Executive Director's Blog
December 20 2006
This blog comes to you all the way from sunny New Zealand, where I’m finally taking a Christmas break after a whirlwind year of activity. And what a 12 months it’s been! Although I’ve only been occupying the Executive Director’s seat since August, as a Board member I was pretty much involved in Eventia’s launch and tentative first steps back in January.
This meant cranking up the marketing drive for the newly-formed association; creating the website and getting in touch with potential new members - targeting the very companies that we knew were missing from our directory of members.
As a result of these activities, I’m delighted to report that our agency membership has more than doubled over the last 12 months. We can boast over 70 of the events industry’s leading events companies, as well as over 200 of their business partners. And that’s not all – we invited freelance event organisers to join the Association this year and we created a dedicated online directory of freelance staff for the exclusive use of our Event Organiser member companies.
Education was at the top of our agenda in 2006, and having begun the year with a series of seminars on risk assessment, health and safety and crisis management, we invested considerable energies into producing Eventia’s first residential conference. The event, delivering fun and social interaction, as well as a raft of serious business sessions, proved to be an enormous hit with the industry – so much so that we are well down the road with plans for the second Summer Eventia.
Climate change has been one of the hot topics of the year, and we started a series of activities to assist event organisers to adopt their own environmental policies and embrace sustainable event management practices.
These include our plans to launch the One Per Cent Initiative, creating a mechanism enabling the events industry to offset some of the damage being caused by carbon emissions. We also got together with other industry bodies to work on the creation of a new British Standard in Sustainable Event Management.
But we were determined to create opportunities for members to have fun as well, and the Eventia Autumn Workout was launched in October. Over 140 of you joined us in the grounds of beautiful Horwood House for a 5km run and walk, plus an assault course, rounded off by dinner and a great party.
As 2006 draws to a close, we’ve barely paused for breath. A thoroughly popular hosted buyer programme to EIBTM in Barcelona was immediately followed by the first Eventia Corporate Event Awards at the Hurlingham Club.
All this in the Association’s first year! We have such plans for 2007 and beyond, that it feels like we’re still on the nursery slopes. And on the subject of snow, it’s probably fanciful to wish you a White Christmas, but I do hope that the festive season provides you with a well-deserved break and that the New Year brings renewed energy and lots of fantastic business prospects.
On behalf of our Board, the Chairmanand all of our team, let me wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
Yours
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