DEAD Talks 2026 to Empower Deathcare Professionals to ‘Ready. Set. Grow.’ in Las Vegas

STERLING, Va. (November 10, 2025) –The International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Association (ICCFA) proudly announces DEAD Talks 2026, the profession’s premier sales conference, taking place January 13–15, 2026, at Park MGM Las Vegas. This year’s theme, “Ready. Set. Grow.”, celebrates the forward momentum of today’s deathcare professionals as they expand their skills, elevate service, and lead with confidence in an evolving marketplace.

DEAD Talks has become a can’t-miss event for sales professionals, managers, and leaders seeking to take their performance to the next level. The 2026 program features a powerhouse lineup of deathcare innovators and educators delivering hands-on sessions, interactive panels, and fresh strategies to help attendees grow both personally and professionally.

The event begins Tuesday, January 13, with a first-timers orientation and lively ice breaker led by Lori Bolton, CSE, CXE, of Park Lawn Corporation. Attendees will then join “The Wheel of Objections” panel, moderated by John Bolton, CCE, CCrE, CSE, CXE, and Lori Bolton, featuring Erin Creger, Néctar Ramírez, Greg Norris, and Dan Kientzel. Panelists will share how to overcome common objections and turn challenging conversations into opportunities to serve. The day concludes with a welcome reception and networking celebration.

On Wednesday, January 14, the program kicks into high gear with keynote speaker David Priemer, author and renowned Sales Scientist. In his keynote, Priemer will explore how effective messaging shapes every step of the purchase journey—emphasizing that the experience is the product. Drawing on real-world insights and practical examples, he’ll share actionable strategies to help professionals connect authentically with families and guide them toward confident, value-driven decisions.

The day’s sessions will continue with four key themes—Educating the Consumer, Knowledge + Passion = Confidence, How to Get More Leads, and Managing Sales—featuring expert presenters including Lee Longino, Jennifer Graziano, Dr. Jason Troyer, Honnalora Hubbard, Noble Sines, Néctar Ramírez, Phil Zehms, Cathy Younkin, Brad Palmer, Eric Battles, Gary O’Sullivan, and Tony Armogida.

On Thursday, January 15, the event concludes with the Sales Seminar Certification Workshop, led by Tony Armogida, Erin Creger, and René Negrete, along with the ICCFA Sales & Marketing Committee. This hands-on session will give attendees a complete blueprint for delivering engaging, results-driven seminar presentations. The closing session, “Monday Morning Mindset” with Shane Pudenz, will help attendees translate inspiration into immediate action.

“DEAD Talks represents the ICCFA’s commitment to empowering professionals across every corner of deathcare,” said ICCFA President Bob Gordon, Jr., CCE. “It’s not just an event—it’s a catalyst for growth, innovation, and excellence. As our members evolve to meet the needs of today’s families, DEAD Talks gives them the tools, inspiration, and community to lead that change.”

“Every year, DEAD Talks is built by sales professionals, for sales professionals,” said Mike Harens, Chairman of the ICCFA Sales & Marketing Committee. “Our committee’s goal is to create an environment where attendees can connect, learn from one another, and leave energized to put new ideas into action. DEAD Talks is about helping every participant—whether it’s their first year or their fifth—walk away ready to grow.”

The ICCFA Educational Foundation is once again supporting professional growth by offering scholarships to help current ICCFA members attend DEAD Talks. These scholarships cover the full cost of registration—recipients are only responsible for travel and lodging. Applications are open now through November 18, 2025, at 11:59 PM ET, and are limited, so members are encouraged to apply early.

Registration for DEAD Talks 2026 is now open at iccfa.com/sales. Attendees are encouraged to take advantage of early bird pricing available through December 19, and group discounts make it easier than ever for teams to grow together.

Founded in 1887, the International Cemetery, Cremation, and Funeral Association is the only international trade association representing all segments of the cemetery, cremation, funeral, and memorialization profession. The association is comprised of more than 10,000 members in the cemetery, funeral home, and crematory industries, as well as supplier and related businesses worldwide.

