The Summer Eventia 2008

  

6-8th July 2008

 
2 days & nights of the best networking & education of the year

 

The Summer Eventia, one of the events industry’s foremost annual events, was held at The Lowry Hotel, Manchester from 6-8 July 2008.  A record 250 delegates, speakers, media representatives and sponsors participated in the event, some 14 per cent more than for the 2007 conference.  Feedback from participants has been universally positive, encapsulated in the comments of Tina Morris, Managing Partner of event agency AddingValue: “What a great conference: really informative, educational and professional”.

Conference highlights

 Conference facilitator: Neil Jones, Avantgarde
 

The conference topics covered a wide range of the key issues and trends facing the events sector, from an overview of the global economic situation to developments in events education university programmes, from the latest trends in experiential marketing and corporate spend on events to pleas for the establishment of a common commercial methodology for pricing event agency services. Parallel workshop sessions ranged over regulatory issues, CSR, health and safety, technology, procurement, client/agency relationships, the provision of destination services, and meeting business embedives through staging effective events.

Members of the National Tourist Office collaboration ‘Where The World Is Your Oyster’ were able to promote their countries’ attractions though a series of one-to-one appointments with hosted buyers on the first day of the conference.

On a more light-hearted note, a version of the popular TV programme ‘Room 101’ was staged, with leading events industry personalities sharing their pet hates with the conference. Such hates included misleading budget airline pricing, email ‘trails’, fam trip last-minute no shows, over-hyped ‘green’ credentials, and the serving of warm white wine!

 

Programme

A copy of the full programme can be viewed here.

Presentations

Some presentations from the event can be viewed here along with individual speaker biographies.

Speaker biographies

View speaker biographies here.

Picture galleries

Picture galleries from the event are now available online.
For access,  you will need to use the following login details:
Login: eventia
Pass: manchester

Click here to access the picture galleries

Carbon Footprint

Many of the conference participants travelled to Manchester onboard a specially chartered private train, minimising the event’s carbon emissions while, at the same time, providing excellent pre- and post-conference networking opportunities. As a part of Eventia's commitment to promote reduced carbon emissions from event management, everyone registering for the conference was asked to enter their plans for travelling to Manchester. This was passed onto The Carbon Consultancy, Eventia's carbon partner, who will undertake a full carbon impact assessment of the event. We will share the overall results with all delegates to help inform your own understanding of lower carbon events and are undertaking this exercise.

Sponsorship

Suppliers who are interested in sponsoring an element of next year’s event: Please contact: Izania.downie@eventia.org.uk

And finally …

Patrick Collins of event agency Universal CIT took on the mantle of Eventia Chair at the conference. He said: “The Summer Eventia confirmed for me that we have a huge amount of talent in the events sector. We must make sure that we deliver fantastic events through the recession facing us over the next two years. I am also really keen to see us move forward in developing a properly structured and agreed pricing model, and I want Eventia to take the lead on this for the benefit of the whole industry.”