Cannabis Industry Trade Shows and Events 2024

Connecticut Cannabis Expo, Uncasville, Connecticut
Date: February 24-25, 2024

Location: Sky Convention Center at Mohegan Sun

The third annual Connecticut Cannabis Expo, presented by XpoCanna, rolls three events into one: the Connecticut cannabis business convention, the consumer expo, and The X Cup. New and existing businesses and entrepreneurs will find value in the trade show, which will feature panel discussions on legislation, business opportunities, growth forecasting, networking opportunities, career openings, and the current cannabis political climate, capped off with the second-annual X Cup award ceremony for the best cannabis products on the market.

SXSW, Austin, Texas
Date: March 8-16, 2024

Location: Austin Convention Center

SXSW celebrates the convergence of tech, music, education, film, culture, and, most recently, medical and recreational cannabis. This year will feature a host of panels on the plant, including topics like retail market trends, career opportunities, industry diversity, cannabis law, social equity, the importance of advocacy, and much more.

Alternative Products Expo, Miami
Date: March 14-16, 2024

Location: Mana Wynwood Convention Center

Originally named the USA CBD Expo, the annual B2C Alternative Products Expo exists to help undiscovered products develop into superstars. The show is going international this year and will feature vapes, cannabis, and “everything counterculture under one roof” from hundreds of brands around the world.

Hall of Flowers, Ventura, California
Date: March 13-14, 2024

Location: Ventura County Fairgrounds

Hall of Flowers is coming to Ventura this March, bringing education, exhibitions, new inventions, and invaluable B2B cannabis tips for success to its attendees.

International Cannabis Business Conference, Barcelona
Date: March 14, 2024

Location: L’Auditori de Cornellà

With a few different conferences occurring throughout the year, the International Cannabis Business Conference in Barcelona will focus on B2B. The conference has partnered with Spannabis to form a “super-conference”, considered a “must-attend” for anyone serious about succeeding in the international industry.

Spannabis, Barcelona, Spain
Date: March 15-17,2024

Location: Fira de Cornellà

Spannabis is the most well-known destination when it comes to tapping into the ins and outs of international cannabis. This year will feature three days of thoughtful exhibitions, designed for global cannabis professionals to exchange opinions, create new contacts, and maybe even feel out a few new clients.

NECANN, Boston
Date: March 22-23, 2024

Location: Hynes Convention Center

This year’s New England Cannabis Convention (NECANN) will feature a new and third exhibit hall, with more programming and workshopping on the 2024 schedule. Exhibitors include Assured Testing Laboratories, Flowhub, Hara Supply, TREEZ, Xylem Technologies, and more.

CannExpo, Toronto, Canada
Date: March 22-24, 2024

Location: Enercare Centre

This year’s CannExpo will feature daily competitions, budtender sampling, games and prizes, an outdoor consumption zone, and the chance to purchase some of the most popular cannabis products on the market. Attendees: expect to explore exhibits from the likes of Boveda, High Flyer Media, and Royal Cannabis Supply Co.

The Emerald Conference, San Diego
Date: April 1-3, 2024

Location: Loews Coronado Bay

In its ninth year, The Emerald Conference highlights industry-wide advancements in cannabis science and psychedelics. A forum for cannabis’s latest research, advancements, and practical applications, attendees will learn about modern innovations in cannabis cultivation, processing, and product development.

CannaCon South, Oklahoma City
Date: April 5-6, 2024

Location: OKC Convention Center

As Oklahoma gears up to hopefully launch its adult-use program soon, the state is getting a head start with CannaCon South, a cannabis networking event that aims to bring together the South’s cannabis community as it continues to establish itself.

MJ Unpacked, Atlantic City, New Jersey
Date: April 9-11, 2024

Location: Hard Rock Hotel Casino in Atlantic City

One of the biggest cannabis networking events in the U.S., MJ Unpacked returns to Atlantic City for a mass collaboration of retailers and accredited investors. The cannabis industry event is exclusive to retail and brand executives with the title manager and above, R&D and licensed lab professionals, and active investors in the space.

