Held at a resort where attendees stayed on the same property, the three-day event combined TED-style talks, networking and activities. But after three days, the question was whether changing the setting could actually change the way people interacted.
For some attendees, the answer was yes.
“I think Joey and his team and Liz have done what I think we are all yearning for, like a conference that is really focused on connecting as opposed to just business first,” said Gonzalo Bisquerra, founder and CEO, Happy Caapi “The way this conference has been set up … allows for that human connection to accelerate.”
That connection did not necessarily happen in formal meeting rooms.
Bisquerra said some of his most productive conversations took place late at night and had little to do with business, allowing people to discuss the industry, science and their personal lives.
“Just talking about the industry, the science, life, personal life,” he said. “I think this setting … you have, again, the holistic business, personal and scientific humans that we live in 24 hours in a day.”
That openness also extended to products and ideas. Rather than keeping discussions highly corporate, attendees were sharing products, sampling ingredients and experimenting on the spot.
“I think we’re experiencing a living lab in this conference,” Bisquerra said. “I think this is a living lab of humans trying, connecting. I think some pretty cool products are going to come out of these three days.”
Consultant Amanda Lovett-Jones said the smaller setting created a similar sense of community.
“The uniqueness of having something so intimate, small, and yet socially fun, it’s something I’ve not experienced at a conference before,” she said. “I feel a lot closer to colleagues than I have at previous events.”
Compared with a large trade show, she described FNIS as more like “a village of like minds” focused on improving the industry.
The event’s sports nutrition focus also contributed to the different atmosphere. Alkemist Labs’ CEO Elan Sudberg joked about the number of highly fit attendees, while also noting their scientific knowledge.
“It’s kind of like the intimacy of a UNPA conference, but with much bigger muscles and a lot more skin and geared towards the sports side of things with tons of innovation and tons of science,” he said. “I was very impressed with the scientific acumen of some of these muscular people all around.”
Connecting science with decision-makers
The difference was not simply about moving a conference to a resort.
The organizers wanted to address what they saw as a gap in the industry: bringing science and innovation people into the same room as executives and decision-makers.
“The thing that the industry does not have is a mix between what we see at SupplySide West and ICSB, where you get a lot of the science people in the same rooms, but also the people that can make the decisions in the same room,” said Matt Harrier, executive director, Future Nutra Foundation.
Paul Eftang, science director at the Future Nutri Foundation, said the industry has a disconnect between executives and salespeople on one side and science and innovation teams on the other.
“There’s a big disconnect in the industry between the executives and the salespeople and the science and innovation people,” he said.
Scientists, he argued, often present new developments to other scientists rather than the people who can ultimately bring those innovations into products.
The goal at FNIS was to close that gap by giving executives and decision-makers direct exposure to new science and innovation.
The resort format was part of that strategy. Rather than attendees scattering after sessions, everyone remained in the same environment for several days, creating more opportunities to build relationships than a brief conversation at a trade show booth.
For David Trosin, that appeared to work.
“Mission accomplished,” said Trosin, senior director, nutrition and wellness, NSF International. “This has been a very unique environment. It’s been very social. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Trosin said he had experienced both casual and technical conversations at the event, adding that people appeared more relaxed and that the conversations flowed as a result.
Did the experiment work?
Creating that environment was not without challenges.
Liz Savage, administrative director, Future Nutra Foundation, said the concept grew partly from the experience of larger industry events, where attendees can be pulled in multiple directions. FNIS was designed to offer something more intimate while maintaining the educational component of a conference.
Getting the event to market was one of the biggest hurdles. Savage said the organizers were late with marketing and were asking brands to commit in February, even though many companies begin planning their marketing budgets months earlier.
Still, 323 people attended the inaugural event.
Savage said she was surprised by how many connections happened organically, including people running into one another in elevators simply because everyone was staying on the same small campus.
“If you walk away from FNIS and you didn’t learn something or make a connection, you did it wrong,” she said.
Joey Savage, founder of the Future Nutra Foundation and the driving force behind FNIS, acknowledged that he was not certain the concept would work.
“There’s a huge part of me that thought, you know, we were flirting with disaster,” he said. But in the end, he was pleased with the result, particularly the combination of science, networking and fun.
For Trosin, perhaps the biggest takeaway was not about business at all.
He said the environment allowed attendees to connect on a personal level, talk about important issues in a relaxed way and remember that, despite competition, people across the industry share a broader mission of improving human health.
After three days at FNIS, the event did feel different — but not necessarily for the reasons expected.
The real difference was not just taking the conference out of a traditional ballroom. It was creating an environment where work, learning and wellbeing could coexist and seeing whether that could lead to better conversations.
Three days at a resort cannot prove that a different conference format produces better business or better ideas. But FNIS did create a different environment — one where attendees spent more time together, mixed across disciplines and had space for conversations that might not happen on a traditional show floor.
