About

Hi, I'm Jared.

I've spent 16 years in B2B events. I started in exhibitor services, ran it as a director at PennWell, then spent five years selling to enterprise exhibitors and sponsors across global energy events. It's the side of a show where you learn fast what exhibitors actually need and what makes them come back.

Along the way I kept running into the same thing: good tools that didn't talk to each other, and smart people retyping data from one system into the next. Nobody was going to fix that for us, so I learned to connect the tools myself. That turned into building the systems outright.

Today I lead event technology for a US trade show portfolio. I also founded QORD, an AI outreach service for exhibitors, and co-founded Cohesion Coworking in Tulsa and Broken Arrow.

The work I enjoy most is the glue: taking a process a team dreads and making it run on its own, so people get back to the parts of the job that need a person.

Outside work

Touring by bike

In 2005 I rode a bicycle across the United States: from Yorktown, Virginia to Florence, Oregon, then down the West Coast to Los Angeles. Five of us set out on September 1, self-supported, carrying everything we needed and averaging 68 miles a day. By the time we rolled into LA on December 1, there were two of us left.

I did it to experience the world around me on a deeper level, to push myself through the hard days, and to connect with the people we met along the way.

It wasn't the only tour. I also rode around Connecticut and Massachusetts in 2005, and in 2009 I rode down the West Coast again and toured Oklahoma.

On my shelf

I read a lot: business, philosophy, comparative religion, and more fantasy than I'll admit to. A few that shaped how I work:

• High Output Management Andrew S. Grove
  A manager's output is the output of their team.
• Setting the Table Danny Meyer
  Service is what you deliver. Hospitality is how it makes people feel.
• The E-Myth Revisited Michael E. Gerber
  Work on the business, not just in it.
• Obviously Awesome April Dunford
  Positioning decides whether people get what you built.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni
  Trust comes first. Everything else on a team is built on it.
• Man's Search for Meaning Viktor E. Frankl
  You can't always choose what happens, but you choose how you meet it.

For fun: The Wheel of Time, The Stormlight Archive, The Murderbot Diaries and the Bobiverse.