Building a Year-Round Digital Event Strategy

Webinars, streamed events, recordings, and online education are already part of many organizations’ work. The opportunity is connecting those efforts into a strategy that reaches new audiences, gives people reasons to return, and creates sustainable value.

Join Brian Zambotti, DES, Chief Strategy Officer at FirstHand Productions, for a practical conversation about what that shift looks like. Drawing on his experience in digital education, platforms, and event production, Brian will explore how organizations can turn session reports into useful engagement insights, use recurring educational offers to build an audience, help people discover related content, and develop paid packages and subscriptions.

We’ll also discuss how to give digital programs a fair marketing test, plan audience growth over several years, and use AI and technology to support the strategy. Throughout the conversation, the Define, Design, Execute, Evolve framework will connect the examples to decisions participants can apply within their own organizations.

Moderated by: NeKay Usher, Head of Content Marketing & Audience Development, PCMA

Leave with a clearer way to evaluate your digital efforts, identify the next opportunity, and decide what deserves further investment.

This webinar is free and eligible for 1.0 CMP clock hour.

About the Speaker

Brian Zambotti has more than 25 years of experience in live event production, digital strategy, and audience technology, working alongside some of the largest professional associations in the country. He has built streaming platforms, grown digital audiences from zero, watched the industry consolidate around him, and come out of it with a clear point of view on where professional associations and event-driven organizations need to go next.

Brian began his career at Digitell, one of the first companies dedicated to digital education delivery for professional associations. Over two decades he helped organizations transform how they reach, teach, and engage their audiences through scalable live streaming and digital event platforms. He now serves as Chief Strategy Officer at FirstHand Productions, where he focuses on helping associations produce more intentional live and hybrid events.

Brian believes associations play a critical role in continuing education and professional growth, especially in a world where attention is fragmented and learning behaviors are changing. He is passionate about helping organizations rethink how education is delivered, not just for highly engaged audiences, but also for the professionals who are harder to reach and less naturally inclined toward ongoing learning.

He is currently working with PCMA to rebuild the Digital Event Strategist certification. The course is built around a single thesis: the association’s value is not the event. It is the knowledge, the community, the credibility, and the content built over decades. Digital is how that scales.