2023 Unified 5K and AdaptXpo Recap
This past weekend, we hosted our inaugural inclusive and adaptive fitness conference, the AdaptXpo.
We welcomed twelve amazing vendors to our facility in Lancaster, MA. They displayed strategies to make spaces and services accessible, technology to measure health and performance, and products to improve your running.
We were really pleased with how the expo developed over the last four months. The opportunity to host events like this was one of the main reasons why I was so interested in buying this building last Spring. Thanks to one of our vendors, The Flying Locksmiths, we’ve been able to make the building more accessible.
One of the biggest challenges initially was that vendors wanted to know how many participants were going to be attending. But we couldn’t market the event until we knew who the vendors were.
We felt a lot of pressure to attract a large enough crowd for the benefit of these individuals and organizations who were giving up their Friday afternoon to join us. We are incredibly grateful they they took a chance on our event and we hope they found it worthwhile. We’re motivated to make next year’s event even better.
Another challenge was the layout. No one designs a gym with the orientation of folding chairs and a projector in mind. Without a projector screen we needed an empty white wall to display his slides. This limited us to having Dustin’s presentation on the turf. As a result, everyone who showed up to the expo between 4 and 5, temporarily “disrupted” our keynote presentation as they entered the gym. However, Dustin was unphased.
Next year we hope to have a line-up of speakers to cover various topics within inclusion, accessibility, and fitness. While some of our vendors had interactive aspects to their booths, it would be great to have more formal sessions. This will just require a bit more planning with the layout of the building so we can have the fluid nature of the expo without interrupting the presentations.
One area where we fell short was attracting more fitness professionals to attend. We were hoping that the expo would be an opportunity to educate personal trainers, PTs, OTs, etc. on how they can make their environments more inclusive and introduce them to our educational offerings through AdaptX. This will be a primary goal of next year’s event. Maybe a more thorough lineup of speakers and workshops, not exclusively related to adaptive fitness, would draw in a larger audience.
Overall, it was a great first experience. Bridget and I learned a lot about marketing and hosting an event that we can apply to next year’s expo.
On Saturday, June 3rd, we had more than 200 participants walk, run, roll, and row our 5th annual Unified 5K.
If you are interested in viewing race results or purchasing finish line photos from the race, please visit our RaceWire pages linked here:
