Executive Director's Blog

7th December 2006

Welcome back if you’ve been traveling over the last week or so, hope you survived the partying at EIBTM, ILTM or wherever else you’ve been lately.
Is this pace ever going to slow down?!

Just talking to people over the last few weeks it seems that most agencies are experiencing a huge surge of activity pre-Xmas, great for revenues not so good for the poor souls who just need to slow down and take stock at this time of the year. Isn’t it normally wind down time, tying up lose ends, schmoozing clients and getting all in the Christmas spirit? But instead I hear stories of running three or four programmes in December with another couple lined up already in January.

When permanent staff are stretched to the limit, suffering exhaustion, first of the winter colds taking people out, is this a boom time for freelancers? A few agency heads I’ve spoken with recently are employing up to 10 freelancers over this period to cope with the increased work load. Well I hope it keeps up for all our sakes but don’t forget to take your Echinacea, Zinc and Vit C to keep the winter bugs at bay!

Well on another note, I hope you’ve all got your frocks ready for the party and awards season! We had our first ever Eventia CE Awards last week, celebrating events held in the UK. A great night was had by all at the Hurlingham Club but one agency that just couldn’t stay off the stage was the ‘uber-cool’ Sprout crowd who I’m proud to say are based just around the corner from my home in Carnaby Street - all the best things come from Soho.

The overall Gold Award however went to Knebworth House. The results are on our Awards page along with some fab pics of people dancing the night away. By the way have you checked out www.eventsreview.com yet? It’s a relatively new (started in April 06) event news site that specializes in web TV. Quite a cool concept, so we have set up a media partnership with ER whereby their journalists filmed our awards and interviewed the winners; they have loads of content on the site, something for everyone.

Well I’m nearly off to NZ for my well overdue holiday but when I return in January, (a few more freckles later) I can’t wait to put on my next party frock and new Jimmy Choos at the first ever Eventia ITM Awards on 2nd Feb. If you don’t already have your ticket to the hottest networking party of the year yet then get on to it now. By the way, did I mention we are bringing back the Afterparty?? Watch this space…. 

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