propositions, and what comes after “belonging” are all in the main rotation. And the closing keynote is literally titled “The Art of Membership in the Age of Everything.”
That’s a profession asking out loud whether the core pitch still works.
This isn’t panic. It’s the harder, more honest work of updating a model that was built for a world where connecting with people was more difficult, and technology was out of reach for most. That world is gone. We now carry advanced computers in our pockets. Members have more options, more demands on their time, and a higher bar for what “worth it” looks like.
The fact that this is on the main stage agenda means enough people are feeling it that it needs to be addressed directly.
What Does It All Point To?
AI at every maturity level. Lean teams are the default. Membership is being renegotiated from the ground up. These aren’t three separate conversations—they’re the same one.
Associations are in the middle of a real transition. Not a trend cycle, not a buzzword moment. The job has changed because what members expect—and what boards expect—has changed. The people heading to MMC+Tech are the ones doing the work of figuring out what comes next.
We’ll be there to learn and to help however we can. Find Marcus or Dan at booth 539—we’d love to hear what’s on your mind.
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