Maria Sidiropoulou – senior product manager at Informa Markets – accepted a new role with the company, event director for Jewellery Arabia, based in Bahrain, since this podcast was recorded. In events for more than 12 years, a career that’s taken her from sales and marketing to the heady world she’s now a part of, Maria talks host James Dickson through that background and the lessons learned before digging into the bigger picture. This episode touches on the pros and cons of studying event management at university, understanding the industry and picking a path. Maria goes on talk about her role at Informa before the Bahrain job, how event companies big and small manage the myriad platforms available, the benefits of having a tech specialist on the team, analysing data, ‘always on’ connectivity and much more.