Mark Spear, CEO of the Wildfire Collective, a collective of cannabis farmers, said when he would attend a conference, he noticed that people would often end up leaving the conference floor to go outside several times a day — cannabis isn’t allowed to be used indoors — and would often meet other professionals in the business right there.
“You always meet pretty much the same people outside these conferences, these are the dedicated cannabis people that love it, are in the industry, and use it,” Spear said. “A lot of other industry participants don’t, they’re just there for a quick buck.”
Spear said it’s a pretty unique situation in the cannabis industry, since most other conferences wouldn’t have such an excuse to be outside so much. But for the people who aren’t interested in the price of admission, he said the benefit of meeting people inside the conference isn’t much greater.
“If you don’t have that kind of money, you can get almost the same result just by hanging out near it,” Spear said. “You can have 80 per cent of the conversations you’d be having on the floor outside for virtually nothing.”