The SuiteWorld top-20 list: 10 people to reconnect with, 10 to meet

SuiteWorld 2026 will be my seventh. The biggest difference between a SuiteWorld that pays off and one that is just tiring is not the booth, the swag or the sessions. It is whether you walked in knowing who you came to see.

So before anything else, I make one list with two halves: ten people I want to reconnect with, and ten new people I want to meet. Everything else in the week gets planned around those twenty names.

Your top 10 to reconnect with

These are people you already know in some form: contacts you met online, at a previous SuiteWorld or at another event. The goal is not to say hello. The goal is to add an extra touch point to the relationship and build on it.

That touch point can take a few shapes, and it helps to decide which one each person gets:

• A one-on-one meeting, booked before the conference fills everyone's calendar.
• A quick moment at one of the sponsor happy hours.
• Time set aside to drill down on one or two important things in person, the kind of conversation that never quite happens over email.

Your top 10 new people to meet

These are people you have not met yet, so the work is figuring out how to reach them. There are more ways in than most people use:

• Are they speaking at a session? Go, sit near the front, and introduce yourself afterward.
• Is there a common thread, someone who knows you both and can make an introduction?
• Are they inside your extended network, a partner of a partner, or a customer of someone you work with?
• And sometimes it is pure happenstance. I have met many people just outside the bathroom between sessions.

Find out who in your network is speaking

Reach out to your contacts and find out which of them are presenting this year. It is a chance to support your friends, see what they have been working on since last year, and give them a familiar face in the room. It also tends to move a few people from your reconnect list into a real conversation.

Book the tables early

Once the lists exist, lock in reservations for team meetings and one-on-ones before you arrive. I like to add one or two extra seats to every reservation in case the group grows. A dinner that grows by two of the right people is the best outcome of the night, and that is what expense cards were made for.

Turn the list into pipeline

A list only matters if the conversations lead somewhere. Capture what each person cares about while it is fresh, and follow up the same week, while they still remember the conversation. If you want a plan like this built for your whole team, that is what our SuiteWorld readiness work does.