Working at Emirates Old Trafford since 2013, Angela Hobson has been sales director at the home to Lancashire County Cricket club for more than three years. Talking to host James Dickson just after the third Ashes Test had decided the series, Australia retaining the urn, Angela does the detail about the venue’s massive redevelopment – a £45m programme over 15 years. She discusses the planning and delivery behind a Test match and Emirates Old Trafford’s new-look provision for the greater...

Thomas Serrano launched Exclamation Group in 2020. Driven by its ‘Events That Make A Point’ mantra the company is a ‘one-stop-shop for corporate and luxury events, cultural and sports partnerships’. And the New York/Miami-based business lists Bulgari, Audemars Piguet, Dom Perignon and Swarovski among recent clients. In this episode, the focus is on how music sews, or should sew, events together. Thomas Serrano discusses the experience clients want to create, mapping their collective or...

Launched in 2003, IMEX Frankfurt is the heartbeat of the global business events community. And that’s what it says on the show’s homepage. In this episode, IMEX design manager Anna Gyseman and Oli Bailey, interaction designer, detail the considerable process involved in giving a new look to the practised, proven event. In conversation with host James Dickson they discuss 18 months research – not least with 50 external partners - how it’s a refresh not a rebrand, modernising and...

Raccoon Media Group, formerly Raccoon Events, launched in a garden shed and delivered the award-winning National Running Show, at Birmingham NEC, less than two years later. In this episode, CEO Mike Seaman talks host James Dickson through Raccoon’s growth, how it currently runs 10 shows, eight of them homegrown, two acquired. Mike discusses rebranding during Covid, delivering for the 500,000 people on the Raccoon database, turning ideas into realities, the resurgence of events...

Since 2022, tellingly titled company TURF has been pitching exclusive NFTs and art prints of ‘any place on earth’.   Co-founder Garm Lucassen, who has a history in business infomatics, took his experience of blockchain and NFTs to co-found TURF, which is focused on cartographic/map-based art. Every piece in its global collection is available just once and TURF is working with First Event and Cardano Foundation to deliver a new dimension in event giveaways.   In this episode, Garm is joined by...

Having spent the latter part of his 10 years at Clarion Events as EVP of its energy portfolio, Duncan Reid founded Reset Connect, a sustainability show for business, investors and innovators, during lockdown. With so many people knocked out of their employment stride by the pandemic, Reid was able to put together a top team of co-founders and launch, in the shape of a week of webinars against the clock in 2021. Since then, Reset Connect has found its in-person feet and this episode, recorded...

Award-winning creative agency EMC3 recently published a white paper, ‘Events as a force for good’, is focused on holistic sustainability in the industry. This episode features the company’s events strategist, Emily Maule, and Saskya Liney, EMC3’s head of sustainability. Host James Dickson does some background, not least finding out about From Now, the environmental services specialist Saskya co-founded during the pandemic, before digging into the document itself. Emily and Saskya discuss the...

With 10 years’ event industry experience in the locker, Ryan Curtis-Johnson is director of communications for Valuable 500, the largest CEO network after the United Nations.   With 15 global chief executives at its core, from the likes of the London Stock Exchange, Apple, the BBC, Sky, Sony and Microsoft, together with 485 equally important others, the Valuable 500 is working to end disability exclusion.   In this episode, Ryan Curtis-Johnson details the group’s makeup and motivation,...

Andrew Morrow is founder/managing director of venues the Belgravia and the Block but he’s here to highlight a new venture, the Events Club. With 25-years’ experience in the industry, primarily venue side, Andrew noted how the teams coming in to put events together under those roofs didn’t have a place to go between jobs/shifts/times. After providing host James Dickson with a weight of background information, this episode sees Andrew discussing his Event Club process, from finding an investor...

Former Mobile Promotions and Star Live man Robin Carlisle launched RC Consultants in November 2021 to help young people with special needs find a foothold events-world. In this episode, Robin talks host James Dickson through volunteering as a governor at a new local SEN school and the impact that’s had. He discusses sustainability in some of its myriad shapes and the notion of accessibility at events, applauding its growth and questioning its depth. With more than 35 years in events Robin...

Since 2011, using content management systems including Drupal and Webflow, Touchdreams has been building websites for ‘e-commerce, product businesses, service businesses, agencies, accounting, law, anything you can think of’ from its offices in Cape Town and London. After giving host James Dickson some background on the company, this episode sees Touchdreams founder Dane Rossenrode talk about bringing his broad experience to bear, specialising in sites for the events industry. Rossenrode...

Rob Vass ran his own event agency, 30 staff delivering up to 30 roadshows a month, and spent far too much time with spreadsheets. “Keeping an eye on the budget and exactly what your margin was at any time was a nightmare”. And Founding event planning software Joi is a product of that frustration. Joining the podcast from Sydney, Australia, Rob Vass digs into Joi, a “productivity tool for events”, detailing its capacity for truly joined up thinking. He details how the system makes it easy to...

Five and half years with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the last six months as chief brand officer, Drew Holmgreen knows what’s expected from the association, in theory and in practice. Joining the podcast from Dallas, Texas, Holmgreen talks host James Dickson through MPI’s method behind its live events ahead of the European Meetings & Events Conference (EMEC), which comes to Brighton, Sussex later this month. The first ‘live’ iteration since post-pandemic. He looks back at...

