Near the registration tables, I caught fragments of conversation that painted the current state of our industry better than any keynote speech ever could. Two guys in expensive sneakers were deep into their social media. Their voices carried that particular excitement of people who've found a temporary edge before the platforms shadow banned their accounts
Ten feet away, another cluster discussed marketing with the fervor of alchemists who'd finally turned lead into gold. Someone was giving away pens wrapped in sponsor logos.
Then the gossip turned darker, as it always does when the stakes are high enough. Background checks. Platform purges. Legal issues forcing the removal of certain individuals from major sites. The industry's eternal tension between the Wild West ethos that built it and the corporate compliance machinery trying to sanitize it into something Wall Street won't vomit on. I filed these details away like ammunition for later, in this business, knowing who's radioactive can save you six months of wasted outreach.