How We Ditched Our Web Agency and Lived to Talk About It

Take a moment and visit the European Collaboration Summit website (https://collabsummit.eu) we launched this summer. Run it through Google PageSpeed Insights if you're the skeptical type - you'll find it hitting top scores. Check the accessibility standards, the SEO metrics, the performance benchmarks. It's even agentic-web ready, prepared for the AI agents that are already browsing the web on behalf of users.

But here's what really matters: people genuinely love it. They tell us it's beautiful, engaging, informative. After twelve years of organizing that event and wrestling with countless website launches, that feedback never gets old.

What nobody realizes when they're admiring our site? The entire thing was built over a weekend. No web agency. No designer hunched over Adobe Photoshop. No copywriter agonizing over the perfect headline. No developer debugging JavaScript.

Or rather, we had all those roles covered - they just weren't human.

The Traditional Dance We All Know Too Well

Anyone who's been in the event business knows the website development dance. You start with a kick-off meeting where you try to download your entire vision into an agency team's heads. They nod enthusiastically, take notes, and come back three weeks later with something that's… not quite right. Not wrong, exactly, but like looking at your event through someone else's prescription glasses.

Then begins the revision rounds. "The tone isn't quite capturing our community spirit." "This doesn't convey the energy of our expo hall." Each round takes time, costs another chunk of budget, and somehow moves you further from your original vision rather than closer.

I've done this dance multiple times. Few times we did it ourselves (we are very tech-savvy), the last two versions were done by an external agency. And they tried - genuinely tried. But something always got lost in translation between my brain, their interpretation, and the final pixels on screen. We tried four different CMS tools during that time - we profoundly hated WordPress, and the other ones were even worse.

Until this summer.

When Machines Started Making Sense

We're living through a peculiar moment in history where AI can write better marketing copy than most humans, code more efficiently than many developers, and even make design decisions that would make seasoned designers nod in approval. The question isn't whether AI can do these things - it can. The question is whether an event organizer who's spent their career juggling vendors and venues can suddenly become a tech wizard orchestrating these AI tools.

The answer? They don't need to. Modern event platforms like run.events have done something rather clever - they've packaged all this AI capability into tools that speak our language, not Silicon Valley's.

I know what you did last weekend

Let me walk you through what actually happened that weekend, because it still feels slightly surreal even to us.

The Blueprint Phase

We started with what we know best - describing our event. Not in technical specifications or wireframes, but in plain language bullet points. After organizing conferences for over a decade, I can describe what makes the European Collaboration Summit special in my sleep. Our community's unique mix of technical depth and business relevance. The way we balance enterprise perspectives with innovative startups. The magic that happens when you put AI developers in the same room with business strategists.

We mapped out every page we needed, some with complete content ready to go, others just conceptual ("we need a page that explains why Cologne in May is actually magical, despite what people might assume about German weather").

The First Draft

We fed everything into run.events and let it generate the basic structure. Within a minute, we had a functioning website. Not just a template - a real site with our content, integrated registration forms, dynamic agenda pulled from our event management system, sponsor logos properly sized and arranged. It was… fine. Professional. Competent. Exactly what you'd expect from a "good enough" event website.

But there are situations where "good enough" is not good enough, and the European Collaboration Summit web site is such a situation.

Meeting Amal

Then it got interesting. We started working with three AI agents that run.events calls Amal: Amal Copywriter, Amal Designer, and Amal Coder. And yes, giving them a name feels a bit silly until you start working with them and realize you're actually having a conversation, not just pushing buttons.

Amal Copywriter took our bullet points about "creating meaningful connections in the Microsoft ecosystem" and turned them into copy that actually sounded like us - enthusiastic without being hyperbolic, technical without being intimidating. When she produced something that felt too corporate, we simply asked for more warmth, more community focus. She rewrote it without complaining.

Amal Designer suggested designs and I wouldn't have thought of. Made pages read easier, redesigned large blocks of text into smaller blocks. The site felt alive, dynamic, like our actual events.

Amal Coder handled the actual implementation and SEO and accessibility optimizations without hassles. Lazy loading for images, proper meta tags for social sharing, structured data for search engines - all the unsexy but crucial details that make a website actually work in the real world.

The Part Where We Question Everything

The question that we all need to ask ourselves: if we can create a stunning, functional, optimized website in a weekend, what does this mean for our entire industry? How are our jobs going to look like? Will we even have jobs?

