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The Business of Events Consultation, CN Agency Awards, neurodivergence in events, & more
This Monday’s Insights (06 March 2023) feature brings you the latest news including The Business of Events Consultation, CN Agency Awards, The C&IT Show on neurodivergence in events, and more.
Headlines
The Business of Events, the not-for-profit independent Think Tank for the events industry, has launched its Policy Unit and opened the first stage of its sector-wide Consultation.
The Consultation aims to gather sentiment among those owning, running, managing, and working in the events industry, which will lay the foundation for a comprehensive Policy Agenda for the sector. It marks the first stage of the Policy Unit’s work and will close on 14th April 2023.
Responses to The Business of Events Consultation will be categorised into sub-sectors and discussed as part of a Policy Unit which will lead to the publication of multiple reports, which will be reviewed by MPs sitting on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Events, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Policy Unit’s Advisory Council.
A second stage Consultation will open later in 2023 and will further explore policy initiatives in more detail.
Complete the Consultation here.
Martin Fullard, Associate Director, News & Content at The Business of Events said: “This is an important milestone in our work to create a Policy Agenda for the UK events industry.
“This Consultation is the first stage of the collation of evidence and sentiment, and the subsequent reports will inform where we go next. Once the Consultation closes in April, we will be arranging a series of roundtable discussions among different sector groups to discuss the findings and relay the views and opinions of the Advisory Council.
“I would like to extend my gratitude to those who have joined the Advisory Council so far. We have a blend of experience from a broad range of sector fields, and crucially we are delighted that Theresa Villiers MP has joined. Any policy initiatives must be stress tested by Government.
“I look forward to expanding the Advisory Council further with specific expertise as a picture unfolds, such as on matters such as taxation, diversity, sustainability, trade and many more.”
The Meetings Industry Association (mia) has celebrated its 2022 achievements at its AGM.
Steve Jones, the associated outgoing chair, mia, comments: “We are in regular dialogue with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and hold a three-way meeting every six weeks.
“The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), part of the Ministry of Defence, connects us with organisations that have benefited from grant funding and have developed new safety and security innovation that could support the meetings industry.”
Read more on this in Conference News, including information on the mia’s restructured board.
An unfortunate lesson for event professionals took place at the recent Conference News CN Agency Awards.
For anyone not in attendance at the event, a very honest article on Conference News states: “At Friday afternoon’s event, an appalling incident took place involving our guest speaker and a member of the audience. At the event, the speaker made some deplorable statements which caused well-warranted offence from the affected party and many of those in the room.
“At the time of writing, it’s 24 hours since the Agency Awards closed, in that time members of the Conference News team have reached out to the affected delegate to offer our support. We’ve also contacted the speaker’s team to voice our disgust at their conduct on stage, and have requested a meeting to demand a formal apology from the speaker directly to the affected party.
“These actions were the speaker’s own, their crass attempt at a joke was unscripted and Conference News wholeheartedly disavows the words themselves, the sentiment behind them and the outdated mentality that they represent.
“However, we must do better. Which is why in future we will improve our speaker recruitment process by using trusted industry speaker bureaus, and adopt a more thorough vetting and briefing process with our speakers to ensure this incident does not repeat itself.”
An update on the Conference News website today, 6/3/23, states, “The Conference News team has been made aware that the best course of action would have been to remove the speaker from the event. Looking back, we accept we did not take appropriate action at the time and will be putting safeguards in place to ensure we do better in future.”
The entire team at EDGE Venues trust the appropriate action is taken, and sincerely hope it is something from which the entire industry can learn.
In the latest edition of the monthly The C&IT Show, Calum Di Lieto talks neurodivergence in events, playful creativity and Vegas adventures.
This is a fab episode covering lessons from Red Bull and Google, a Maltese hotel with panoramic views, BAFTA winners with links to the events industry, and more. Guest speakers include Gabby Austen-Brown, Founder of Diversity Alliance and Kate Scully, Global Travel Manager, Howden Group Holdings.
Listen and learn from Julie Coker, CEO and president of the San Diego Tourism Authority, as she talks about community, mentorship, destination boycotts, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
According to Skift Meetings, “Julie began her journey into the events industry while working in restaurants in high school. This love of interacting with the public and helping them get to know her hometown began her love for the industry. This led to a corporate management trainee position with Hyatt after graduating from college.
“Coker worked her way up the organization, becoming a general manager at four different Hyatt properties, all of which exposed her to the wider hospitality industry and the role of destination marketing organizations (DMOs). This ultimately lead to her role as senior Vice President of convention sales at the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, becoming President in 2016 and then moving to her current role in San Diego in 2020.”
