We just celebrated S3’s 22nd birthday.  We became a corporation in the summer of 2000.

To put that in context, we were born out of the dot com bust. Before pets.com went belly up. Before 9/11.  That year the Bush – Gore presidential race was so close Florida ballots were recounted.  The Y2K scare came and went.  We were really worried about the ozone layer. Britney Spears and Pink were just getting going.  Cast Away and Gladiator were blockbusters. Remember that?

A lot has happened since that time. After the technology bust there was a boom, then the housing bust which evolved into the most impressive bull run in history.  Google became important, the iPhone was invented, social media came to be, for good and bad, and a global pandemic changed the world.

Throughout more than 2 decades we’ve seen a lot.  We’ve, worked with over 75 clients, placed more than 500 executives in front of more than 1 million live audience members at over 3000 conferences driving online and print media exposure well into the millions.

During this time, we’ve worked with hundreds of conference producers, followed them as they’ve moved to other organizations and in some cases have helped them grow their own careers.

We’ve seen conferences change too.  The days of the 60-minute keynote address in a suit behind a podium are behind us (our corporate logo used to have a podium in it).  Replaced by the 20-minute moving discussion (thank you TED) with beautiful visuals, or an engaging fireside chat with a smart journalist, and strictly business casual.

We started the firm as a virtual company – back when it was just 2 of us.  Even then we were in different locations.  Today, our team lives and works in 6 different states.  We were a virtual company before it was cool (and now, common practice – thanks, Covid).  In the beginning we were worried about not being in the same room.  What unspoken communication would we miss? How would we stay productive?  Over time, we turned those fears into strengths.  We could hire great people no matter where they lived. We kept overhead low allowing us the flexibility to work with only the best clients providing them exceptional value for our services.  Sure, we had to get creative. We built systems to ensure overlapping coverage and full transparency. And we work hard to meet in person regularly to reinforce our human connections.

Through all of that we have watched companies, conferences, and trends come and go.  We’ve stayed resilient while maintaining our singular focus. We enable clients to utilize speaking at major conferences as a deliberate and strategic communications tool to differentiate their leaders, achievements, and offerings from their competitors. We’ve tried to be the best in the world at what we do.

Our clients tell us we don’t toot our own horn enough, that’s because our philosophy is to be hungry and humble while ensuring our clients are in the spotlight.   But now we are so proud to toot horns, yell from the rooftops and proudly convey S3 is 22 years young!

We create thought leaders. And we let them shine.

Happy Birthday S3!