A Milestone Celebration Designed to Overcome Anything

March 17, 2026

ASID Gather 2025 stayed on script thanks to a strong team

The mission was to celebrate the milestone of a half century of American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) by bringing together the community from students to the most experienced professionals. The plan was to welcome 800 to Gather 2025 at Signia by Hilton, Atlanta Georgia World Congress Center in August of 2025 for an event billed as a celebration of 50 years of interior design excellence: honoring our past, designing the future. The highlight was seeing retired and active leaders coming together to celebrate the organization.

“We plan our events like our designers approach projects,” said Valerie O’Keefe, Hon. FASID, senior director of engagement with ASID. “They never do the same kitchen design twice and we mix the agenda up a little to keep people on their toes,” she explained.

Smart Meetings asked her to break down the elements that created this once in five decades experience, complete with a breathtaking moment that required some fast footwork.

A Storied Location

The ASID conference moves from city to city each year based on where concentrations of members live. Miami, Los Angeles and Denver have hosted in the recent past and the group’s Catalyst 2026 national leadership conference will be in Dallas this September to coincide with ARCHLight and Dallas Design Week.

For the 50th anniversary, the team was looking for a meaningful location. Some deep research in the archives revealed that the organization’s first board meeting was in Atlanta. “It was a nice little nod to where everything started,” said O’Keefe.

Red Carpet Treatment

To set the stage, Gather kicked off with a glamorous awards celebration. The ASID 50 recognized 50 individuals who embody the essence of the organization as nominated and voted on by participants and announced on-site.

Usually, the awards element of the program wraps up the conference, but by scheduling the gala with some historic honors on opening night, attendees were cued in to congratulate the special guests throughout the conference. “It helped drive new connections and conversations throughout the event,” said O’Keefe.

The evening was couched in a 1970s disco vibe and the creatives in attendance embraced the theme. “Our members showed up and brought the experience to life,” said O’Keefe. The outfits encouraged storytelling as attendees shared their thrift store and family hand-me-down stories.

A disaster-averted moment during the honorifics that O’Keefe can look back on now and laugh about was that in the middle of the awards, when the hotel was asked to close down the bars in the expo hall closest to the stage, they took it to mean move everything out and one of the bar tenders accidentally pulled the plug on the AV just as a commercial was about to play for the biggest sponsor and the volunteer honorees were lined up on stage. The only light was the glimmering of the disco ball from the ceiling and a collective gasp could be heard in the room.

“In my corner of my eye, I see the AV team running faster than I’ve ever seen anyone run and everything was back up within a minute, running flawlessly just as we had rehearsed it,” O’Keefe said.

The next night a curated tour of home, decor and outdoor furnishings at AmericasMart Atlanta was perfectly aligned with the interests of the group.

A yearbook-singing party was another thread woven into the agenda to make the anniversary event a little bit more special.

And a Golden Soiree at Georgia Aquarium’s Oceans Ballroom closed out the festivities without a hitch.

Back to the Future

Women talking

One of the reasons O’Keefe thinks the recovery was so fast the first night was that the team had embraced AV more than in previous years by working closely with White Tie Productions out of Phoenix and Script Elephant as the run-of-show software. What was previously a PowerPoint deck produced by the marketing team had morphed into an interactive, immersive experience that was still poised and ready to go once power was restored.

“It’s all about the team you build around you that can pivot and make the best of a situation and fix it whatever happens. By working together year-after-year, we have built camaraderie, trust and respect for each other. You just never know whether you’re going to need someone to have your back,” she said.

O’Keefe, who considered herself a non-production person, has been experimenting with the production tool for three years. “The day I get access to Script Elephant is one of my favorite planning days because I get to see the work that individual teams have built to create the brand story and script. That is when it all comes alive in the platform with music and transitions,” she said.

Surprise and Sprinkles

F&B can be one of the more logistically challenging aspects of feeding 800 people, but O’Keefe sees it as an opportunity to add joy to the day. All-day coffee service in the expo hall drives traffic and serendipitous connections with sponsors. By offering ice cream Snickers bars as an afternoon snack on a warm day, she brought nostalgic delight the grown-up professionals who were not expecting it. They ate it up—literally. “When you introduce something people aren’t expecting, they get very excited,” said O’Keefe.