Event Industry News Podcast

Practical uses of technology at Bournemouth 7s Festival

On this week’s podcast, our host, James Dickson is joined by two guests from separate companies working collaboratively to organise Bournemouth 7s Festival. Craig Mathie, from Bournemouth 7s and Steve Jones, from FesTech, describe the practical uses of technology at events.

Launched in 2008, Bournemouth 7s is an annual sport and music festival that welcomes 30,000 guests and hosts five different sports – rugby, netball, dodgeball, hockey and volleyball. The 400 sports teams, combined with live music and camping, creates one of the biggest festivals of its kind in the UK.

Describing the journey of planning the event to the clean-up afterwards, Craig and Steve depict how they implement technology that ensures a smooth, safe and enjoyable experience for everyone involved, from the guests to the sports teams to the organisers themselves.

Introducing himself as the MD of the “technical side”, Steve explains that FesTech is brought on each year to run the design and implementation of the technology used at the event. From the health and safety aspect to the delivery of the actual event, technology is relied upon to ensure every facet of the event runs without glitches. This technology includes CCTV, till systems for the bars, contactless pay and visitor tracking.

“We take these practical uses of technology as ways to improve the event” Craig explains. Using the scoring system as an example of this, he describes how the festival evolved from using whiteboards to introducing an app that not only saves the scores from the games, but also allows for audience engagement and updates on the teams.

Craig also delves into the pros and cons of the festival being independently-owned, relating that they consciously try to use cost-effective solutions that are practical. Going further with this, Steve describes how he implements technology that is relevant: “If I don’t think something is going to work, I don’t use it, or I adapt it until it does.”

Podcast: CEO and co-founder of Tito, Paul Campbell describes the fickle relationship between integrity and success

Join us as we talk to Tito co-founder and CEO, Paul Campbell, and delve into what makes the company tick, the importance of maintaining its core values and why creating a community helps success.

Essentially, Tito is event ticketing software that was created to offer the best check-out experience for buying tickets online. Speaking from the head office in Dublin, Paul comments on how taxing buying tickets used to be: “Buying tickets felt more stressful than it [should have been] or you were landed with a tonne of forms to fill in before getting your ticket and I felt there should be a better way.” Initially starting out as a simple bit of code, Paul used his software background to create an app to connect PayPal to the Tito website.

Describing the evolution of Tito, Paul explains that he and his colleagues avoided the “start-up mania” that other companies fall into as they didn’t want to fall victim to ‘hyper-growth’: “focusing on growth at all costs to get investors’ money back can compromise one’s morals and values.”

Drawing more on the company’s values, Paul explains that they wanted to build a company of which they would want to be customers. “Avoid spammy email tactics, trickery and dark patterns” he advises. “[To maintain our values] we built a community. We put effort into getting to know our customers really well.”

Relating the nature of being a small company, Paul goes on to explain the pros and cons of building his company slowly and organically, drawing comparisons to larger companies. To keep our guest from being too modest, our host, James, makes reference to Tito’s accomplishments and questions Paul on the method behind these achievements: “We try to achieve growth without compromising on our values… we want people to use Tito and their jaws drop.”

Tito is a small company comprising nine people but has already got a number of accomplishments under its belt. Throughout the podcast, Paul stresses the importance of remaining true to your beliefs and not sacrificing your integrity for success.

ExecSpace CEO, Emma Little talks ‘Behind The Business’

Joining James on the Event Industry News podcast this week is Emma Little, CEO and founder of the free, venue-finding service, ExecSpace.

Delving into the early days of the company, Emma reveals the reasons behind the business, the struggles of “starting her own company from scratch” and how to maintain the momentum a decade down the line. 

In what can be described as a well-populated world of venue-finding, Emma describes how she entered the scene with no experience in the industry having come from a telephone sales background: “it’s about being humble and honest enough to admit what you do know and admit what you don’t”.

