Today we’re announcing LASSO Intelligence, the first AI built specifically for how event production companies operate. But before we tell you what it does, we want to let the people actually using it do the talking.
For the past several weeks, a group of beta customers — operations leaders, application owners, and crew managers running real shows in real time — have been putting LASSO Intelligence and Lassie, our industry-native AI agent, through their paces. They’ve asked it hard questions. They’ve tested it against their workflows. And they’ve started telling us, in their own words, what’s changed.
Here’s what they’re saying.
“It Already Caught Things We Would Have Missed.”
Rick Ralls, Sr. Logistics Manager at Eventions AV (Compass Group @ Microsoft), is the kind of operator who knows LASSO inside and out. His goal in the beta wasn’t just to test features — it was to find out whether LASSO Intelligence could empower the rest of his team to get more out of the platform too.
“What got me excited about LASSO Intelligence was being able to give my managers — people who don’t live and breathe in LASSO like I do — a tool they can talk to like an assistant. Ask it about double bookings, blank spots in next week’s schedule, or VIP customers coming up. In the first few days, it caught double bookings we would have missed, pulled VIP customer breakdowns with technician history I couldn’t easily get before, and automated a schedule export that used to eat hours of manual work every week.”
Rick Ralls
Sr. Logistics Manager, Eventions AV | Compass Group @ Microsoft
That last point — a schedule export Rick’s team used to build manually — is the kind of operational drag that doesn’t show up on a feature list but eats hours out of every week. It’s exactly the kind of work LASSO Intelligence is built to handle.
“Instead Of Digging Through Crew Lists, I Just Asked.”
Austin McElwain, Director of Show Services at AFPC, runs operations the way most of our customers do — not from a desk, but from a warehouse, a job site, or the driver’s seat between them. For Austin, the value of LASSO Intelligence showed up immediately the first time a last-minute change came in.
“This morning a customer asked if we could move a call up. In the past, that meant pulling up crew lists and working through availability one by one. With Lassie, I just asked who I had available right then — and had my answer in seconds. That’s the difference it’s already making, and we’re only weeks in.”
Austin McElwain
Director of Show Services, AFPC
The mobile experience matters here too. Austin estimates he’s away from his laptop 90% of the time. Being able to pull out his phone, ask Lassie a question, and get a real answer grounded in his actual data is a meaningful shift in how operations leaders can run their day.
“It Actually Understands How We Work.”
Daniel Johnson, Crew Services Manager and LASSO Application Owner at Solotech, joined the beta with a specific mission — see the capabilities firsthand so he could bring them back to the rest of his organization. What he found was something different from the generic AI tools his team had explored before.
“Our company is careful about putting data into outside tools, so having AI embedded directly in LASSO is a big deal. And because it’s trained on industry data, it actually understands the short-hand and terminology we use every day. It’s not generic — it’s smart about how we work.”
Daniel Johnson
Crew Services Manager / Application Owner – LASSO, Solotech
Daniel also flagged something we’ve heard repeatedly from operators thinking about AI — the concern about what it means for their teams. His take is worth quoting in full:
“People worry AI is about job security. The truth is we’re stretched thin already. Anything LASSO Intelligence can take off our plates means our team’s brains are freed up for the work that actually matters — recruiting crew, building relationships, making the calls that move the business forward. That’s the value.”
The Pattern We Keep Hearing
Three different companies. Three different roles. Three different segments of our industry. And the same throughline in every conversation — generic AI hits a wall fast because it doesn’t understand event production. LASSO Intelligence doesn’t, because it was never meant to be generic in the first place.
It’s built into the system you already use to quote events, schedule crew, manage inventory, and run payroll. It understands your data, your terminology, and your workflows because it was designed around them — not retrofitted from another vertical.
Rick said it cleanly when we asked what he’d tell another event company:
“If you’re looking to make it user-friendly and get even more out of the tool, the Intelligence module is the key that unlocks a lot of the data you already have — and brings it forward in reporting you couldn’t easily get otherwise.”
That’s what we built it for. And we’re just getting started.
What’s Next
LASSO Intelligence is rolling out in waves throughout the year, starting with Ask and Act — the ability to query your business and trigger workflows on demand. Alert (proactive monitoring) and broader agentic capabilities follow.
If you’re a current customer, your account team will be in touch about access. If you’re not a customer yet and want to see what industry-native AI looks like, book a demo — we’d love to show you what Austin, Rick, Daniel, and the rest of our beta customers are already seeing.
