Two years ago, when we reduced Marijuana Venture from monthly to quarterly, part of our thinking was that we wanted to invest more time and energy in our events.
In 2024, that didn’t exactly happen. We were in the process of moving our headquarters for the first time in seven years and, like anyone packing up their belongings after living in one place for an extended period of time, we had accumulated an awful lot of junk, a boatload of paperwork and plenty of stuff that made me wonder why we’d ever held on to it in the first place. We moved into our new office in June 2024, and we also learned that the Renton Pavilion, where we’d hosted more than 20 Interchange events previously, was redeveloping its business model and wouldn’t be available for rent anymore, meaning we’d also need to hunt down a new venue for our signature events. So the timing wasn’t ideal for expansion.
In 2025, though, I’m happy to say we finally made some big steps forward in bringing our events to a wider audience. We hosted eight industry events in 2025 — doubling our schedule from the previous year — including our first Interchange in Massachusetts and the successful launch of our Indie-Change series in Washington, for small and medium sized operators.
And we already have some big news for 2026: after a three-year hiatus, we’ll be relaunching Interchange in Michigan.
We’ll have a formal announcement about those events in the next couple of months, when we’ll share information about the dates, venues and details about a key partnership. But suffice it to say we’re thrilled to be coming back to one of the most important cannabis markets in the country, where we last hosted Interchange in 2022, but left temporarily due to unforeseen circumstances. For anybody who’s interested in more information about Michigan Interchange, you can always reach out to me by email (Editor@MarijuanaVenture.com) and I can connect you with the right people.
Looking back on 2025, we accomplished quite a bit and learned a lot along the way. Our hope is that nobody sees the chaos that goes on behind the scenes, as we juggle the demands of event production and publishing a print magazine. But each state, each venue and each event style has more than its share of nuances. It forces our team — and event manager Raina Melchor, in particular — to be nimble and adaptable and continuously pivoting to stay ahead of the latest hurdle.
We hosted events in five different venues in 2025, each with their own quirks and challenges. Our Interchange REMIX in November at Cannonball Arts in Downtown Seattle gives me hope that we may have found a home for our most important event moving forward, though that’s a discussion for our team in the coming weeks. We also produced four different event styles, some of which will be key for us moving forward, while we also explore ways of incorporating new formats and more educational components to our schedule.
Interchange has been a core piece of our business since 2016, and I only see it becoming more important to the industry at large as we look beyond our home state of Washington.