NECANN Cup of Champions and soooo many updates!

First off: yes, I did take a much needed LinkedIn posting break as part of a "Social Media-free Summer" experiment. I had a few lapses but it was a great experience overall that I highly recommend, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be an annual thing for me!

So about that Cup of Champions...

WELL - this is a new METRC Compliant Cannabis Competition curated by NecannCUP _ creator Mike Clinton with help from Kayla Hanlon. The Cup of Champions competition will be open to all Massachusetts Cannabis Businesses that are licensed by the CCC, with judges made up of winners from the annual necann Cup competition held annually at NECANN Boston.

The necann Cup of Champions is a proud sponsor of the Boston Freedom Rally, and the winners of the competition will be announced from the Rally's Stage on Sept 21st ! Many thanks to Harbor House Collective for hosting the intake, and the many sponsors including Alternative Wellness Centers , Green Valley Analytics , Eagle Eyes Transport , Regenerative LLC , Custom 420 Supply , Mohawk Glass Company , Slate Glassworks, Talking Joints Memo, Fevre Makers. ZZZ Rolling Papers, Cannatrol, and the Summit Lounge!

Top 3 2024 necann summer updates you might have missed

#3 - We are officially transferring ownership of the Vermont Cannabis Convention to local ownership. Since we 1st launched it in 2018, the annual trip to Burlington has been a spring highlight for the necann crew, and it has been great to get to watch the local canna-industry form and grow year to year. New Owner Eli Harrington has been a partner with us since day one (and has been asking us to sell it to him since pretty much day one, lol) and he finally broke us down. necann will still be involved in the event for the next several years as Eli works on adding some cool new local elements, stay tuned!

#2 We cancelled the 2024 Connecticut Cannabis Convention and currently don't plan to reschedule it. Long story short, our Connecticut venue (the XL Center) told us our dates would be fine right up until they told us they weren't. Turns out they are eliminating their Exhibit Hall completely, leaving us with no venue in the state willing and/or able to host our 150+ exhibitor event. Bob Kraft had a similar experience with the Nutmeg State about 25 years ago, so we're glad it's not just us.

#1 necann will not be returning to Illinois in 2025. This was a hard decision, as the Schaumburg Convention is the best venue we've ever worked with, and we've grown close with so many people in the Illinois canna community over the past four years. As you can see from our 2024 Illinois highlight video, this year's exhibitors and attendees had a very successful event, but in the end the cost of doing business in the Chicago metro from the East Coast grew faster than the event did and it just doesn't make sense for us anymore. Definitely a great opportunity for a local entrepreneur or business if you know anyone who might be interested, feel free to reach out!

Now I'm looking at the headline of this post and realizing that 3 updates really isn't "soooo many" but whatever. Like I said, I'm back! So more soon.

https://www.necanncup.com/