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The history of Hot Firm Nearly two-decades-old event came about after founders attended Inc . 500 conference and wanted to extend its fun, informative culture to A/E industry.
But the main reason attendees return each year, in addition to the camaraderie and professional devel- opment: It’s fun. “People who come to the Hot Firm and A/E Indus- try Awards Conference can tell that we care about this event,” Zweig says. “We hold the event in a great hotel, we have great food, and we feature great speakers. And everyone always has fun at the conference and the awards dinner. There are many fond memories from events past: One year we gave an award to my now 9-year-old daughter, Olive, for being the Best 4-year-old in the World. That was a hoot! The most excitement I’ve had at an event was the year Kathryn Sprankle’s husband, Eduardo De Caceres, lent me his BMW sport bike, and we did about 100 miles around the San Francisco Bay Area before the day’s activities began. This culmi- nated in high-speed lane-splitting on the Bay Area freeway so that I could get back to the conference “We had such a great time at the Inc. 500 Conference ... We thought, ‘we should do this someday for the A/E industry.’ And so, a few years later, we did!”
By Andrea Bennett Managing Editor M ark Zweig, founder and CEO of Zweig Group, attended the Inc. 500 conferences in 1995 and 1996 because Zweig White (the firm that has become Zweig Group) was named to Inc .’s list of the 500 fastest-growing private businesses in the U.S. for those years. The experience of Inc .’s event, Zweig says, led him and his team to develop the Hot Firm and A/E Industry Awards Conference, which will be held in Boston this year on Septem- ber 3 and 4. “We had such a great time at the Inc. 500 Confer- ence,” he says. “It was fun, we met some really cool people – some of which are still friends of mine to- day, such as Norm Brodsky and Bob Juniper – and it had a great energy. We thought, ‘we should do this someday for the A/E industry.’ And so, a few years later, we did!” Though the industry and the conference have evolved over the nearly two decades since its incep- tion, the basic format of the event has stayed the same. “The conference has always been a couple of days of educational and inspirational break-outs with a black-tie dinner at the end,” Zweig says, “and it’s al- ways been a family-friendly event.”
See HISTORY , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER AUGUST 3, 2015, ISSUE 1114
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