• February 2026Hey all, and welcome to the February edition of The Mixer.
This time around, we’re on part 2 of our friction series, where we discuss why vibe coding has emerged as a solution to organization friction, and why event planners should keep their guard up. (There’s still plenty of room in the AI pool, though.)
Also this time around:
🤖 The robot event takeover
🛑 The most painful friction points
🎨 A new way of thinking about event design
Anyway, let’s get to it:
Was this email shared with you? Keep up with us and get the best mix of monthly insights about the event sector by signing up for future issues of The Mixer.
The Wrong (And Right) Way To Manage Friction
It might be tempting to throw a vibe-coding tool at your friction problem. But there’s a more responsible way to work AI into the mix.
By Ernie Smith
It might feel easy to give in to the vibes of AI to let it build your website or speed up a traditional process. (After all, you’re fighting friction.) But are the shortcuts worth it?
According to Thorben Grosser, EventMobi’s head of AI & automation, it depends on the problem you’re trying to solve—and whether it’s going to make anything worse.
And for most use cases, that leaves “vibe coding,” the spicy AI trend that defined 2025, out in the cold. “Don’t vibe code critical infrastructure. End of story,” he says.
Instead, Grosser suggests taking a more pragmatic approach to managing the vibes, using it for smaller, behind the scenes tasks, like ideation, or a small automation that doesn’t require online access. But even then, you might be overestimating it.
“Vibe coding is still not something you just pick up and do,” he says. “You need to have at least the level of interest of somebody has that still sets up an email client manually.”
So, what’s the alternative? “The answer is so boring and simple, but it’s ‘work with professionals,’” he says.
That, combined with cost, might mean you need to ease your ambitions, but there’s still lots of potential to smooth out the friction through integrations. Software integration tools (like Eventmobi’s integrations hub) utilize the under-the-hood connections that many modern tools have through their application programming interfaces (APIs), but abstract out much of the complexity, making them powerful but approachable.
“It’s possible to build something that we can make available to use on one hand, but that is safe to use on the other hand,” he says.
Want to learn more? Check out the full interview with Grosser below:
Reduce Event Friction Before It Shows Up Onsite
Most planner stress isn't about people. It’s about tools that don’t work together. Registration, check-in, and engagement shouldn’t live in separate systems.
Bring together the core parts of event delivery in one connected platform with EventMobi.
Still thinking about how to work automation and AI into your tech stack? Some insights to help you figure things out:
» How risky can vibe coding be? A recent BBC piece highlights how security risks can creep into vibe-coded projects.
» Does the idea of an API confuse you? Check out this high-level guide from GitHub that explains how APIs work and how they simplify integration.
» There’s still plenty of room for AI to grow in the B2B events space, as Forrester Principal Analyst Conrad Mills explained in a recent blog post.
|
💡 Idea Machine
The one area where AI really shines for event planners.
34%
The percentage of event planners that say they plan to use AI to generate creative concepts or themes, according to a recent survey by American Express Global Business Travel. The study found it was the most prominent planned use of AI, above content creation (31%) and tracking attendee engagement (28%). Perhaps the reason concept generation is so popular with event planners? Nearly a quarter (24%) believe that generating creative concepts will be a challenge this year.
Handout photo
Here’s a provocative idea that may rile some up—but might seem appealing to others.
A new startup called ExpoBooth.ai is attempting to reinvent the process of creating an expo booth by simplifying it using (you guessed it) artificial intelligence. As their tagline states, “8+ hours just became 11 seconds,” with the idea that the product could be a good choice for those designing booths to speed up the ideation process.
Co-founder and CEO Matt Funge says that the approach aimed to take lessons from generative tools while ensuring the approach was practical. “Ultimately, the inspiration is simple: help the industry move faster without sacrificing craft and quality,” he shares in an email.
The renders and videos are available now at a cost of a few hundred pounds (this is a U.K. company, after all), while the company promises that more in-depth tools like technical drawings and material lists are on the way. “Technical outputs have to be accurate and build-aware, which is why our approach is AI-powered but not ‘AI-only,’” Funge adds.
Could this approach save the booth designers of the world time, or just lead to more boring booths? Ultimately, Funge says that the goal is to ease early-stage design iterations—and make them work within existing workflows.
“This is not about replacing great designers—it’s about removing bottlenecks.”
That’s where the event sector stands this month. Keep an eye on where we’re headed—and be sure to share this link with your favorite reader: