Touring travel is operating under a new set of constraints shaped by volatility, rising costs, and evolving crew expectations. This panel brings together leaders from touring, production, travel management, and transportation to examine how teams are adapting to these realities on the ground.

Featuring industry experts across touring and global travel brands, the discussion centers on real-world decision-making around routing, forecasting, cost pressure, and the day-to-day realities of moving people and production at scale. Grounded in lived experience rather than theory, the conversation explores how better workflows, shared visibility, and practical coordination can reduce friction and stress without removing human judgment, offering clear insights touring teams can apply on their next run.

In todays AV industry, networking is more than just a backbone—its the foundation for seamless, reliable, and scalable productions. This talk dives into the world of converged networking, exploring how audio, video, lighting, and control can coexist on a single network without compromising performance. Showing how converged networking optimises shows, increases flexibility, and making it easier to collect, inspect, and manage your network.

Live production is under unprecedented strain. Tours are getting bigger, faster, and more complex at the exact moment the industry is facing a generational labor gap, fragmented communication, and runaway production expectations.

This panel brings together leaders from venue operations, large-scale festivals, and touring production to unpack what is actually breaking on the ground—and what needs to change next. From the disappearance of experienced mid-career crew after COVID to the inflation of production scale driven by democratized design tools and social media influence, the panel explores how misaligned expectations are colliding with real-world labor, venue, and budget constraints.

Panelists will share firsthand perspectives on why advancing has become harder than ever, how unreliable information creates downstream chaos, and why traditional “old school” production workflows no longer scale. The conversation will also examine emerging approaches to standardization, data-driven advancing, and shared systems that reduce cognitive load for venues, tours, and festivals alike.

With students and early-career professionals entering the industry alongside veterans navigating a rapidly changing landscape, this session offers a candid look at where live production is headed—and what it will take to build sustainable, professional workflows for the next generation.

Go behind the scenes with the touring team behind one of the world’s biggest arena acts as they break down how they use Master Tour to run an exceptionally tight global show operation. Led by Tour Manager Mark Oglesby and members of his core touring team, this session offers an inside look at real-world workflows used at the highest level of live touring.

The discussion dives into rapid-fire decision making, mobile usage on the road, crew coordination, advancing practices, and day-of-show execution across continents. Attendees will gain a rare, practical perspective on how elite touring teams operate inside Master Tour at scale—what drives efficiency, where challenges emerge, and how modern touring teams push technology to evolve alongside the demands of today’s global arena tours.

Join us for a focused preview of what’s next for Master Tour. Key members of the Master Tour team will share platform updates, workflow improvements, and a forward-looking roadmap, alongside high-level, data-driven touring patterns from 2025 that help frame how the industry is evolving.

The session will include updates on our rebuilt mobile experience and broader platform capabilities, designed to unlock new workflows and partnerships throughout 2026 and beyond. We will also highlight continued progress on our venue system, including growing venue adoption and endorsement from NIVA. Together, these advancements reflect ongoing efforts to improve efficiency, strengthen data flow, and support more connected workflows between touring teams and venues.

We will also introduce a community-focused partnership with Professional Tax Alliance through its Own Your Future initiative, reflecting a shared commitment to long-term sustainability and financial well-being across the touring community.