The event formally known as the “I Create Music” EXPO had to retool due to the pandemic. Now it's planning to keep the new format.
On March 9, ASCAP officially canceled its rebranded ASCAP Experience music conference (formerly the "I Create Music" EXPO) due to COVID-19’s growing spread in the U.S. In the aftermath, ASCAP executives began strategizing on how to pack the traditional three-day schedule into a virtual format.
"Those were some of the early discussions: 'Can we do that? How do we do that?'" says ASCAP executive vp and chief marketing & communications officer Lauren Iossa of initial conversations focused on retaining the three-day structure. "And then we realized, 'Actually, we don't have to do that.'"
By the time it was announced on May 22, ASCAP Experience: Home Edition had morphed from a three-day conference into a once-weekly, three-hour block of online programming that would ultimately come to encompass eight weekly sessions and a total of 31 panels. "We decided not to try to replicate the live experience," explains Iossa of the reimagined event, "but to take what was so important about the live experience and translate what we could to virtual."