Executive Director's Blog

February 9 2007

Welcome to Eventia in 2007, we’ve already had quite a start to the year. Our first Events in Action seminar was held in January to a great response of over 40 participants eager to learn the nuances of the events industry from a starter’s perspective. Due to the extremely popular demand, we will be holding another one very shortly, so don’t worry if you missed out.

Last Friday was the first ever Eventia ITM Awards, celebrating the ‘best of the best’ of events held internationally. For those who were still on the dance floor past 3am, I hope you have since recovered and checked out the photo library - they say a picture tells a thousand words. It was fantastic to catch up with some familiar faces and meet some new people in the industry, what a great celebration we had. Another huge congratulations to all the winners of the evening and especially the Platinum-winning WorldEvents team who I’m sure were responsible for most of our record breaking champagne bill at the bar! The great news from the night is that we are back to our numbers of around 800 guests, which makes these awards remain the uncontested event of the year, a must attend for the entire industry.

The lesser news of the night was the result of the charity collection. I was so disappointed that with so many more of us in the room than last year we only managed to raise £5.2k. This was £800 less than last year’s efforts with 150 more people! So not being backward in coming forward I got up and told everybody that it wasn’t good enough and we sent the buckets around again. I thought about this for approx two seconds while departing the stage, wondering would I forever be known as the woman who told off the entire industry? “Had I pushed them too far?” I thought. Well any doubts were quickly dispelled, as one of the biggest cynics of our association, came rushing up to me thrusting a fistful of cash in my hand and saying: “Good on you! You were right to say that, we are far too tight in this industry, here is my part towards it!” (hopefully his membership will follow suit….) he was closely followed by a dozen more similar gestures from, mostly I would say, our industry leaders - it was the owners and MDs of the agencies who quickly made up most of the shortfall.

Whilst recovering in my suite on Saturday morning with a well prescribed Zantac, Eggs Benedict, huge jug of water and some of my dearest friends scattered about the room, I got to thinking about leadership, and what it takes to be someone who stands out from the crowd and isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo.

Our industry has been developed over the past ‘30 something’ years by people like Tony Moy – our Lifetime Achievement winner, and David Hackett, our 2006 Lifetime achievement winner. I haven’t had the pleasure of working with Tony, but his reputation precedes him as being one of the best people to do business with, and the people he has trained have gone on to build up some of the most successful agencies in existence today. However, I do know David, and have worked with him for the past four or so years, and I can personally attest that he is one of the most personable and fairest people in this industry.

So what are the qualities that set these people apart? And how can we learn from them? It obviously isn’t simply a case of being ‘nice’ – if that was so, plenty of people would be up there running successful companies. I have read many leadership books and studied the secrets of some of the world’s greatest leaders (it’s a personal passion of mine) and they all seem to give similar notions but sometimes different angles, depending on whether they are a business leader like Richard Branson / Donald Trump, a sporting hero like Paula Radcliffe / Lance Armstrong, or a spiritual/humanist leader like Mother Theresa, or Nelson Mandela for example.

So I’ve made up my own personal combination of what makes a leader of today. This isn’t a definitive list and the attributes are not in any particular order nor are they mutually exclusive. I believe it’s the combination of these qualities that makes a good starting point for me when I look to see what type of person I want to do business with and who I would like to see leading our industry today and in the years to come:

1. Inspirational: They must be inspiring, visionary and have goals, be creative and think outside the box
2. Positively balanced: they must be a positive person who can find the silver lining while remaining realistic at the same time
3. Competitive: they must have that driving instinct and desire to be the best, be prepared to do what it takes to succeed
4. Intuitive: have insight and be astute, able to assess situations and people and respond accordingly
5. Gracious and kind: not everyone can be a winner all of the time, it shows a lot about a person as how they handle losing as much as winning
6. Emotional Intelligence: our industry is about people so you must understand what motivates and drives people and how to get the best out of them not just for the sake of the business but also for the development of that person. Treat your people well and you will get the best out of them, chew them up and spit them out and your business will rot from the inside out and at some point that will reflect on your bottom line.
7. Adaptable: times move so fast we must see the signs and be flexible enough to change and keep pace, if you remain too attached to certain ways of thinking you may find you become too rigid to change and get left behind.

Keeping on the subject of leadership, we have planned a ‘senior leaders breakfast summit’ on 14 March during British Tourism Week (12 – 16 March), to register. The idea behind this week of events is to raise the profile and understanding of how tourism affects the economy and specifically our event will raise the flag for business tourism amongst the wider business community, MPs and the press. You can also get involved in other ways, logon to www.britishtourismweek.co.uk for a full listing of all events taking place you can also take the opportunity to invite your local MP in to your business and demonstrate to them what our industry is worth to the economy.

Not pausing to take a breath, we have a busy few months ahead, we are in to the planning stages of our SummerEventia 2007 so keep your diary free from 1–3 July at Beaumont House, Old Windsor, for the best two days/nights of networking, education and socializing of the year. Full joining instructions will be coming out soon and sponsorship details are on the website.

In the meantime I hope you’ll join us on the Eventia Pavilion Stand Y602 at CONFEX, especially on Wednesday for a drink between 4.00pm - 5.00pm.

We are also starting to gear up for IMEX and places are available on our hosted buyer programme, see the news letter for more details.

Last but not least, Happy 10th Birthday to Event magazine and so sorry I had to miss your bash, I was still feeling the effects of a winter bug I’m afraid. I can’t wait for the crisp spring weather to appear. So whether you are staying in snuggled up with a loved one (or just someone), or doing the party circuit - stay warm and don’t forget to take a vitamin with your vodka to keep you going on those long nights out!

Wishing you a fantastic first quarter,

Yours,

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