Highlights The Rocky Mountain Early Childhood Conference (RMECC) is one of the region’s largest gatherings for early childhood educators, administrators, and advocates. In 2026, in its 16th year, it brought together over 1,700 registrants for two days in person in Denver, followed by weeks of on-demand sessions online. Townbell was the event planning agency hired by the host, Denver’s Early Childhood Council, to direct the conference and manage it end to end on vFairs. The vFairs platform handled everything in the same place, including abstract review, curating sessions, selling exhibit space, lead capture, and checking in a large audience. 1,700+ total registrations 1,250+ attendees checked in 6,100+ leads captured 65 exhibitors Being able to manage all of our event processes in one place, with amazing customer support, is what made this event possible. From abstract review all the way to onsite, the vFairs solutions achieved every one of our objectives. Alex Hellrung Founder The Challenges Two High-Stakes Jobs to Land at the Same TimeRMECC’s reputation rests on its sessions. That meant the RMECC Program Committee had to review a large pool of submitted talks and cultivate a program valuable enough to fill the rooms. The Denver’s Early Childhood Council and Townbell teams also had to sell out every exhibit space to sponsors and vendors, who expected a full house for their spend. Both the content and the commercial side had to land, and each one leaned on the other. Checking In a Large, Changing AudienceOver 1,250 attendees had to move through check-in without bottlenecks. The complication was the group registrations: schools and centers that sign up as a group routinely swap one teacher for another at the last minute. So the check-in process had to absorb constant roster changes and on-site service requests rather than stall on them. One Community, Two Formats, Six WeeksThe conference ran in two parts: two days in-person in Denver, then a virtual portal of pre-recorded sessions that stayed open for six weeks afterward, where attendees could keep learning and earn continuing-education credit.The RMECC team needed to pull a dispersed professional community together onsite, then keep that audience engaged through the weeks that followed. Event Gallery The Solution Townbell ran RMECC on the vFairs all-in-one platform. The same centralized system carried the conference from the first submitted abstract through to the show floor, building the program, checking attendees in, and scanning exhibitor leads, with no handoffs between separate tools. Abstract Management to Build the ProgramRMECC collected and reviewed both session and poster proposals in the vFairs abstract management module, with an add-author flow and a full reviewer workflow behind it.Once sessions were accepted, their details carried straight into the event agenda and speaker pages. That gave the team one pipeline from call-for-speakers to confirmed lineup. Check-In & Badge Printing That Absorbed the ChaosOnsite, attendees checked in and had badges printed on demand through vFairs.The process was built to handle the chaos of group registrations. When an organization needed to swap a teacher or sort out a registration at the desk, staff could make the change and print a new badge on the spot instead of holding up the line. Lead Capture That Proved the Exhibit ValueExhibitors and sponsors captured leads through the vFairs Lead Capture app, scanning attendee badges instead of collecting business cards.Across the event, more than 6,100 leads were captured, giving the vendors who bought every available space concrete return to take back to their teams and a reason to come back next year. Why vFairs Denver’s Early Childhood Council and Townbell could have stitched RMECC together from separate tools for abstracts, registration, check-in, lead capture, and on-demand content. But then every seam between those tools would’ve been a place for data to fall through.vFairs covered all of it in one platform, which meant a single system to run and a single team to call when needed.That support is what Townbell singled out. When something needed changing mid-event, their team leaned on vFairs to make it work under pressure, rather than being told what the software couldn’t do. In the Spotlight: The Mobile Event App The customizable vFairs mobile event app put the whole conference in each attendee’s pocket. It was how a professional audience that came to RMECC to learn and connect found its way through two busy days and stayed engaged with the content afterward.For attendees, the app provided one place to: See the full agenda and session details Browse sponsor and exhibitor profiles Access on-demand sessions after the in-person days ended Connect with a dispersed community in new ways The sponsor exposure is where the app paid off most. Counting both the in-person crowd and virtual-only ticket holders, 1,400+ attendees (both in-person and virtual-only combined) viewed sponsors and exhibitors through the app. A new record for the event, plus it gave real visibility beyond their booths. Results RMECC 2026 hit both of the targets it had brought Townbell in to deliver. Registrations passed 1,700, up from the event’s goal of 1,500, and the exhibit floor sold out completely. In-app sponsor exposure improved year-on-year as well, reaching a new high of 1,400+. Those results came from running the whole event on one platform, backed by a support team that solved problems in real time. And that’s the model Townbell can now bring to its next event with confidence. Share This Article: Amna Bajwa Amna is a content marketer at vFairs, where she writes about event technology for B2B audiences. She brings over five years of content writing and copywriting experience across B2B SaaS. When she isn't working, she enjoys reading books, crocheting, and baking.
