Inside the Ashby One Agenda: Why We Build Sessions Differently
8 minute read
My first day at HubSpot coincided with the kickoff of the Inbound Marketing Conference in 2011, back when a few hundred marketers gathered in a small hotel and the idea of a company conference was still an experiment. Over the next five years, I watched it grow into what is now INBOUND, a flagship event drawing 12,000+ folks to the Boston Convention Center each year to hear big ideas, new product launches, and celebrity speakers like Trevor Noah and Reese Witherspoon.
Over the course of those five years I went from working behind-the-scenes (registration desk, mic runner, directions usher) and helping prepare speakers to taking the stage regularly myself. I was ranked a top-five speaker by attendees three years in a row, which led to invitations to speak globally at events like Unbounce in London, Growth Hackers in San Francisco, SEOZone in Istanbul, and CTA Conference in Vancouver. Through these experiences I became obsessive about what makes a session great — the narrative flow, the audience engagement, the structure of the talk. I later became a professional speaker coach and ghostwrote entire keynote decks for executive leaders.
But when I joined the talent and people space through my role as Head of Content at Ashby, I kept hearing the same feedback about existing events in not just our industry, but all business sectors as the sheer number of events available has multiplied:
- “I see the same speakers at every conference.”
- “I spent a lot of my learning budget, but I didn’t really learn anything new.”
- “It sounded good, but it didn’t change how I work.”
I don’t think that’s because the industry lacks smart people. I think it’s because of how most conferences are built.
An In-House Model for Designing Agendas
Traditionally, events rely on open calls for speakers. The loudest voices (or the ones with the most time to build a polished deck) submit proposals. Conference teams then play Tetris, fitting those talks into a day of programming and hoping it coheres.
But some of the most innovative hiring workflows, thoughtful RecOps systems, and impactful talent strategies come from practitioners doing the work every single day — and those practitioners are busy. Keeping up with economic fluctuations and AI adoption is challenging enough; being expected to also turn your work into compelling narratives and structure into talk tracks is simply not in scope. So when we conceived of Ashby One, I knew we had to architect it differently.
Start With the Work, Not the Submissions
Ashby has a unique vantage point. We work with many of the top talent teams in the world from fast-growing companies building entirely new operating models for hiring. Through customer conversations, community threads, social listening, and our proprietary dataset spanning millions of hiring moments, we have a living pulse on what’s actually shifting in talent acquisition.
That’s where the Ashby One agenda begins. Not with “Who wants to speak?” But with: "What conversations does the industry actually need right now?"
A select few of us personally craft the agenda based on those inputs. We pressure-test it internally and turn to our Sales and CS partners to review it and scope: Who is truly doing this work at a high level and how do we map the right expert to the right topic?
We also deliberately scan for a mix of voices across company size, geography, talent leadership and RecOps expertise, lived experience, and career stage. Recruiting is one of the most diverse professions in the world. Our industry programming should reflect that.
We Co-Build Every Session
We also don’t ask our speakers to show up with a fully formed talk. We often hear initial hesitation when we reach out to experts in their domain. They’re nervous about the major time suck it can be and don’t want to spend weekends stuck in presentation decks. Instead, every Ashby One session is co-built in-house. My content team partners closely with each speaker to:
- Refine the topic so it’s sharp and relevant
- Pull out the strongest insights from their real-world experience
- Shape the narrative arc of the session
- Build slides with our in-house design team
- Run speaker coaching and dry runs
By the time someone steps onto the stage, they’re prepared, confident, and excited to share something meaningful.
This model isn’t common. It’s also why our speakers often tell us it’s one of the best event experiences they’ve had. And why feedback from our audience at the inaugural Ashby One in 2025 was so strong we’re bringing the conference to two cities this year (hello London!).
