Resilience and RECON 26 - The Recap!
Posted in Buzzshot News by Mairi Nolan on Mon 24 August 2026
This year’s theme of “resilience” was introduced in David Spira’s opening talk, “Resilience: A tale of building and/or breaking”. By the end of the weekend, we’d heard resilience come up in so many different ways and contexts it’s hard to think of RECON 26, and indeed the escape room industry as a whole without that underlying thread.
Quick Reminder: What is RECON?
But first, a quick recap. What exactly is RECON? We wrote about RECON in the blog a few weeks ago, but for anyone new to it RECON (or Reality Escape Convention) is an annual event for escape room owners and enthusiasts run by the team behind Room Escape Artist. It’s one of our highlights of the year and we’ve been proud sponsors since the very beginning.
RECON alternates each year between in-person events, to fully digital ones. RECON 25 was fully online, and RECON 24 took place in-person in Los Angeles. This year's event took place at the Sheraton Laval Hotel, just outside of Montreal, and it was the perfect setting for the 300 or so attendees of the event. Being in Canada also meant most of the attendees were North American, but it was also brilliant to see the UK contingent out in full force too. A shoutout in particular to our friends Tom and Alex at COGS (the best show control system around), Miquel and Avraam at Escape Puzzles (for all your escape room scenario needs), and Sam at Immersif (business consulting and reports, make more money) for making the trip across the Atlantic
Overall, the venue was easy to get to, well-signposted, and very well organised. But perhaps most importantly, the location was chosen for its proximity to world-class escape rooms like Escaparium, Immersia, and Sauve Qui Peut.
…We may just have taken advantage of this and snuck a few in ourselves whilst we were there too!
Left to Right: The Lost Island of the Voodoo Queen, Wardrobe for Sale, The Final Stop V2, Project RESET, The Forgotten Cathedral, Magnifico, Ctrl Alt Reboot
Our favourites were Escaparium’s Magnifico (currently ranked as number 1 in the world!), The Forgotten Cathedral, and Immersia’s Project Reset. A round of applause for the designers.
The Keynote: On Resilience
Looking back over the conference as a whole, “Resilience” feels like a fitting theme! Many of the talks and conversations circled back to how escape rooms can be built for resilience, rather than just hoping for it.
One of the most lasting talks on this theme was by Will and Kim Rutherford of Escape Artist Greenville: the quest for the month-long holiday. Which as an escape room owner or business owner sounds like pure fantasy! But it wasn’t just about holidays, it touched on something more interesting - how to set yourself up so that the business you’ve built can be strong and ultimately run without you. From training the team properly, to trusting them to make decisions, to building systems and processes that don’t rely on owners being in the room.
Lisa Spira introducing RECON
We heard the theme again in Emma Rochon of Improbable Escapes’s talk, who explained how expanding the definition of an escape room and the types of experiences you can sell did wonders for Improbable Escapes. From physical rooms, to podium games, to outdoor trails, to temporary pop-ups. It’s about making your business thrive, and self-sustain when supported by smaller, less risky projects. Theresa Piazza of The Great Gotham Challenge explored this type of resilience too, but on a practical focused talk of how to actually manage all the countless things that go into running a business. In short: How to cover the small things, to make the big thing (your escape room!) happen.
To bring it back to the main reason we attended RECON, all of this talk of resilience is something we couldn’t help but notice that a good software is not just helpful with, but vital for. A system that handles all the complicated parts of running an escape room, so owners can focus on the reason they got into this industry in the first place - making excellent escape rooms. Operators need a system that can handle the bookings, player satisfaction, signing and storing waivers, staffing systems, automated marketing, and so on, and so on. It’s not just convenient, its operational resilience. One less thing that only works when the owner is watching.
Buzzshot at the Booth
When not listening to the talks, we were at the Buzzshot booth! This year we were a team of three at RECON: Tom, Jean and Mairi.
Our booth was set up in the exhibit hall, right by the entrance when you first walked in. By all accounts, this was a very busy convention! Around half the people who stopped by were already Buzzshot customers - which is one of our favourite things about going to these events, putting names and faces to clients, and hearing about how Buzzshot is working in the world. The other half were new and curious operators who had seen the name or been pointed our way by someone they’d just been talking to.
A particularly busy moment at the Buzzshot booth! Tom explains how Buzzshot works.
The focus of our booth and demos this year was firmly on Buzzshot Bookings, our fully integrated booking system built specifically for escape rooms. In addition to demonstrating how Buzzshot Bookings handles more standard booking system features like payment processors, multiple locations, abandoned cart recovery and vouchers, many of the interesting questions we got asked were about complicated operational setups like dynamic pricing, flexible availability and shared resources. These are all features we’ve built into Buzzshot Bookings from the very beginning and it was great learning about the types of escape room setups people are developing that will use them.
Buzzshot Bookings
Other Highlights from RECON
We’ve mentioned specific speakers earlier in this recap, but truly the full speaker lineup at RECON 26, even the ones we haven’t mentioned yet, were excellent. There were 8 talks over the 2 days, including highlights like:
Troy Armstrong of The Escape Game
Theresa Piazza of Great Gotham Challenge
Arcturus Wang of Boxaroo
Bill Dalitsikas of Lockhill
Emma Rochon of Improbable Escapes
Marcelo Morales of Encrypted Escape Room
Will and Kim Rutherford of Escape Artist Greenville.
After each one was an extended Q&A session to ask those burning questions to the speakers. Then, in the evenings a more lighthearted entertainment. On Day 1, The Crossword Show did a comedy set about crosswords, and on Day 2 a special live episode of Reality Escape Pod, which we proudly sponsor. And hey look- here's our very own Mairi asking a question to special guest Gijs Geers!
We also in particular really enjoyed playing the RECON games. This year there were three available to play, and some of the exhibitors even had bonus puzzles you could play. One called “Saving Atlantis” had a dedicated space and needed to be booked in. Upstairs, “Space Quest” was a series of podium puzzles opposite across from the Info Desk.
The official game was a wonderfully layered thing that all began with a mysterious postcard which was handed to everyone entering the first talk. This led to decoding a series of questions, which led to an email address, then an in-person device you had to find and input a code in, which in turn led to a specific place and time you had to be for the grand finale. The journey was lovely, a multi-day puzzle hunt woven through physical and digital spaces with just enough “hiding in plain sight” to make you feel clever when it clicked into place.
Players puzzling over the RECON game
What’s Next for RECON?
The details for RECON 27 haven’t been publicly announced yet - but we do know it will be taking place online! Details will be posted on the official RECON website when it’s announced. We can’t wait! Hopefully see you there?
In the meantime, if you’re looking for your next escape room conference fix, we’ll be attending two which are well worth putting in your diary. Firstly, there's Puzzolcon taking place September 13 - 16th in Memphis, TN. We'll be sponsoring it, so if you are attending, we'd love to see you there! Then early next year, Game On will be coming to London in April - it's a fantastic UK-based escape room and immersive event we'll be sponsoring and attending. If you want an up to date list of conferences happening, and all the other big news stories, we curate a monthly escape room newsletter you can sign up to for free.
If there’s one thing we’re taking away from two days in Laval it’s this: The escape room industry is resilient! Not because it’s all fun and games (sometimes it is but often it isn’t), it’s because the people in it care deeply about what they do and show up for each other, and keep finding ways to build businesses that last.
If you were at RECON 26 and didn’t get a chance to speak to us, or would like to try out Buzzshot Bookings for yourself, get in touch! We’ll give you a demo and get you set up with a free trial.
