Traditional Conferences Are Broken. Here’s How We’re Fixing Them.

Finance events are changing, or at least, they should be. 

For years, the standard format has barely evolved: long presentations, packed agendas, the same faces on stage, and a crowd of professionals half-listening while quietly checking emails. It’s efficient, sure, but it’s also predictable, and increasingly, it doesn’t reflect the kind of dynamic, people-first leadership that modern finance needs.

That’s the challenge the GENCFO team has set out to tackle with GENCFO Live, a new one-day event happening next March. The goal isn’t just to host another conference; it’s to redesign the experience of professional learning and community-building for finance leaders.

Rethinking the Role of Finance

One of the big ideas behind GENCFO Live is that finance is facing an identity shift. The old stereotypes of back-office number crunchers and detail-obsessed controllers do not match the modern finance leader’s reality. Today’s CFOs and finance teams are strategic, commercial, and relationship-driven. They sit at the heart of business transformation, not the edge of it.

But the perception has not caught up. Too often, finance is still seen as a support function rather than a strategic partner. Changing that requires more than a new job title or a rebrand. It means changing how finance people learn, connect, and share ideas.

That is where the concept for GENCFO Live began: create an experience that brings finance professionals together not to listen to leadership, but to be leaders collectively exploring how the function can evolve.

Breaking the Conference Mold

Most conferences rely on the same model: speakers talk, audiences listen. GENCFO Live is designed to break that pattern. The team is drawing inspiration from participatory learning formats such as Liberating Structures, collaborative methods that turn attendees into active contributors.

Instead of focusing on passive content delivery, sessions will be built around interaction, problem-solving, and shared insight. The event will still feature expert speakers, but their talks will serve as catalysts rather than conclusions. Each session will lead into structured group discussions, giving attendees space to reflect, challenge, and apply ideas in real time.

In short, it is less about being talked at and more about learning with the people in the room.

From Network to Tribe

GENCFO has always described itself as “informally informative” — a space where finance professionals can learn without jargon, connect without forced networking, and share real experiences from the front line of business change.

That philosophy runs through the design of GENCFO Live. The event is not about consuming knowledge; it is about co-creating it. It is built on the belief that the best insights often come from peers, not podiums. When you get a room full of smart people facing similar challenges, the value is not just in the speakers; it is in the conversations that happen around them.

Smashing Stereotypes and Rebuilding Together

Underlying it all is a bigger purpose: to challenge how the finance profession sees itself. Finance leaders are being asked to navigate rapid technological change, shifting expectations, and growing demands for commercial insight. Yet many still feel boxed in by outdated perceptions of what finance should be.

GENCFO Live aims to create a space where those assumptions can be tested and new ones built. It is not about abandoning the analytical or the detail-oriented. It is about blending those skills with curiosity, collaboration, and a willingness to learn differently.

A New Kind of Learning Experience

If this all sounds a bit unstructured, that is intentional. GENCFO Live will not hand out predefined answers; it will create the conditions for discovery. Attendees will not sit through a packed agenda of slides; they will help shape the discussion in real time. The event will be facilitated, not lectured.

That kind of format takes more preparation, not less. But it is also more rewarding. Instead of walking away with a few bullet points from a keynote, participants will leave with ideas that have been challenged, refined, and built collaboratively with peers.

The value is not just in the content. It is in the conversation.

Looking Ahead

With five months to go until we go live, the GENCFO team is deep in planning, refining the flow of the day, the structure of the sessions, and the atmosphere they want to create.

The promise is simple: an event that feels different, that challenges the norms of professional learning, and that reflects the modern finance community — diverse, dynamic, and human.