Design the Day for Energy, Not Endurance
Ashby One is built around three tracks:
- Talent Leadership
- Recruiting Operations
- Ashby Labs
Talent Leaders and RecOps practitioners share a mission, but they don’t share the same day-to-day decisions. One is navigating executive alignment, headcount strategy, and talent density. The other is designing systems, enabling teams, and turning strategy into workflow. And the partnership across the two is essential. Meanwhile Ashby Labs is a dedicated product space where practice and interaction replace observation.
Within and across these tracks, we vary format intentionally.
Product Keynote
We open Ashby One with our product keynote on what we’ve been building and where we’re heading next. This session is designed to ground the day in what’s possible when recruiting teams have a modern system built for the way hiring has evolved.
You’ll see the latest feature launches and product updates, along with real examples of how customers are using Ashby to achieve hiring excellence. We’ll also share how we’re thinking about AI across the platform — not as a collection of experiments, but as an integrated layer across the entire hiring process designed to help teams move from exploration to operational rigor.
Finally, we’ll pull back the curtain on our product philosophy: how we organize teams, how we approach building software for talent organizations, and how customer insight shapes the roadmap.
Panels
Our panels are designed to stay current. Instead of locking topics months in advance, we build them to reflect the reality of the market in the weeks leading up to the event. At every Ashby One you can expect our pillar panels:
- Our Hiring Excellence panel evolves alongside the challenges enterprise teams are navigating in real time.
- Our Talent Trends panel pairs proprietary insights from millions of hiring data points with leaders who live inside those numbers every day.
Presentations and Fireside Chats
Some ideas need structure and depth. Our in-depth presentations and structured fireside chats give space for a couple of experts to unpack an emerging shift in the space. These are focused and strategic to help inspire meaningful change within organizations across (think Quality of Hire, AI innovation, and more). And the format adapts to the speaker - some are more comfortable delivering a 40-minute session while others prefer conversation to guide them. Either way, we include visuals and prep the content to come alive intentionally.
Lightning Talks
Energy matters.
Our Lightning Talks are ten minutes each, split across Talent Leadership and RecOps. In the time many conferences give you one voice, you’ll hear from at least three. These sessions are tightly scoped around specific programs and workflows. They’re designed for velocity and exposure, giving attendees more ideas without cognitive overload. And they’re a whole lot of fun, inspired by the lightning talks our employees give internally at our annual company offsites.
Build-a-thon
And then, we build. For our RecOps professionals, we close the day not with theory, but with action. Our Build-a-thon invites practitioners to experiment together in a creative, low-stakes environment. Because building alongside peers is often more powerful than listening to another talk. What more beautiful way to network than to co-work?
Ashby Labs
Ashby Labs is one of the product-focused experiences at Ashby One, built for deeper learning, hands-on exploration, real conversations, and practical takeaways you can use right away. Whether attendees are evaluating Ashby or already running it day to day, Labs is the place to learn real workflows and leave with clear next steps. This includes Labs stage sessions, 1:1 Labs meetings that can be booked, and direct access to Ashby’s product experts, customer stories, and key partners.
Final Thoughts
Building an agenda this way takes more effort, but we believe it matters. When people spend a day at a conference, they deserve more than a set of polished talks. They deserve real ideas, inspiring workflows, and tangible context they can take back into their work the next morning.
That’s why we’re so intentional about how we source both topics and speakers. Many of the people you’ll see on the Ashby One stage aren’t regulars on the conference circuit. Instead, they’re spending their days building the systems, programs, and operating models we’re talking about. Our job is to work closely with them to shape those experiences into sessions that are clear, practical, and genuinely useful.
From where we sit, these are some of the most thoughtful leaders and practitioners in the industry right now. Much of the work they’re sharing is still being actively built inside their organizations and will likely show up as case studies and broader conference conversations in the years ahead.
This is also very much a team effort. The agenda comes together through input from across Ashby: our community, our sales and customer teams, the data we see across the platform, and the incredible work of our marketing team who help turn those ideas into a great experience on the day. So taking this moment to say thank you to everyone that has contributed so far this year and in the years to come.
If you can join us in San Francisco or London this year, we’d love to see you there.
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