Get Ready, Cemeteries: ‘Tis the Season for Necrotourists

One might assume that most cemeterians eventually develop a love/hate relationship with visitors. For example, family and friends are always welcome to stop by a loved one’s resting place — as long as they’re not driving through the grass or breaking the decoration rules. Likewise, you probably don’t mind when folks from the community walk the grounds for exercise, drive through to appreciate the beauty of nature, or learn more about the people of the past. You might even be OK with the #Gravetok creators who film themselves cleaning an old gravestone or eating a pie they made from a recipe engraved on a marker.

But how do you feel about people whose only purpose for visiting a cemetery is to revel in a place of death and sorrow, create creepy horror reels, or to pose for selfies at the graves of babies? While this type of questionable motivation or behavior can happen anytime of the year, the weeks leading up to Halloween are prime time for some of the sketchiest situations a cemeterian might encounter.

It’s called necrotourism

“Necrotourism” is a recently-coined term used to describe a niche form of tourism focused on visiting sites related to death. The concept itself isn’t new though, as people have naturally been drawn to sites of tragedy and death throughout history. These sites are most commonly cemeteries, but also include memorials, museums, and other places of historical or cultural significance where the deceased are remembered. 

All in all, necrotourism isn’t a bad thing, as many tourists are visiting these spots to appreciate the art, architecture, and history found in these locations or to simply honor those who died there. Visits to Ground Zero, Auschwitz, and Chernobyl, for example, can be incredibly educational, spiritual, and life-changing experiences.

Many modern cemeteries were created to be places for people to gather — for recreation and relaxation as well as mourning and remembrance. Today, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles are just as well-known for their overflowing calendar of events as they are for their famous residents.

The dark side

Naturally, as the number of visitors to a cemetery or memorial site grows (along with the sales of t-shirts and guided tours), so do debates on the morality and ethics of profiting from tragedy. Some worry that encouraging necrotourism can lead to exploitation of suffering, disrespect to the dead and their families, and the possibility that people will forget the true purpose of the site.

These consequences are known as the “dark side” of necrotourism — when sites meant for respectful memorialization attract visitors with more nefarious intentions. Sadly, and perhaps, expectedly, these visitors and the creepy and/or criminal behavior spike in October, especially around Halloween — and especially at cemeteries.

Hateful and obscene

Over the last several decades, more reports of stolen or disturbed grave decorations, toppled vases, graffiti, trespassing, and other petty to serious vandalism have been reported in October than in other times of the year. In 2022, for example, criminals chose Halloween night to paint “hateful and obscene graffiti” (including some Satanic language) on graves and columbariums in a Catholic cemetery in New York. The cleanup and restoration cost thousands of dollars, in addition to the human cost in grief and outrage.

Other activities can be even more depraved and dishonorable. In 2007, someone dug up the grave and stole the remains of a woman who died 1821 from a New Hampshire cemetery around Halloween. The hole they dug was “a perfectly rectangular hole, 5 1/2 feet deep, with evenly piled mounds of dirt left on either side of the empty grave,” leading authorities to suspect that the actions were motivated by witchcraft or satanic ritual, as “some believe that if a skull is stolen on Halloween night, it will grant powers to a person who holds it.”

A similar situation occurred in Queens, New York on October 31, 2016, when vandals broke into a mausoleum, “wrecked the place,” leaving bones and clothing scattered about, and left with the skull of a man and the entire skeleton of a woman, both of whom died in 1928. 

While these examples are somewhat extreme, today’s social media culture has certainly compounded the potential for Halloween mischief — and the recording of such activities. Even though trespassing on cemetery grounds is a classic adolescent Halloween activity (call it old-school necrotourism), the resulting videos or images of the actions for TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram can lead to much bigger issues.

Practical preparations

There are some things cemeterians can do to proactively prevent or prepare for Halloween hijinks:

• Remind families (especially in October) about removing fragile decorations overnight, and offer to store or safeguard seasonal items.
• Collaborate on lighting, camera coverage, visitor policies for high-risk nights, and volunteer watch rotations.
• Encourage family members to photograph damage and file police reports immediately; quick reporting increases chances of prosecution and insurance recovery.
• Help families with repair referrals, memorial restoration fundraising, or compassionate communications. 
• Counsel communities about the social-media angle (don’t film or post desecration) and coordinate with police/parks departments about rapid takedown of offending posts if possible.

Good luck, and Happy October!