The Great Equalizer

For years, I've watched smaller events struggle with their digital presence. Brilliant niche tech conferences shouldn't lose attendees just because they can't afford a €50,000 website. A community event shouldn't look amateur just because their entire budget is €5,000.

This technology doesn't just level the playing field - it fundamentally redefines what the game even is. When any event with clear vision can have world-class digital presence, we compete on what actually matters: the quality of content, the strength of community, the value we deliver to attendees.

Speed as Strategy

In the traditional model, by the time your website launches, the market has already shifted. While preparing the website for the European Collaboration Summit 2017, Microsoft announced Teams in November 2016. Needless to say, half of our event content shifted focus to Microsoft Teams, and we had to rework the site just as it went live. Overnight, our entire messaging about "the future of collaboration" looked dated.

Now? We can react and change in hours, not months. And we don't need to call a web agency for that, explain the changes, wait for a quote, approve the budget, and then wait another week for implementation. We just do it ourselves, right there, right then.

The website becomes a living document, not a monument to decisions made months ago.

The Agency Evolution

I can already hear the gasps from our friends at digital agencies (and yes, we're still friends with all of them). But this isn't about putting them out of business. It's about the evolution of our business - and theirs.

The agencies that will thrive are those that stop selling implementation and start selling strategy. Event organizers will not need someone to push pixels around - they will need partners who understand event psychology, who can help them articulate the vision clearly enough for AI to execute it brilliantly. The best agencies will become AI orchestrators, not HTML factories.

This shift fundamentally changes our job description. We're no longer project managers coordinating between multiple vendors. We're creative directors with AI as our production team. The skills that matter aren't technical - they're strategic and creative.

Understanding your audience deeply becomes more valuable than understanding CSS. Being able to articulate what makes your event unique matters more than knowing WordPress. The human elements of event organizing - building communities, understanding attendee psychology, creating meaningful experiences - these become our core differentiators.

Some Uncomfortable Questions

Let me address the elephants performing synchronized swimming in the room.

Isn't AI content soulless?

In short: It is as soulless as many human copywriters. Amal Copywriter wrote a description of networking sessions in our Expo Hall that made me genuinely smile. The soul comes from the input - from understanding your community deeply enough to guide the AI toward authentic expression. Soulless input creates soulless output, regardless of whether a human or machine is doing the writing.

What about the unique creative vision?

After so many years of working with agencies, I can tell you that true creative genius is rare. Most of what we get is competent execution of established patterns. AI does competent extremely well. And when we need a true creative breakthrough? That's where humans come in - and that has been my point all along.

Aren't we just putting people out of work?

We're changing what work looks like. We are even changing the definition of work. The developer grinding through HTML isn't needed. The strategic thinker who understands how to create compelling digital experiences? More valuable than ever. It's evolution, not extinction.

The Bigger Picture for Events

This transformation extends far beyond websites. We're approaching a point where AI can handle much of what we consider event production. Agenda optimization based on attendee behavior patterns. Personalized communication streams for different audience segments. Real-time content adaptation based on engagement metrics.

The event organizers who thrive will be those who embrace these tools while doubling down on what makes us human - the ability to create meaningful connections, to understand community needs, to design experiences that resonate emotionally.

After so many years in this industry, I've learned that technology never replaces the human element in events - it amplifies it. The question is whether we'll use these new amplifiers or let them gather dust while we cling to familiar processes.

What This Really Means

The European Collaboration Summit website stands as proof that the barriers between vision and execution have crumbled. What once required teams of specialists and months of development now requires clear thinking and a weekend of focused effort.

This isn't just about saving money (though our CFO certainly appreciates that aspect). It's about maintaining authentic voice, responding to market changes instantly, and focusing our human energy on what actually matters - creating exceptional event experiences.

Some will see this as the end of an era. I see it as the beginning of something far more interesting. When every event can have professional digital presence, when every organizer can execute their vision without compromise, when technology amplifies rather than restricts creativity - that's when our industry gets really exciting.

The European Collaboration Summit has always been about embracing the future of collaboration technology. It seems fitting that we're now living that future ourselves, with AI as our newest collaboration partner. And yes, we definitely lived to tell about it. In fact, we're already planning what to do next. Why spend months on development when you can spend that time actually improving your event? That's the question our industry needs to answer.

Based on our experience, I know which side of that equation I'm choosing.