2024 - end of year review

As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve just wrapped up my final onsite event of the year, and what a year it’s been—both personally and professionally.

Personally, it continues to be an extremely fulfilling life, even with the big life milestones moments of losing my father in June to seeing my daughters continue to flourish and make life affirming decisions to get engaged, change careers and make decisions to leave the UK for new challenges and opportunities abroad.?

Whatever the stages of grief I am in or supposed to be in I feel very reconciled about my fathers death and need to do everything to celebrate the legacy he has left behind, after all he has lived an extraordinary life, moving to the UK in 1966 to work in the cotton mills of Stockport, married on arrival to bring up 4 children (and now 11 grandchildren, and two great grandchildren) in a two up two down whilst living with his mother (and uncles/ aunts in the early days). In his later years, he battled Parkinson’s and numerous physical challenges and through it all, my mother’s unwavering strength in caring for him was nothing short of humbling. I read an extraordinary book this year called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, which has helped to add some context to the process of life and death, and our relationship with both.?

Professionally, it has been a monster year. This time last year I was invited to do a site visit to Shanghai, my all time favourite city on the planet for what turns out to be a ridiculously ambitious event requiring several site visits and the opportunity to reconnect with my dear colleagues and friends in Asia. I started the year in earnest with an equally monster project plan to drive this project across the year. January started in Dubai for a finance kick-off conference and Abu Dhabi for a small experiential activation, followed by a new win April project for a medical global leadership conference in London and several partner events at McLaren Woking to keep me really busy throughout the year.?

Big shoutouts to my agency clients, NVE Experience, Ivory Worldwide, Octagon Worldwide, Purple Group and Rippl Group who’ve made 2024 such a memorable year. Some of the standout projects include:

Temenos, Kick-off 2024 - UAE. Executive Producer, Ivory Worldwide: Working closely with the client team and Ivory creative team to deliver what continues to be a classic finance sector sales kick off conference with a super packed agenda for day and night, a number of mini exec and regional meetings and the fun of a rousing awards ceremony.?

Convatec GLM24 - London. Project Director, Rippl Group: A new win for a new agency even before the ink had set at Companies House. Great to be leading a project from the outset, developing the strategy, agenda, creative and technical production, right through to choosing the venue and hotel bedrooms for the client. Nice also to have a client that knew exactly what they wanted and why they wanted it.?

Diageo World Class 24 - Shanghai. Project Director, NVE Experience: This event continues to be as ambitious as it is extraordinary in the world of bartending and cocktail culture. The stats are eye watering for every metric. As Project Director it started with a short list of venues to choose from, and then work meticulously for 9 months of project planning, guiding, budgeting and directing to what undoubtedly became a hugely successful event from all angles. Working with some of the best skills and services in the industry.?

Cisco Security Hypershield - Woking. Executive Producer, Octagon Worldwide

Webex One - Woking. Executive Producer & Content Lead, Octagon Worldwide

Both events stem from long time relationships with Octagon supporting their motorsports division and the Cisco client team who I have known for many many years. Working with the team at the futuristic McLaren Technology Centre to deliver flawless Partner events and product launches.?

And of course, a special mention to The Closest Point, my personal milestone. We finally held a number of private cast and crew screenings of my short film, The Closest Point, a film that I produced with my dear friend, Dilesh Korya. As we end 2024 the challenge and task now is to get this film into as many film festivals as possible to give it the exposure it so deserves.?

A couple of other milestones to mention, delivering a VR project to a select committee in the Houses of Parliament, celebrating 35yrs since starting Central School of Speech & Drama with friends for life and seeing the amazing musical 'Standing at the Sky's Edge' with music and lyrics by Richard Hawley.

I want to thank the individuals, the agencies, end clients and the team members that I have had the pleasure of working with. Despite the inevitable pressures, it’s always the people that make the difference—those I work with, collaborate with, laugh with, sing with, and most importantly trust when the going gets tough. For all of its challenges in this industry, though demanding and sometimes maddening, it is also uniquely creative and competitive, and constantly pushing personal boundaries. The lessons for me through working on such creative projects is to recognise the short and long term challenges of this industry over and above the cut and thrust of project delivery. Issues such as the challenges of agency culture and team spirit stinted due to remote working, a broken business model of clients who want more for less with internal processes that do not fully support the bottom line, or for the revolving door of staff and freelancers but more about these challenges in my next article.?

As for me, I’m closing the year with a commitment to personal growth. I’ve engaged a professional coach to help me gain perspective on my lifelong skills in the creative industry and to explore how I can leverage them for business management and my next career move, and I look forward to applying the lessons I learn everyday from the remarkable people I’ve worked with.

For now, I continue to be available and ready to support anyone needing my skills and service, regardless of the size and scale of a project and business growth challenge. I am keen to get back onto the global circuit and maybe even find my way back to Asia through a board room or senior management position for an agency with global ambitions.?

Endings always lead to new beginnings and being blindly optimistic I cannot wait to start the year, so bring it on! Wishing you all a fabulous festive season.?