There has been a lot of research in the past couple of years about who the “Consumers of Funerals” are.  There’s been a lot of great data published —  some of which is good news for Death Care and some not so good news for Death Care.

I’ve also suggested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) not publish a new “Funeral Rule” until they look at and get a very good idea of how the consumer purchases “Death Care” in today’s world.

Things change over time and in my interactions with consumers and Death Care professionals I see a trend of how people purchase Death Care that has changed since I worked every day in the business.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

When it is broke down, I’ve always seen Death Care purchased in the following fashion.  The purchase of Disposition, the purchase of Celebration, and the purchase of Memorialization.  Typically the consumer choice was burial, church service, cemetery in that order for Disposition, Celebration, and Memorialization. . . . . and, all three were, most of the time, purchased and arranged during one post-death arrangement at a traditional funeral home.

Because of how it was all done at the funeral home few of us recognized the distinct purchases of Disposition, Celebration, and Memorialization.  In today’s world, the segmentation is easily seen.

I clearly see the Death Care tri-metric purchase choices of Disposition, Celebration, and Memorialization being done by consumers at this point in time.  Many times in today’s Death Care purchase not all of those purchases are even consummated.  . .and even if they are, sometimes they are not all done by the traditional funeral home.

Matter of fact, a consumer can go through the thought process and complete the purchases they choose without ever using a traditional funeral home.  As is happening a lot in today’s world, Disposition may be carried out by an online cremation company and the consumer may forego Celebration and Memorialization or use non-funeral home providers for those services.

I also don’t think it is too different than other parts of our daily lives that have became segmented.  For many consumers, the daily newspaper has dropped off of its perch and people get their news from “segmented” places — most of the time online.  And, cable television is fast falling out of favor and being replaced by a consumer’s choice of “segmented” streaming options.

A lot of this change has been driven by the fact that the necessary information for purchasing is easily available at our fingertips by simply typing on a keyboard.  It used to be that you “needed” to go to the funeral home to learn about pricing and options.  That’s not so anymore.

Today, even with large dollar amount purchases consumers are comfortable purchasing online.  About 3% of automobiles are purchased completely online with about 23% ordered online with some follow-up contact at the dealership. . . The U.S. Chamber of Commerce states that 43% of people prefer to shop mostly online.

The Point —  There always has to be a Disposition (of the body) while Celebrations and Memorializations are optional purchases.  And, I believe that as we move forward there will be more niche operators chasing the Death Care business. . . . Niche operators like venues, funeral planners, outside the funeral home financial preneed planners, and Disposition operators like those operating with online crematories, alkaline hydrolysis, and natural organic reduction.

I’m expecting all of these niche businesses to have some type of online presence putting their best face forward to potential Death Care consumers. . . . and they will do that at a price point that may be less than traditional bricks and mortar operators can charge.

It’s my opinion that the “Customer Journey” to purchase Death Care segments will become, especially for the awareness or informational stage, more and more internet centric with all three phases of the Death Care purchase.

As these niche operators come more and more into the market are you ready for this competition and do you have a plan to acquire “Death Care consumers” to use your services rather than someone elses?

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

Is the World Ready for Deep Space Burials?

So besides the launching of cremated remains into or out orbit as part of a final farewell (an option of such growing popularity that there are businesses built upon the option as a burial alternative), there may soon be legitimate options for deep space burial of intact remains. Popular space travel, long-term missions and other circumstances may bring the necessity to the forefront in the near future. 

Star Trek and the sci fi genre have long featured the practice artistically; how faithful to reality are such depictions? In some shows, bodies explode from the lack of atmospheric pressure; in others, remains float unprotected gently into space, accidentally or otherwise, and just sort of peacefully float away, intact.

What’s the real story?

Human Bodies Are Tough

No exploding corpses after all: the absence of the pressurized atmosphere isn’t extreme enough to pull the human body apart, as the skin and connective tissues are sufficiently tough to hold things together. Even so, there would be other immediate effects, as well as long-term ones, contributing to the degradation of remains… though it wouldn’t be decomposition on earthly terms.

Immediate loss of pressure would draw out gases within the digestive tract, as well as oxygen in the tissues and blood. While this process might cause some damage, it wouldn’t be catastrophic. Rapid dehydration would follow, fluids in the body boiling off as the gases dissipate, and due to the extremes of temperature – at the low end, hundreds of degrees below Fahrenheit – any remaining moisture in the body would freeze.

