Getting The Most Out of Workday Rising 2026

Workday Rising isn’t short on things to do; it’s short on time to do them. Four days, thousands of attendees, hundreds of sessions, and an expo floor that can swallow an afternoon without you noticing. The individuals and organizations that leave with something useful aren’t the ones who see and do the most. They’re the ones that come with a plan and stick to it. 

Here’s how we suggest spending your week.  

1: Write Down the Three Decisions You’re Trying to Move Forward, Not Just Topics You’re Curious About 

Before you open the session catalog, get specific about what “useful” looks like for you this year. Not simply “learn about AI,” something closer to “figure out whether we should extend or automate our exception-handling process” or “decide if it’s time to consolidate our reporting tools.”  

A topic gives you something to browse. A decision gives you something to test everything against – every session, every demo, every expo conversation either moves that decision forward, or it doesn’t.  

2: Build Your Session Shortlist Around Gaps, Not Headlines 

New product announcements will get the most attention this week, and that’s fine, go see them. But don’t let your whole schedule be built from the keynote highlight reel.  

Balance your shortlist across three types of sessions: 

• What’s New – product direction and roadmap sessions. 

• What’s Proven – customer stories from organizations who’ve done the thing you’re considering. 

• What’s Unresolved – sessions on the messy, in-between problems (change management, adoption, legacy data cleanup) that rarely make the keynote but eat the most time back home. 

3: Treat 1:1 Conversations as a Different Tool Than Sessions 

A session is built to answer a question for hundreds of people at once. It’s not built to answer your specific questions.  

If you’ve got something specific and a little unresolved like a process that’s technically working but never feels right or a decision your team keeps circling back to, that’s a conversation to have, not a slide deck to read through.  

Skip the generic questions that could apply to anyone like: “What’s everyone doing about AI?” or “Any tips for optimization?” Instead come with something like: 

• “Here’s the workaround my team built two years ago and never removed, what would you actually do with it?” 

• “We’re choosing between extending this in Workday or bringing in a point solution, what did that tradeoff look like for someone else?”  

The same goes for the expo floor. Every vendor demo looks impressive in the abstract. Bring one real scenario from your own environment and ask people to react to it directly. You’ll get a clearer, faster answer than sitting through a generic pitch.  

4: Leave Room in Your Calendar for What Isn’t Scheduled 

If you’re calendar is full from 8am to 6pm, you’ve optimized for attendance, not for insight. Protect at least one unscheduled block a day, not for a nap (though, no judgment), but for the conversation that only happens because you weren’t rushing to your next thing, or the follow-up question a demo raised that you want to chase down while it’s still fresh.  

This also applies for the parts of Rising that don’t look like work (fun runs, morning yoga, event events, dinners, the random conversation at the coffee stand). Say yes to those. They’re often where the most honest conversations happen.  

5: Debrief Before You Leave Las Vegas, Not After You’re Back in Your Inbox 

By Thursday afternoon, your notes are a mix of half-finished thoughts, a dozen names, and screenshots you’ll need to remind yourself about. Don’t let that turn into “we should really go through everything from Rising” three weeks after you get back.  

Block 30 minutes before you fly home (with your team, if others came) and answer:  

• Which of our three original decisions actually moved?  

• What’s one thing we need to bring back to leadership this week, while it’s still urgent? 

• Who do we need to follow up with, and when? 

• What did we hear that we should be skeptical of?  

That last one matters. Not everything that sounded exciting on the expo floor will still sound exciting months from now.  

Want to keep the conversation going after Rising? Talk to Loop Consulting →