NoCo Hemp Expo, Estes Park, Colorado
Date: April 11-13, 2024

Location: Estes Park Events Complex & Conference Center

This year marks the 10th annual NoCo Hemp Expo: a tranquil, intimate retreat in Estes Park, Colorado—a.k.a., “The Gateway to the Rockies.” Here, you’ll find meaningful connections, insightful sessions, and the invaluable opportunity to network and make deals with like-minded operators.

International Cannabis Business Conference, Berlin
Date: April 15-17, 2024

Location: Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin, Estrel Berlin

This iteration of the International Cannabis Business Conference will take place in Berlin: one day at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin for a global investment forum, and the following two days at Estrel Berlin to cover B2B industry updates and innovations.

CannaCon Midwest, St. Paul, Minnesota
Date: April 16-17, 2024

Location: Saint Paul RiverCentre

CannaCon Midwest is where Midwest cannabis culture collaborates with the legal industry. The cannabis business expo is a one-stop shop for cultivation supplies, industry innovations, world-class genetics, business and legal advice, retail displays, extraction technology, scientific and financial trends, branding, marketing, and more.

Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference, Hollywood, Florida
Date: April 16-17, 2024

Location: Diplomat Beach Resort

Of all the cannabis events on this list, Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference is the one geared most toward investment and branding. The cannabis conference is all about meeting major players and making deals. Attendees will attend group networking events on a daily basis, schedule one-on-one meetings, and establish powerful relationships with new targets.

Lucky Leaf Expo, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Date: April 26-27, 2024

Location: Minneapolis Convention Center

This marijuana convention is all about industry education, networking, and growing your business. The Lucky Leaf Expo provides attendees with speakers and panels, innovative exhibitors, networking opportunities and after-parties, and last but not least: a canna museum, where you can learn all about the roots of the cannabis industry.

Innovation CannaTech, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Date: April 30, 2024

Location: The Kingsley by Hilton Bloomfield Hills

Whether you’re a cultivator, manufacturer, or retailer, Innovation CannaTech is a prime opportunity to present your cannabis community advancements to a like-minded and experienced audience. Out of all this year’s weed conventions, Innovation CannaTech is best for new business owners looking to float their bright new ideas in a safe, helpful space.

Michigan CannaTech Expo, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan
Date: May 1-2, 2024

Location: Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort

As the largest cannabis market expo and one of the biggest cannabis trade shows in the nation, Michigan CannTech Expo is the prime place to gather if you’re a local operator looking for some guidance in the still-establishing new market. The event will feature over 40,000 square feet of exhibitions, highlighting recent advancements in production technology, licensing, banking, hiring, and more.

Cannabis Science Conference, Kansas City, Missouri
Date: May 7-9, 2024

Location: Kansas City Marriott Downtown

This year’s Cannabis Science Conference will include presentations, exhibits, and roundtable discussions from some of the most brilliant minds in cannabis science. As the industry’s premier science event, the conference focuses on science, medical cannabis, and cultivation.

CBD & Hemp Wholesale World 2024, Las Vegas
Date: May 8-9, 2024

Location: Las Vegas Convention Center

The CBD & Hemp Wholesale World 2024 is for entrepreneurs in the space. Attendees will pull a lot of value from the event, including effective business practices and powerful insights into past challenges operators have learned and grown from.

CannMed, Marco Island, Florida
Date: May 12-1, 2024

Location: J.W. Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort

This year’s CannMed Innovation & Investment Summit will be an exclusive experience of discovery, development, and networking with cannabis innovators all over the world.

CannaCon West, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Date: May 17-18, 2024

Location: Albuquerque Convention Center

This B2B cannabis expo is a great chance for operators to connect, network, and learn more about building a business in New Mexico. CannaCon West will feature cultivation supplies, business and legal advice, market trends, branding concepts for retail success, and more.

BizCann Expo, Medellín, Colombia
Date: May 18-19, 2024

Location: Plaza Mayor Convention Center

BizCann Expo offers customized educational panels that will cover topics like: legislation and regulation, branding and marketing, banking, investing, accounting, real estate, legacy markets, and retail. The event space focuses on delivering educational and networking opportunities for the LATAM cannabis region as it continues to expand and develop.

Grow Up, Toronto, Canada
Date: May 27-29, 2024

Location: Delta Hotel by Marriott Toronto Airport Conference Centre

This year’s Grow Up is Toronto’s ninth annual industry event. It’s one of Canada’s largest legal cannabis trade shows, featuring a wide array of growers, retailers, and brands for attendees to discover and connect with.