The result would be a sort of preserved, dessicated, partially frozen mummy which, depending on its  trajectory after being ejected into space, might some day pass within proximity to cosmic features where temperatures are significantly higher and could cause other damage… such as within proximity to a star, like our sun.  

No Putrefaction

And there wouldn’t be the bacterial helping hand we’re used to for the sort of decomp we typically experience  on earth. For one thing, there’s no oxygen in space to help with the processes of bacterial propagation in the gut, that primary device that directs things so expeditiously on the surface; none of the natural means would be available to aid putrefaction. Space’s extreme temperatures don’t support propagation of the microorganisms in our gut that typically drive the processes we associate with the body’s breakdown.

But at a more stately pace, over time, interstellar radiation would take over, contributing to the breakdown of tissues by the deconstruction of DNA and other cellular materials. There could also be collisions from micrometeoroids and other space debris, though most of them would be relatively small particles – space dust, really.  Ultimately, the body will disintegrate, if slowly.

And should the remains be protected by a space casket of some sort, a vessel for the protection or in honor of the deceased, preservation might be possible for considerably longer, depending on the nature of the materials and any preparation of the body.

A regal ending, in theory if nothing else, to find a final resting place among the stars of our origins.

Get Ready for New Orleans | FFFW 209

DISCLAIMER: None of the F’s in FFFW stand for “facts.” Enjoy the jokes and satire.

Y’all welcome to the 209th edition of the FFFW! As a reminder, the “FFFW” stands for “Friday Funeral Fast Wrap.” Whenever this whole thing started, we had a little logo of a “wrap” that we used in every issue. Then, I guess I got tired of it and just moved on. So, now our name doesn’t make much sense.

But- the Lakers don’t play in a city with ANY lakes- so maybe I’m in good company.

There’s your history lesson of the day. Let’s move on to the things that have stayed the same in this publication:
– GIFs
– Games
– Good News

Excited for NFDA New Orleans this year? We are! The biggest show of the year is only a few weeks away and we can’t wait to see you at #NFDA2024!

We’re in Booth 1852 this year. Stop by to see how MemoryShare has simplified livestreaming and is transforming the way funeral homes reach more families. (Or just come grab a pair of socks— we’ll have those too.)

See you in New Orleans!

A Funeral Director’s Quick Guide to New Orleans: The Dos and Don’ts

Welcome to New Orleans! It’s time for NFDA 2024, but before you hit the streets, let’s make sure you survive the Big Easy with these essential tips:

Do: Eat the Beignets

It’s fried dough covered in sugar. What’s not to love? Don’t wear black unless you want to look like you’ve been embalming with powdered sugar.

Don’t: Wander into Bourbon Street at Night

Sure, it’s iconic, but by 9 PM, it becomes a scene you’ll wish you could unsee. Stay safe. Stick to networking—preferably somewhere with fewer beads.

Do: Join a Second Line Parade

You’re here for the NFDA, but when you hear that brass band, jump in! Nothing says “I’m celebrating life” like dancing with strangers and pretending you know how to twirl a handkerchief.

Don’t: Ask for Salad

Seriously. You’re in New Orleans. Everything is fried, spicy, or served in a bowl the size of a casket. Just go with it.

Do: Visit the Cemeteries

Above-ground tombs? It’s like real estate for the dearly departed! Take notes for your next big funeral service idea.

Don’t: Try to Speak French

We know “Laissez les bon temps rouler” sounds fancy, but after a few attempts, you’ll sound like a tourist with a mouth full of gumbo.

Trivia

What is the most commonly played song at funerals in the United States?

(Click the correct answer, and you’ll get a video of a puppy. Click the wrong answer, and you’ll see someone hurting themselves.)

Answer Choices:

A) “Ave Maria”
B) “My Way” by Frank Sinatra
C) “Amazing Grace”

You Otter Be Proud

Here’s some good news going on in the profession.

1. Why is it important to have a funeral director?
2. Old Lick Cemetery in Roanoke cleaned, repaired with help of national expert
3. Fifth-generation funeral director Jeff Monreal helps families grieve, celebrate loved ones