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What’s Your Main Task Before Relaunching Your Face-to-Face Event?
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Warwick Davies
With almost three decades of conference and event management under his belt, Warwick Davies has literally been there, done that and got the tee shirt. A known thought leader in the industry, Warwick has been operating as The Event Mechanic! for over 17 years advising event organizers on the best way to run an effective, efficient and profitable conference, while delivering the experience that attendees expect.
2 Responses
Sound advice. The decision to re-open F2F events should be driven by "the value we offer to our customers"—not by the placement of chairs, tables, and handwashing stations.
My take: the event industry's focus on removing "virus-centered logistical barriers" reflects nothing other than its core talent: logistics. Organizers aren't called "organizers" for nothing.
When the business value of any B2B event can be digitally replicated, the F2F version will seem to customers like taxicabs do to Uber users: quaint, malodorous vestiges that cost too much.
Were the event industry capable of focusing on the right stuff, it would long ago have taken to heart Peter Drucker's definition of business:
"Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."
Right now, organizers should be concentrating all their efforts on structural, not logistical, adjustments,
I'm not sure they can.
Bob appreciate the comment. I think organizers are probably much more capable thank you think- this is really the first existential crisis they've faced other than 9/11 perhaps. There are enough smart people in this industry, and now is the time for them to sharpen their pencils to find new business models...