Nicola Shaw, head of growth at Tag Digital, has been in/around digital marketing for most of her career. In this episode, having detailed Tag’s mission - how it works exclusively with organisers around the world helping to grow their events - with host James Dickson putting the questions, Nicola looks at new model marketing. Across an energised, educational 40 minutes, they talk data blindness, cookies, AI, the astonishing breadth of data capture, touchpoints, audience extension, digital...

Creative director at IllumiNaughty offshoot Visual Architects, which he founded in 2013, Lefteris Angelidis knows the value in offering audiences original experiences.   To that end he has invested in new machinery, brought in more people and grown the company to what it is today, delivering projects for Kendal Calling and Boomtown Fair through to Cirque du Soleil and Puma in the process. In this episode, Manchester-based Lefteris Angelidis and host James Dickson discuss  how social media has...

Muhammed Younas founded vFairs in 2014 after 12 years in a variety of roles at Bayt.com, ‘the Middle East’s #1 job site’. A remote-first company, none of the now 250 plus employees at vFairs work in a specific office, they’re at home or a location close-by of their choosing. Quite sensibly, that model prioritises right people over right location, amplified by the way Younas talks “regions” in the shape of America and Europe rather than Boston, Massachusetts or Slough, Berkshire. And vFairs...

Meera Somji and Andrew Carney launched Clusivity a year – pretty much to the day – before this podcast was recorded, January 2022. A ‘new easy to implement SaaS tool’, the company is a product of the founders’ background and their want to make a difference. Clusivity mantra ‘take a data-driven approach to diversity, equity and inclusion’ is the essence of its new white paper - How diversity, equity and inclusion could radically transform the events industry - the subject of this...

Andrew Perrott is managing director of Chorus, a London-based brand experience agency with a worldwide client base. This episode sees Andrew discussing a recent project for luxury Diageo brand Johnnie Walker Blue Label in Singapore and the Chorus capacity for bringing theatrical elements into the immersive experience. He goes on to talk host James Dickson through the agency’s pandemic learnings, house term ‘radical creative’, living and dying by the idea, exploiting sound, provoking long-term...

Joining host James Dickson from the Hague, Jelmer van Ast, founder and CEO at event engagement platform producer Conference Compass, talks through his thoughts on the contemporary industry model, starting with the focus of the company’s January 2022 blog – flexibility and adaptability. A regular on the podcast, Jelmer van Ast goes on to discuss ‘back to normal’, the benefits of on demand, the subscription model, micro events, refining the hybrid handle, on demand, using event tech across the...

‘The world’s only communications cloud for events, public relations, and investor relations’, Notified, released its annual Benchmark Report in September. Customer data highlighting trends in the virtual events market, the document revealed an upsurge in attendance for webinars and virtual events alongside increased engagement before and after thanks to the hooks – the downloads, live chats et al. Host James Dickson jumps straight into this episode, analysing the report with Notified’s...

CEO John Martinez, a quantum physicist, founded Shocklogic in 1997. One of the earliest exponents of event technology as we know it today, Shocklogic was developing/providing platforms for virtual events far in advance of the pandemic shift in thinking/delivery.   Thick with life experiences, from interviewee and from interviewer/host James Dickson, this episode delivers a deep examination of the Shocklogic method and the Martinez management mindset.   John Martinez talks rethinking the...

Richard Belcher is director of streaming/production company First Sight Media, a key partner in delivering Event Tech Live (ETL) across its in-person, hybrid and virtual incarnations.   Richard starts this episode explaining what First Sight Media does at ETL, front of house and behind the scenes, going on to detail changing audience perspectives post-pandemic, the dividends from community building, pre-event marketing, FOMO, engagement, blended content, sustainability, and the value of...

James C Morris joined full-service event and experiential marketing agency Impact XM, where he is now VP client service, at the beginning of 2018 – bringing nearly 12 years of industry experience at Atlantic Exhibits with him. In this episode, Morris and host James Dickson look at the realities post-the UFI’s Global Recovery Insights 2021 report. Have things bounced back as predicted and what the driving factors are if so. Morris goes on to consider the parameters of ‘experiential’, how...

Chief strategy officer Stephen Pickett joined Live Group in March 2022, from equally self-explanatory Canadian business CleanRiver Recycling Solutions. In this episode Pickett explains what ‘quiet quitting’ is, the causes behind the concept, the impact on employers and, crucially, what they can do about it. Steered by host James Dickson, Pickett discusses motivating a team and the individuals within it. Keeping people engaged and how crucial that is in the events industry. He unwraps ‘how do...

Caroline McGuckian founder/CEO at Meshh, a company focused on the ‘metrics of movement’, and Jack Jacob, MD and founder of PNE (Partnership Network Events), join host James Dickson to take a look at the Metaverse.   On the premise that Metaverse is a work in progress, and everyone, everywhere, has a different perspective, this episode is part wish list, part comparison.   All three participants are resolute supporters of in-person events and hope this next iteration of the virtual world can,...