Reflections on Zarticon 2024: Critiquing Our Own Art
A creative event can not be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. Great art comes more from knowledge than inspiration.
Zarticon is our annual user event that changes the way destinations and places look at things. It is an exclusive classroom where we creatively embrace future changes. Its mission is to improve destination data literacy within our industry.
Immediately when it ends we reflect on it and think, “How can we improve this event?” — or better, “How do we evolve this art which has been molded, painted, and written as a group into the best tourism conference in the industry?”
Artists exist to disturb the peace, and we are objectively looking back at Zarticon 2024 knowing there are several touch-ups we will apply to the 2025 conference to make it more disruptive. For now we will admire and appreciate why this piece of science and art creates wonder in the tourism industry.
1. We begin with science and end with art
Science is the poetry of reality, and Zarticon always begins with a keynote speaker who reinforces the helpful and rapidly changing scientific tools that are available for destination leadership.
After two days of learning to use those tools, we conclude with a speaker who reminds us that we’re all artists and inspiration is everywhere.
This year, SEO and marketing maven Britney Muller opened our minds to the possibilities — and pitfalls — of putting AI to work for destinations. Then artist and author Noah Scalin brought it home with a creativity challenge. Our off-site social on Tuesday evening at the Discovery Place Science Center added an extra touch of wonder.
2. No salespeople
Zarticon is about listening, diagnosing, and prescribing solutions for destinations. There is no selling.
Although we love our Sales team companions and industry partners, none are present at the event. And meanwhile they’re connecting with new destinations to join next year’s event.
3. Client-led courses
Our peers teach us how to think, not what to think. All eight of our educational breakout sessions are taught by destination leaders in order to convey the first-hand application of big data sets into ongoing strategic planning.
When we tell someone about something, we’re just sharing knowledge. But teaching engages and involves in a way that boosts everyone’s learning. From data storytelling competitions to breakouts, all the way to destination leadership reflections, Zarticon will continue to be for the client and by the client.
4. Retention learning — just like when we were kids
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
Data and complex algorithms can be difficult to understand, let alone communicate their value and how best to utilize them for community betterment. We created content in the spirit of Schoolhouse Rock and Sesame Street — not to dumb down the information but to deliver it in digestible, entertaining, memorable packages. No sessions over 45 minutes, plenty of recess breaks, and quick shortcut videos that convey a keynote’s worth of info in 90 seconds.
Yeah — “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?” is in our heads now, too.
5. We provide a platform for emerging industry voices
The destination industry's future belongs to the young people who have the guts to share their knowledge and the imagination to create.
Of the 20 destination professionals who took the stage at Zarticon, many were early in their careers, actively using data to push the boundaries of what can be done with stakeholder storytelling, content development, destination leadership, and badass inspiration.
The more we continue to invest in our young people the better future we provide for our organization, our fellow residents and visitors alike.
6. Chasing Innovation and the Data Hero Awards
Data is the new superpower, and those who use it for good are the new “Data Heroes.”
This was the inaugural year for our Data Hero Awards, an opportunity to recognize seven destination teams and initiatives that use data to create an outsized impact on the visitors, residents, and future prosperity of a destination.
We closed the awards ceremony with our Chasing Innovation award to honor the individual who best personifies the late Julie Chase’s passion for new and creative ways to approach the challenges facing destination leaders. Congratulations to Explore Asheville’s Vic Isley who took home the Golden Mona.
Zarticon opened as a blank canvas for the imagination and concluded with a reminder that we are all artists and everyone is creative. How we all apply what we learned is the true measure of our success in how we inspire others.
Artists don’t paint dreams or nightmares, they paint their reality — because it’s not what you see, it’s what you make others see.
