Founder of Beyond The Event and The PIE Network joins Event Tech Live to programme the Meetup Zone, reactivate the Event Tech Founders Forum and support a year-round community strategy ahead of ETL London 2026.
Event Tech Live (ETL) has confirmed the appointment of Valentina Ruffoni as Community Lead, a new role that brings dedicated community management capability into the ETL operation for the first time. Ruffoni will programme the Meetup Zone at ETL London 2026, take on the management of the Event Tech Founders Forum and help shape the wider community strategy that runs across the year between ETL editions.
The appointment formalises a working relationship that began at ETL London 2025, where Ruffoni first appeared as a panellist in a session on community and events alongside Francisco Opazo founder at Led By Community. It also reflects a deliberate shift in how ETL views its audience: not as a registration list that activates twice a year, but as an active community of buyers, founders, and operators who expect value from the brand throughout the calendar.
A community remit, not a content remit
Ruffoni is the founder of Beyond The Event, a consultancy focused on building and managing communities that sit alongside events such as trade shows, conferences, and expos rather than disappearing the moment a show closes. She is also the founder of The PIE Network, a community for people in events that has grown into one of the more active independent networks in the UK and European events scene.
Her remit at ETL is structured rather than promotional. The first phase of work focuses on the Event Tech Founders Forum, a private WhatsApp group of around 200 event technology founders that Adam Parry, Founder of Event Tech Live, set up at the start of the pandemic as a peer support network. Ruffoni will work with Parry on a structured re-engagement of the group, including a careful audit of active members, a clearer purpose and set of guardrails, and a programme of conversations designed to surface the operational and commercial questions founders are actually wrestling with.
From there, the focus moves to the Meetup Zone at ETL London 2026 at Excel, where Ruffoni will work with industry communities and associations to programme curated meetups, open networking, and host-led sessions across the two days of the show. The model builds on the introduction of The Meetup Zone at Event Tech Live 2025.
Why this matters for ETL
Trade shows have a long-running structural problem. Networking is one of the primary reasons buyers attend in the first place, but a meaningful share of that networking happens in hotel lobbies, partner dinners, and offsite venues rather than on the show floor. The Meetup Zone is ETL’s answer to that problem: a programmed, branded space where community activity is brought back inside the venue and given a clear schedule.
The community remit extends beyond the live event. ETL’s database of around 59,000 opted-in subscribers, the founders forum, and the wider supplier and organiser audience represent year-round touchpoints that have historically been managed alongside everything else, rather than as a discrete workstream. Bringing in dedicated community capability is an acknowledgement that this audience needs deliberate management if it is going to deliver value to members and to the ETL brand.
Comments
“The strongest communities in our industry are the ones that are properly managed. They do not run themselves, and the assumption that they do is one of the reasons so many of them lose momentum. Bringing Valentina in is about doing this properly. She has built one of the most engaged independent communities in events with The PIE Network, and she understands that community work is consistent, not sporadic. The Event Tech Founders Forum and the Meetup Zone deserve that level of attention, and so does the audience around them.”
Adam Parry, Founder, Event Tech Live
“My first time at Event Tech Live was on a panel about community, and a year on I am joining the team to lead that work. Communities sit before, during, and after the event itself. That is the whole premise of Beyond The Event, and it is the same premise behind what we are building with ETL. The Meetup Zone gives the audience a real reason to stay on the floor, and the Founders Forum gives the supply side a place to talk to peers without it becoming a pitch. There is a lot to do, but the foundation is already there.”
Valentina Ruffoni, Community Lead, Event Tech Live and Founder, Beyond The Event
Looking ahead to ETL London 2026
ETL London 2026 takes place on 11 and 12 November 2026 at Excel London. The Meetup Zone will be programmed across both days, with curated sessions hosted by industry communities, scheduled meetups, and open networking between sessions. Further programme detail and partner announcements will follow in the run-up to the show.
Ruffoni will continue to lead Beyond The Event and The PIE Network alongside her ETL role. The two are positioned as complementary, with Beyond The Event acting as her independent consulting practice and the ETL role focused specifically on the Event Tech Live audience and the Meetup Zone activation.
