Corporate Events Plus

Keeping up to date with regulations and best practices of working is one thing – what about your own PPE (Personal Protection Equipment)

Having a look at my own lightweight hard hat and toe protector boots I thought it would be time to see what was on the market. This gear is picked up and carried job to job, kept ready to use and is part of the furniture so has been if I am honest slightly overlooked.

Well….if it is comfy , why change it?

So – after some research and some trying on I have decided that the helmet has been changed for a more protective shell and the leather boots have been changed for a composite lighter weight offering. I have of course been using the new shoes to break them in before christening them on site.

Interesting thinking about the saving of weight in these new items. Less weight, not so much to carry either in baggage or on your feet and head.

So I was thinking about the sustainability benefits and I had recieved recently an email from Trainline the booking agency for train travel in the UK and I have since 2021 travelled 61 journeys at a distance of 4,617 miles.

These have been mainly to Heathrow and Gatwick airports for work abroad.

Apparently I have saved enough CO2 to power a washing machine for 4 years!

An interesting statistic from Trainline but I do feel good about the green travel – I have also travelled many more times by train and tube but now it is cheaper to tap the credit card on the barriers than to book through trainline and pay the booking fee and then pay the company credit it card fee trainline charges.

One part of work is about keeping up to date with what suppliers have to offer or what is available in the market. This month I was fortunate to meet up again with Alan MacDonald the MD from Media PowerHouse. Alan and I started work together as apprentices at Samuleson Communications in the late 1980’s. Young 17 year olds keen as mustard to get involved with the industry.

Alan has been forging a path still within Audio Visual, Hybrid Event Production, Experiential solutions and Creative print but what interested me most was their permanent Virtual Gallery, managed by the Master Control Room, offering an immersive digital experience that brings together people on Collaboration Tools like Teams and Zoom and integrating them with other participants in remote offices and studio spaces, seamlessly creating a show that can be streamed globally, connecting audiences worldwide. Sounds like a mouthful but a slick solution for remote events.

With Alan in the Master Control room Virtual Gallery

Well, that was an interesting year of working in Exhibitions, Product Launches and Conferences. Our work is varied for sure but what makes earning a living in this industry worthwhile is the people you surround yourself with along the way. Here are some of my favourite group snaps of the year – I am hoping there will be many more next year too.

2 conferences this month in Madrid and London

Interestingly though, both events were related to internet systems and security.

I quite enjoyed this month working with Kahoot a fun voting audience participation tool and Singa, a Karaoke application that enabled delegates to join in with evening entertainment.

Knitting a team together on site is always a big part of the project and working home or abroad the crew make a massive difference to the success of the project.

This month has been a real pleasure working with new contacts and old contacts – Paul Wood and I first worked together at Samuleson Communications in 1988 – we are still working with Audio Visual although the projects are larger video based now than the slide projection roadshows back then.

September and October involved many face to face meetings and gatherings around working drawings but there are challenges managing the working day with calls that are also pre booked. It is very easy to fill the diary with back to back calls on Teams, Chime, slack huddle,Google chat and zoom depending on which agency is driving work.

After a couple of months of office work and meetings I am looking forward to November where we will be on site putting into fruition our pre event efforts on events in Madrid and London with visits to Barcelona for work next year

4 projects this month looking into work for later this year and in the first quarter next year. One thing I am finding is the difference between supplier costs. We all used to have a rate card in the head and know what services and hired equipment cost. Now though you really do have to get quotes to be sure you are keeping a budget aligned.

Good to see that some venues have had a spruce up in recent years. The London Metropole has some particularly eye catching carpet now.

Always beneficial to have face to face meetings and I enjoyed meeting a new group of people in London this week.

A good year of business and some interesting work to fondly look back on.

We started with a derig of exhibition work in Madrid, packing for travel and storage – very hot working conditions both inside and outside of the venue.

Then work preparing and installing an Exhibition for 5 weeks in Vienna during January which was minus 12 degrees C.

Then building a booth in Barcelona our 3rd European location for work before completing 2 projects in London and to round off the financial year we are now looking at costing projects for the first 3 months in 2025.

A project this month in London at The Tate Museum saw us working with water.

How effective – 80cm of water can be if you use a black pond liner and black vegetable based die to give the water a look of infinity depth.

But – it can be challenging working with water – double check any seams – double liner the area – have a robust plan to clear up any spillages or to cope with leaks.

This water feature definitely created another dimension to a floating catwalk.

Before we knew it – we had derigged and it was as if we had never been

One of the interesting bennefits of working in this industry is that we often get to work in re purposed buildings when previously used structures or buildings are tuned into event spaces

This month we have completed work at Protien Studios in Shoreditch London at the former Bristol car manufacturer building and been on recce’s to the Tate Tanks at the Tate Gallery, the Tanks being the oil storage area for the previous power station.

The Tanks

In over 25 years we have had such a great relationship with our clients and not only been rewarded with great work ,we have been paid for our work.

But when you are spending month after month chasing some finance department in a company in another country to pay for work agreed you can see why people spend alot of time on arranging contracts before turning a wheel. In live events there is a deadline – things need to happen and often quickly.

A note to self, do not take requests at face value have faith in your experience and look at the warning signs. Leave projects when your gut tells you to, do not stay engaged with a project just because it is a big brand name and those in charge are spinning a hopeful yarn.

On a positive note, there are discussions in the pipeline for another project we successfully completed and were paid for at Mobile World Congress. We are looking forward to seeing the new design for Barcelona 2025.