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DSO Declassified 2026 Midyear DSO Event Discussion. What’s New & What’s Worth Attending
We are about halfway through 2026 already. In this DSO Declassified, Bill Neumann runs through what to expect at the upcoming ADSO Summit where GDN will host the Emerging Dental Groups to Watch awards. Bill also looks back at the events that have already happened this year and what the rest of year has instore for the DSO and dental group industry. Takeaways include:
- The GDN ‘Emerging Dental Groups to Watch in 2026’ awards on June 16, 12:15-1:15 at the ADSO Summit in the Thought Leader Theater
- The rise of the intimate, invite-only DSO events
- What to expect for the rest of the year
- Visit our comprehensive DSO event calander and subscribe to the calendar (at the bottom) so you never miss an event announcement
To learn about all of the important DSO events in the industry make sure you visit: https://www.groupdentistrynow.com/events/list/
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DSO Podcast Transcript – DSO Declassified 2026 Midyear DSO Event Discussion. What’s New & What’s Worth Attending
Bill Neumann (00:03):
Hi everyone. Welcome to DSO Declassified. Start with a cold open here. This is unlike a lot of our videos, but we try to do a DSO declassified every once in a while and we’re about halfway, not quite, but close enough to halfway through the year. So we wanted to do a recap on the events that have happened in the past year. Maybe we’ll even catch up on a couple of the bigger stories if we have time. But we’re the week before actually the week before the ADSO Summit, which will be in Chicago and that is June 15th through the 18th. And we will be there. Kim will actually be there. Kim Larson, who doesn’t do a lot of the meetings, but she’ll definitely be at this one. I know a lot of people are interested in catching up with Kim and talking to her. And of course, we’re doing our emerging dental groups to watch awards at the event.
(01:04):
So what I’ll do is we’ll start with the ADSO since it’s coming up next week in our role there. And then we’ll go back to the beginning of the year and do a recap of the events and then kind of look at ADS. We’ll discuss ADSO first and we’ll jump to Dykema and then everything that we have on the calendar through the year. And you can go to groupdentistrynow.com. There’s an events tab. You can find all of the pertinent DSO events in the space. We don’t have every single one of them, but we have most of the ones and certainly all the important ones that are out there. But there are a lot of events, as we all know. It’s harder and harder to choose which ones to go to. We can’t possibly be at all of them. Although some people try to be and good on them if they can, but it’s definitely hard to manage and hard to manage your business at the same time.
(01:57):
So try and cut through the clutter and kind of let you know what the important ones are to go to and the ones that we’ve been to so we can kind of share our experience. So what I will do is I’m going to do a little screen share now. So if you’re just listening to this, you can just listen and continue on, but I would probably jump over to our website afterward at groupdentistrynow.com, go to the events tab, or you can just jump over to our YouTube channel or go to groupdentistrynow.com and go to our podcast page and actually just watch the embedded video because we’re going to take you through a little bit of a screen share of the website and that way you can actually see what I’m talking about. But we’re going to talk about the ADSO Summit. So as you can see, it is next week, June 15th through the 18th.
(02:49):
And looks like based on what I’ve seen, it looks like there is a good, good attendance, good mix of both DSOs and sponsors from what I’ve gathered in talking to Andrew Smith and his team over at the ADSO. Looks like it’s going to be a good year. Really great time to be in Chicago. We’re all pretty used to going to Chicago mid-winter in February, which of course is not the best time to be in Chicago. Although we did have one good day, it was in the 60s actually at the Chicago midwinter, which was kind of interesting, but most of the time it’s really cold. So June 15th through the 18th and that is at the Hyatt Regency right on Wacker, which is a great location. I’m excited to be there and actually walk around and not have to wear a jacket. So we’ve got last minute for DSOs and Dennis, we have a discount code, which is a long one, but it’s DISC20GDNMEM.
