Impressions From The First Invidis Executive Lounge In US

December 10, 2024 by Dave Haynes

My friends at the Munich-based consultancy invidis do a bunch of things, including organizing and running a series of executive retreats. They have done several in Europe and just did their first on this side of the pond, in Palm Springs, California.

They invited me to join in, doing some interviews with attendees and sharing some of what I have learned in writing a massive report about display tech that will be out in about five weeks.

The format is an invitation-based, intimate gathering of executive-level people – mostly CEOs – who can get away from the grind to hang out with people they might normally regard as competitors. There were evening drinks, a group dinner, R&R activities like golf or an architecture tour, and a three-hour education and discussion session.

This was a first run at it over here and from what I know of the nutty work and travel schedules of Florian and Stefan from invidis, they did not have a whole bunch of time to pull it together and perhaps invite and attract as many people as they wanted. There were about a dozen folks, including one who came all the way in from Dubai and another from Prague. They were then going on to DSE, so the timing worked out nicely.

What I thought worked really well was the knowledge sharing session, which if you walked into the meeting room you would have thought was an AA meeting. Just 14 or so chairs set up in a circle.

It worked because it shifted the dynamic from being taught and informed to throwing ideas and insights back and forth about the state of the industry and where things appear to be headed – especially with respect to tariffs, supply chain, AI and retail media.

There is a bunch of photos here …

I had never been to Palm Springs and being a moron, I thought it was kinda like Aspen or Park City. Nope. Half a million people in the metro area and the place just goes on and on and on, because there appears to be absolutely no high-density housing. Just garden apartments and endless single-home communities.

My taxi ride from the airport cost $88 and that was by no means because the ride crossed the whole metro area.

I dunno how the shift by DSE to more of large-scale forum/retreat set-up might affect plans for future versions of this in North America, but I thought this was good – despite my presence.