CWCB Expo, New York
Date: June 5-6, 2024

Location: Javits Convention Center

CWCB Expo is New York City’s premier B2B convention for East Coast operators. Expect two days of networking, keynote speakers, product displays, educational sessions, and an exhibition floor created to inspire ideas for the industry’s future.

Flower Expo, Greenfield, Massachusetts
Date: June 5-6, 2024

Location: Franklin County Fairgrounds

The grassroots Massachusetts Flower Expo is where buyers meet legal cannabis brands. The goal of the event is to facilitate meaningful connections and partnerships for businesses, while also offering a consumer-friendly experience that includes product samples, networking, and delicious food and beverages from local vendors.

CannaCon Northeast, Rochester, New York
Date: June 20-21, 2024

Location: Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center

Rochester’s CannaCon Northeast provides New York operators with access to entrepreneurs and creators within the space. Attendees will learn more about trends and technology from the industry’s leaders and access forecasting insights into New York’s market.

Flower Expo, Allegan, Michigan
Date: August 7-8, 2024

Location: Allegan County Fairgrounds

This year’s second Flower Expo will take place in Michigan, where operators will gather to discuss the future of the industry and network with like-minded peers over free products, food, and beverages.

AICPA & CIMA Cannabis Industry Conference, Aurora, Colorado
Date: August 12-14, 2024

Location: Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center

AICPA & CIMA Cannabis Industry Conference is where finance leaders and CFOs reveal and explore all of the insights that they’ve rendered “top-of-mind” for 2024.

Hall of Flowers, Santa Rosa, California
Date: September 27-28, 2024

Location: Sonoma County Fairgrounds

Hall of Flowers also hits Santa Rosa in September, where essential B2B connections are available for attending entrepreneurs. Of all the cannabis conventions 2024, Hall of Flowers is great for checking out high-quality brands, accessing impactful networking, and consuming onsite with your peers.

Lucky Leaf Expo, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Date: September 27-28, 2024

Location: Albuquerque Convention Center

New Mexico’s Lucky Leaf Expo brings professionals and enthusiasts together to experience cutting-edge technology demonstrations, informative discussions, and panel discussions led by industry experts.

Grow Up, Edmonton, Alberta
Date: September 29 through October 1, 2024

Location: Edmonton Convention Centre

Grow Up will also hit Alberta, Canada: a choice opportunity for Canada’s largest collection of growers, retailers, and brands to gather and exchange ideas and information.

MJBizCon, Las Vegas
Date: December 3-6 2024

Location: Las Vegas Convention Center

As one of the most well-known cannabis events in the world, this year’s MJBizCon returns to Las Vegas with new speakers, educational resources, and more opportunities to network. The expo has four pavilions for convenient navigation: cultivation products and services, processing, packaging and lab services, retail and dispensary, and business services.

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OpenAI introduced a long-form question-answering AI called ChatGPT that answers complex questions conversationally.

It’s a revolutionary technology because it’s trained to learn what humans mean when they ask a question.

Many users are awed at its ability to provide human-quality responses, inspiring the feeling that it may eventually have the power to disrupt how humans interact with computers and change how information is retrieved.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot developed by OpenAI based on GPT-3.5. It has a remarkable ability to interact in conversational dialogue form and provide responses that can appear surprisingly human.

Large language models perform the task of predicting the next word in a series of words.

Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) is an additional layer of training that uses human feedback to help ChatGPT learn the ability to follow directions and generate responses that are satisfactory to humans.

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) ] is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

ChatGPT was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven factual accuracy was identified as a significant drawback. Following the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI was reportedly valued at $29 billion. (Wikipedia)

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory consisting of the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP and its parent company, the non-profit OpenAI Inc. The company conducts research in the field of AI with the stated goal of promoting and developing friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. The organization was founded in San Francisco in late 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others, who collectively pledged US$1 billion. Musk resigned from the board in February 2018 but remained a donor. In 2019, OpenAI LP received a US$1 billion investment from Microsoft and Matthew Brown Companies. OpenAI is headquartered at the Pioneer Building in Mission District, San Francisco. (Wikipedia)

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Can movie theatres and online streaming live side by side?

