An Interview with David Audrain: New Event Development, New Technologies and the Challenge of Millennials
EM: David, good to chat. Let’s talk about where the money is in the business, what’s your opinion about what’s happening with recent acquisitions? DA: There’s been a dearth of acquisitions in the past few years. We’re seeing some now, but there has been quite a backlog until recently. There’s been some interesting ones recently-like […]
One Trend That Won’t Get You to the Sweet Spot in 2015
As mentioned previously, I am looking forward to featuring other voices on Events Matter! in the next year. One of the writers I have followed for a while is Michael Hart, formerly of Expo Magazine and TradeshowWeek among a few other important industry media outlets. I saw him in Los Angeles last month and had […]
How Will We Find Our New Events?
Hope everyone had a fun and peaceful holiday. I was at Expo! Expo! in early December, as were many of you. The event provided me a great opportunity to sit down with a number of you to take your pulse on a few things. The events industry is certainly changing and those changes have prompted […]
Have I Met my Career Expectations?
Circumstances that signal a transition in life become opportunities to reflect on what has happened in the past. Some of these events are profound (marriage, death, and similar major inflection points.) Others are less so, but still represent opportunities to look back and consider what happened – and what didn’t. My father recently asked me […]
Launching New Events without Losing Your Shirt
Launching a new event can be so risky that many won’t even attempt it. After all, who wants to lose money and possibly look foolish? But if you are courageous or want to take advantage of an untapped market opportunity, how can you proceed in a sensible manner, given the potential risks? Here are the […]
Is Event Innovation Overrated?
Jessica Levin is a well known Engagement Expert, and since I am fascinated with the relevance of attendee engagement and innovation, I asked her to guest write this column. Hope you enjoy her thoughts as much as I did! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Over the last few years there has been a strong movement to make events innovative. […]
How can you get this ‘event engagement thing’ to make money?
In some recent posts I’ve mentioned the different roles – the different “guys” – who are involved in the creation, management, and execution of events. Each type of role has something to contribute to the success of a particular event. But when I look beyond an individual event at the broader trends within the business, […]
How to Get to the Next Level in the Events Business in One Month
In an earlier blog post, I reviewed the three styles of an event manager and I promised to help you determine which one you are and how you might acquire the characteristics of the others. Having the attributes of all three styles can be important, as all are contributors to the origination, development and execution […]
Flying in the Face of a Disturbing Trend: Gain Competitive Advantage by Doing More!
I’ve been thinking about how bad air travel has become, prompted by this recent story in USA TODAY (http://usat.ly/1tiHNgn) by Christopher Elliot. Poor customer service is a prevailing and longstanding complaint of many travelers. Yet air carriers not only seem tone deaf to those concerns; they are compounding things by trying to maximize revenue through […]
The 3 ‘Guys’ You Need to Run a Successful Event…
Ray Bianchi’s blog post in the March issue of Expo offered an interesting perspective on the different types of employees found in our industry. The post prompted me to look at the industry from a different angle, identifying some of the typical event management “personas” (as they say in marketing) that I often come across […]