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 me to wonder whether we, as events business professionals, are keeping pace with those changes.
One topic that I mentioned in my conversations – and which was echoed by those with whom I spoke – was the matter of from where will the new ideas for events come?
Most new events seem to originate as spinoffs of proven, existing events or perhaps are the regionalization (with new locations) of existing events. Now these represent smart, risk-averse ways to launch, but they leave open the question of how will “brand new” events make their entrance? As I have mentioned in prior postings: where are the Creative Guys within our industry and what are they doing?
My biggest concern with the new event creation which is happening is that it is happening outside the orbit of SISO/IAEE/ASAE and, therefore is under “our radar”. As event professionals, are we open to these kinds of opportunities and do we have the skills and experience to take them on?
Where are our own incubators? “Back in the day” when I was working at DCI (a boutique IT events conference company in Massachusetts), we were taught an approach – a new business launch model – which meant that we were well versed in how to start a new event, even if we ourselves weren’t the Creative Guys normally tasked with that role.
I asked my good colleague and mentor, Sean Guerre, how he would approach this opportunity and he promised me a great post soon. So I look forward to that insight. But, in the meantime, can YOU really say you have a ‘find and launch’ capability in your own company?