Catersource and The Special Event
Feb 24 – 27, 2025
Broward County Convention CenterFort Lauderdale, FL

Opening Keynote

Wednesday, February 14
9:00am - 10:00am

Will Guidara

Will Guidara is the author of the National Bestseller Unreasonable Hospitality, which chronicles the lessons in service and leadership he has learned over the course of his career in restaurants. He is the former co-owner Eleven Madison Park, which under his leadership received four stars from the New York Times, three Michelin stars, and in 2017 was named #1 on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. He is the host of the Welcome Conference, an annual hospitality symposium that brings together like minded people to share ideas, inspire one another, and connect to form community. A graduate of the hospitality school at Cornell University, he has coauthored four cookbooks, was named one of Crain's New York Business's 40 Under 40, and is the recipient of WSJ Magazine's Innovator Award.

Event Chair

Scott Frankel, Animatic Media

Scott Frankel is the President of Animatic Media, an industry leader in event production and sought-after speaker at industry events. Animatic is a full-service event production company founded with the idea of offering agency-style service without the agency price tag. Since 1996, Scott and his team have produced events for clients of all sizes, from Fortune 500 conferences with thousands of attendees to smaller road shows and events. Scott is an innovator in the event technology space and insists on perfection and flawless execution for all of his events. In 2020 Animatic Media relaunched their on-demand web service as Conference-On-Demand +LIVE, a full-service virtual/hybrid event platform for fully “produced” virtual and hybrid events and will soon be introducing an Augmented Reality offering built for the live events industry.