Events in 2020

There is little doubt that COVID -19 has impacted event organisers in every industry across the world. With postponements wide spread the usual Spring diary was a tad quiet this year! 

My inbox went unnervingly quiet for a few weeks as we all found our footing, then as we felt a bit more settled business, as usual as it can be, resumed. People are still booking events as they need to ensure they have business, development and sales opportunities down the line. We are doing everything we can to help exhibitors marketing in the meantime, so if you are joining one of our events later this year, please send us stuff to share to our eco system.

The current situation is changing the way us organisers spend their time. As Event Director & IRMS Account Manager I should have been making my way back from Birmingham this morning, following three (well five if you include set up) very full on days at #IRMS20, a residential conference, exhibition and networking (some may say "party") event that is an annual delight.

Instead I'm in my home office feeling much more refreshed (I've not consumed my body weight in fizz in a few days) than I would be in the "pre-covid" world. We had some online activity, but nothing will take away the experience of a F2F event, so we're really looking forward to running the event the last weekend in Nov. instead. 

A friend asked me, "so I guess you've been doing nothing but sunbathing now eh" 

Er... no! 

The event world has a chance to breathe and focus on re evaluating our strategies, encouraging education and making improvements to our planning, sales and marketing activities. 

This week we plan to communicate with all of our event stakeholders to ensure they are in the loop with plans, ideas and new deadlines that we've been busy working on and evolving over the past six weeks. We'll ensure content is still being shared and let everyone know what our steps are moving forwards.

GDPR hasn't gone away, we continue to ensure our data is spick and span, compliant and segmented so we can ensure the most targeted marketing takes place, only sending relevant info to inboxes, as we're all now a lot less tolerant of unrelated emails. 

We're updating our systems too. These plans were already in motion in March, and ensuring our online CRM system is running smoothly (and we all know how to use it) has been taking priority and getting the love it deserves. Also,a project team have been working on the SharePoint migration project, getting us in the position to shift to SharePoint next month. I'm particularly excited about this project as it really does look a much better way of working. Collaboration will be smoother and duplication hopefully eliminated. Using webinar videos, online training videos and homemade (yeah ...me, not realising you could still see the little video of me with un brushed hair and zero make up!) training videos, by Friday we will all be on the same page, looking to close the project with confidence that we all understand how it works! I had forgotten how much the brain likes to learn new stuff! (and I now understand the AIIM and IRMS content... ??) 

 Like most companies we have embraced communication tools, our main tool being Microsoft Teams. The speed at which they are updating their software is phenomenal, keeping ahead of competitors (Zoom, WhatsApp, Messenger, houseparty etc) which has made it a much better product to use already in just my five months experience. 

We've encouraged all staff to keep an eye on self care and to also keep themselves engaged to reduce stress by widening their knowledge base / skills outside of the workplace.

For me, it's picking up my Spanish again, painting (*cough* by numbers *cough*), random knowledge with Jay's Thursday night Virtual Pub Quiz with the family WhatsApp group going crazy (aware that loads of you are probably doing this at the same time as us too, at least last week was easier than the week before!) and supporting the local community with not just donations, but time too. This is certainly helping and developing me more as a human. 

Back in the workplace, we've also been mapping out our event process, ensuring our team are working efficiently and making sure the stress levels stay as low as possible for them all. 

Plus there is also the essential work being done on H&S in the office / events planning, researching the hybrid options (though some of our events wouldn't suit being virtual, much more about F2F) and in general being a team. 

In short, we are busy following the R's at Revolution Events: Redefining, Reinventing, Reinvigorating! 

Keep Safe

Dx