(03:47):
So that’s DISC20GDNMEM to save 20% off and you can register on our website. It’ll push you through over to ADSO and then we’ve got the agenda here. So there’s a pre-conference day next Monday, June 15th and then there’ll be some networking that’ll be going on, I’m sure. There’s a student track international meeting or delegation anyway meeting. And then the beginning of Tuesday, June 16th, they’ll be setting the stage and then you’ll have your presentations and the opening session of course will have breakfast before that and then you’ll see there’s a bunch of different things going on. I can’t go through all these right now and get through all the meetings, but I’ll say they’ve got a lot jam packed. There’ll be a happy hour at night. Our role will actually be hosting for the first time at the ADSO and we really appreciate the partnership with them having our emerging dental groups to watch awards.
(04:54):
This is our 10th year celebrating the awards. We’ve done the awards now four times in person at another show and we actually decided to move our awards to the ADSO and really excited to be partnered with them. So first time with the ADSO, it’ll be on June 16th and it’ll be at 12:15 to 1:15. So that’ll be at the Solution Center or the Innovation Lounge. I believe it’s the Solution Center or sorry, the Thought Leader Theater. Got it. All right. Thought Leader Theater is where it is. So we’ll help you try and get over there and find it. It’s not on the main stage. And so the Thought Leader Theater is going to be a side stage area and we’ll have signs and directions to get you over there. But right at noon, there’ll be a break for lunch. We start at 12:15, but lunch goes from noon to 1:45.
(06:00):
So there is a pretty big spread for lunch. So you’ve got plenty of time to get lunch. At least that’s what the calendar’s telling me right now, 12 o’clock to 1:45. So what I would say is probably not going to have 15 minutes to grab a bite to eat. So come on over, join us over at the Emerging Dental Groups to watch awards and panel discussion, especially if you want to get a chance to meet some of these award winners and they’re going to tell their story, of course, which is going to be great. Get the awards. We’ve condensed it into an hour, so it’s going to be rapid fire. Get the awards, they’re going to sit down, panel discussion, and then you’ll get a chance, of course, to talk to them. And we’ve got a bunch of different groups that are accepting the awards.
(06:46):
We have Oakwood Dental, we have Mosaic Dental, we have Bright Direction Dental, we have Lavender Dental. We have a couple of others as well. Blueprint Smiles is going to be there and Birch Dental Partners. So I think I hit them all and they’ll all be there and great representation. Some smaller groups, some much larger groups, some right in the middle, all have kind of grown differently. And so that’s why I love the panel discussion. So again, June 16th, which is you’ll probably get there on the 15th. My suspicion would be kick off things early on the 16th. We’re smack dab in the middle of the day, 12:15 to 1:15. Again, we will be competing a little bit against lunch. So if you want to grab your lunch early, come on over or at 1:15, we’ll be done and you’ll still have time to go over and get lunch.
(07:44):
So either way, depending on how hungry you are, make sure you stop by, support the emerging dental groups to watch winners. They would definitely appreciate a nice audience there and we’re going to be making sure we usher people in from the main stage, which is probably where you’re all going to be watching the events that start in the morning and pretty much end on the main stage right around lunchtime. We’ll get you all over there. We’ve got some people working to move people over to the Thought Leader Theater. So that looks like where we’re going to be, the Thought Leader Theater, which looks like also where they’re going to have the opening night reception. So you’ll definitely get used to that. All right, that’s the ADSO Summit again next week. We hope to see you there. And yeah, let me know. I mean, ping me on LinkedIn or ping Kim and let us know you’ll be there and love to chat with everybody.
(08:39):
Okay. So that is the ADSO. That is what is coming up right now. Now let’s go back again. This is our website here, but let’s jump back to beginning of this year, since we’re kind of trying to do a recap. All right. So really one of the first DSO meetings was the Yankee Multi-Site Summit. Now I believe we’re four years or five years into the multi-site summit and I really think they did a great job. These meetings were not without their challenges for sure, but what I think really … Shoot.