It’s been a tough time for movie theatres around the world with a number of factors contributing to the decline in the number of people heading to the cinema to watch movies. In a world that is embracing digital technologies, the movie industry is in danger of getting left behind unless they quickly embrace the technologies available that will get people excited to return to movie theatres and get the enjoyment of the cinema experience once again.

The rise of the video game industry

Whilst there are plenty of factors that are influencing people’s decision to visit the cinema, there is no doubt that the rapid rise of the online video game industry is a large contributing factor. People are starting to look elsewhere for their entertainment and online video gaming provides a lower-cost alternative to a trip to the cinema.

A report by MarketWatch in 2020 found that the video game industry is now bigger than the sports and movie industry combined. Just take a minute to digest that. Bigger than movies and sports - that’s big.

The news outlet reported that global video game revenue is expected to increase 20% in 2020, making $179.7 billion, according to data from IDC.

The biggest gain is expected to come from mobile gaming, according to the news outlet, which is expected to surge 24% to $87.7 billion. Part of this is due to China recently lifting a ban on gaming consoles.

Game console revenue is expected to soar to $52.5 billion this year, while PC and Mac games are expected to make $39.5 billion.

In their most recent report, MarketWatch reported that whilst overall revenue was expected to grow by 11% in 2021 to $251.39 billion, the forecast for 2022 is just a 2% growth and a flattening out of that rapid growth over the past two years.

Is this a potential opportunity for cinemas to reclaim some of that lost audience share?

Early signs look good for cinemas in 2022

If the latest movie releases in 2022 are anything to go by, it looks as though the movie theatre industry is not ready to give up just yet. Spider-Man: No Way Home became the biggest grossing movie of the past two years, grossing over $US1 billion ($1.38b) in the first two weekends. It is the second-fastest film ever to reach the $1 billion mark and suggests that this could be a big year for cinema-goers.

Following in its footsteps is another 2022 release, The Matrix Resurrections, a movie that grossed $US12 million in its opening weekend.

Whilst this is a great start to the New Year for movie theatres around the world, it remains to be seen whether this is a trend that continues throughout the year. With a number of high profile movies due for release in 2022, this could be a time for cinemas to really cash in.

The impact of streaming and long-form content

It is unlikely that cinemas will have it all their own way in 2022. Whilst it is great to see people returning to movie theatres to watch the latest releases on the big screen, there is no question that home viewing is here to stay.

As more studios and media distributors are developing their own direct-to-consumer streaming services, this starts to eat into the revenue of major studios.

Studios derive almost half of their revenues from theatrical releases. Although the average number of movie tickets purchased by Americans each year has declined from 4.2 in 2009 to 3.4 in 2019 (Source: Deloitte), studio revenues are driven more by box office tickets now than they were 20 years ago.

Streaming is having the biggest impact on people going to the movies. As televisions have improved, where you can now watch movies at home in 4K high-definition on screens with sizes up to 100”, with surround sound, people have become more willing to wait for the latest release movies to become available on streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Stan.

Another major impact on the cinema industry is the consumer switch to long-form content in the form of series. Many people feel there is more depth to a series that contains anywhere from six episodes upwards. Game of Thrones was one of the groundbreaking series to really capture the audience’s attention, however, there are so many amazing series now that it is becoming more difficult for movies to compete with the depth and the character development that a series can bring.

Huge series like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and more recently, Succession, have really captured the attention of audiences around the world and this is something movie producers need to consider.

The entertainment factor

It’s not just video games and streaming that are competing for people’s attention. Another industry embracing technology is the online casino and betting sector. Here, we have seen huge advancements in the way people are able to game online. One company leading the way in the sector is Betway, “Developed by our exceptionally talented people, Betway creates market-leading, cutting-edge interactive gaming experiences. We bring people closer to the action – putting them at the centre, making them feel a part of it.”

From the introduction of in-game betting to the development of new and exciting interactive games, these online gaming sites are leading the way when it comes to embracing new technologies that can lead to better experiences for customers.

The movie industry is at a real crossroads. With competition coming from every direction within the entertainment industry, studios and distributors need to find a way to either a) get more people back into movie theatres or b) look at alternative ways to ensure that movies can compete with online gaming, live sports streaming and online casinos for a share of customer eyeballs.

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