JB Miller is the visionary leader and CEO of Empire Entertainment and Emmy Awards-winning executive producer. He is a legend in the events industry for creating completely immersive experiences on a global scale.

In this interview, JB talks about what signifies the “experiential events industry”, seen as a merger between the events and meeting industry and the entertainment industry, that opens wide opportunities for a producer to create cutting edge events for clients to fulfill thoughtful, creative, and strategic goals

What are the key resources necessary to create events that will attract people’s attention, change the mindset and behavior of a key audiences, help launch new products, create new markets, and move the needle on an objective, in a major way?

He tells us about various projects where the producer is likened to an alchemist at work. The producer, or perhaps rather the “experiencer”, is a person who is “genre agnostic”, and can move swiftly between various types of gatherings, clients, and locales. One project, in particular, illustrates how producing a multimillion-dollar project in front of a global audience, can become a scary high-wire act.

JB Miller was recognized as “Producer of the Year” by BizBash’s Reader’s Choice Awards and has been regularly identified as one of the “Top People in the U.S. Event Industry”. In 2023 Miller was awarded the “Collaborate America” award for outstanding achievement as a collaborator, convener, and connector.

Photo credit: Caroline Dorn.

Helen Toomer is the director of Photofairs New York, which held its inaugural edition at the Javits Center this past September. The mission is to “present the state-of-the-art view of visual culture, … to explore the diverse and rapidly evolving landscape of image-making, from intersections with digital art and film, to the medium’s next frontiers, … including virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI-driven art.”

In this interview, Helen talks about her excitement for a photo fair that exists in the space between the traditional archetype of photo exhibitions and the typical art fair; a photo fair that celebrates the incredibly vast and diverse medium of photography. On this episode of the podcast, we talk about photography as an art form, and how visual communication is very much at the core of how we interact with each other today.

Helen dives into the effects of the democratization of photography with the dawn of the smart phone and even gives a valuable recommendation to those of us who are passionate about photography.

Helen has previously directed the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, PULSE Contemporary Art Fairs, and Collective Design Fair. She co-founded Stoneleaf Retreat, an artist residency and creative space, Art Mamas Alliance, to support dialogue on motherhood among creative professionals, as well as Upstate Art Weekend, an annual celebration of the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York.

Helen Toomer, 2023 © Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of PHOTOFAIRS New York

In this episode, Linnea Larsdotter Mikkelä, creative director and president of NIFF, Nordic International Film Festival, takes us on an inspiring walk-through of this year’s festival program. We talk about the identity of Nordic filmmaking, and why the 2022 Cannes Film Festival was the busiest festival ever for Nordic filmmakers, among them Ruben Östlund, who won his second Palme d’Or with Triangle of Sadness, Tarik Saleh with Cairo-set Boy From Heaven, and Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, the story of an Iranian serial killer.

The vision behind NIFF, is to build bridges between filmmakers in the Nordic region and the international film community, by finding diverse independent films with strong characters and storylines, that encourage all filmmakers to submit their films, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or worldviews.

Linnea is a much-acclaimed actress and film producer in her own right. Till We Meet Again is a romantic adventure drama film directed by Thai filmmaker Bank Tangjaitrong and starring Johan Matton, Linnea Larsdotter, Emrhys Cooper and Vithaya Pansringarm.

The film was written and produced by Johan Matton - who also co-founded NIFF with Linnea in 2014 - and won awards at several film festivals, including the Audience and Jury prizes at the Long Beach International Film Festival, and Linnea won best actress at NYLAIFF, New York Los Angeles International Film Festival.

Photo by Sean Turi