Experiences, not just events

It was so good to be back on the event stage. So good. It wasn't just the human feeling of being in and around people again, but the very definite feeling from everyone involved that we're going to make the very best use of this time.

On the first day of October, I was hired as the host of the launch of LCR Connect, the Liverpool City Region's ￡30m partnership with French infrastructure company NGE, and my client on the day, ITS Technology Group, who will lead the consortium to build and manage the 212km roll out of a full-fibre network. A new dawn has broken, has it not?

I've worked in technology journalism and communications all my working life, one way or another. It's always a challenge to bring that to life. What made this event so good to work on was the determination that everyone involved got to meet others, engage with the possibilities of what this could mean for the city region; and that the team could get feedback from potential partners and stakeholders about what the priorities need to be.

Obviously, you don't just achieve that by hoping, you have to plan carefully.

But this is the events world and if something can go wrong, then it might. Our keynote speaker got pinged and had to pull out. His replacement, by the way? Wow, she was outstanding. Lorna Rogers, remember the name.

It has been a good 18 months since I'd hosted a live event. 18 long months. I've done a few online events, but they're just not the same. If I'm brutally honest (and I always try to be) the last in-person event I did before lockdown wasn't great. I'd banished thoughts of it until now, because I know what went wrong. But this week I've been reminding myself of what great looks like, why things we build into the programme work, why they might not, and how everything can be better.

I was blessed with an agency - Konductor - delivering the communications strategy and their client, ITS, with the courage to unleash some energy into the Papillion suite at Aintree racecourse.

The jeopardy lies in audience participation. I've chaired events where it has properly kicked off, usually political ones, rather than technology launches, but I've also developed a sixth sense for where the aggro is going to come from. I've also seen overly contrived and controlled feedback that fools no one. There are tricks and techniques to deploy to make these interventions useful to everyone involved.

It comes back to something I said in a blog recently about why most networking is rubbish. I think we're impatient now, we demand better, we insist on an active experience, not just a passive passage of time. Being present and being involved.

I was most pleased that I still had the muscle memory for stage management. There were also some tiny, minute event habits that I always insist on building into a script, or around the staging of an event. They may be so small you'd barely notice, but I always spot them when they don't happen at other people's events. All of them are designed to get the absolute best out of all the speakers, presenters and the audience.

Then there's diversity. It can't be acceptable to have all male panels and platforms, can it? I know this might do me out of a job, but I'm beginning to think of these as non-negotiables, to ensure that the experience is as inclusive and inspiring for all of the attendees.

As my friend David Parkin explained so beautifully in his Friday blog this week: "As a journalist I tell peoples’ stories and at events it is about hearing from speakers with great stories and also encouraging the audience to help tell their own stories."

Appraising our role is as a convenor of ideas, a catalyst for conversation, a conduit for human interaction. There's also a paradox at the heart of striding onto a stage and demanding the attention of hundreds of people - you have to be supremely confident, but to hit all those other notes you also have to be humble. To recognise what you bring and what the overriding clear purpose of the event is. To know what it is you want everyone to come away feeling and thinking.

Let me know if you think I can help, I'm itching to get back out there again.