She reveals the main reason to set up a company was produced by essentially being a career-driven home-bird. Following other companies would likely have taken her away from Edinburgh, so, to combat the push to move to places such as London, she decided to take her career in her own hands and set up a company.

This, Emma agrees, is probably a backwards way of going about it: most people come up with an idea and go on to make a business out of it; she wanted to create a business so needed an idea to follow! 

She goes onto explain the difficulties surrounding the geographical implications faced by the company and how the customers “forced [her] hand” to expand to companies and venues further afield than Edinburgh. Now, Emma strives to make a global brand from a Scottish-based business.

The self-made CEO describes the process as “no mean feat” but since launching, she has developed a range of clients and created new jobs. She still has aspirations for the company and aims to meet each goal through hard work, technology and expansion.

Using technology to improve simple issues at outdoor events

On this week’s podcast, host James Dickson is joined by the founder of Volt, Frederik Jensen. Volt specialises in supplying charging and cloakroom solutions for outdoor events.

Having launched their product at Denmark’s legendary Roskilde music festival, Volt quickly developed a pedigree for supplying mobile charging solutions for festivalgoers. However, the company has expanded and developed some clever solutions to aid cloakroom operations. It may sound simple, but by utilising smartphones and some clever programming, the company aims to improve the audience experience thought reduced queues and a more efficient service.

Are events sending the right message when it comes to sustainability?

This week’s Event Industry News podcast looks at how events communicate their sustainability efforts to their customers. Joining host James Dickson to discuss the subject is Joss Ford, founder of communications agency Enviral.

There are very few events out there that don’t pay attention – even in a small way – to the matter of sustainability. Although the depth of their commitment may vary, there is a consensus that events have an obligation to ensure they operate in a greener manner.

Joss talks about how events can effectively communicate the strategies that they are deploying, as well as highlighting the work being done by other organisations to promote the subject within the industry.

Introducing Lionel, the robotic floor marker

This week the Event Industry News podcast looks at an innovation that could transform the way exhibition stand marking is conducted. Joining host James Dickson is CEO of August Robotics Alex Wyatt, who speaks about Lionel, the robot created to mark out floor space in event venues.

During the podcast Alex explains how Lionel works, the various types of marking that the robot can deploy, and the operational aspects of deploying the technology. He also answers questions relating to the accuracy of the marking, along with the way the robot can analyse and identify issues with floorplans prior to the commencement of marking.

INVNT CEO Scott Cullather reflects on a decade of growth

The Event Industry News Podcast once again goes trans-Atlantic for this week’s episode, as host James Dickson links up with CEO of INVNT, Scott Cullather.

Scott launched INVNT in 2008 with a clearly defined ambition to create a global agency that would deliver innovative and dynamic events for the world’s leading brands.

Ten years on – and having just opened the company’s Singapore office – Scott talks about that way he and his colleagues went about pitching to potential clients as a new agency. Having established an early reputation as creative thinkers who were prepared to take risks and explore new ideas, Scott also talks about how he retains that attitude whilst also balancing the business need for consistency of practice.

The Future of Event Technology from Cvent's perspective

The Event Industry News podcast returns with its first episode of 2019, and welcomes Cvent’s Brian Ludwig to the show.

 

Host James Dickson talks to Brian about his 18 year career with the company, looking back to when the now global tech brand was just a handful of young people with a desire to make a difference.

 

During the episode Brian also talks about the challenge of delivering solutions to territories that may have different social or cultural protocols, and the awareness that they need to have in order to provide a service that best fits any given location.

Data to help you to calculate return on marketing investment

Rob Murdoch, founder of Exposure Analytics, the market leader in experiential analytics for events and retail, joins us for his second podcast at the end of a fantastic 12 months for the company. Exposure Analytics work with brands and agencies to evaluate the success of activations, events and conferences. Their sophisticated technology delivers key insights into how visitors interact with event space including footfall analysis, heat maps, flow routes, and even facial expressions to determine the age bracket, gender and sentiment of visitors.

In Rob’s last appearance he explained more about how their technology works and how it is used to power experiences through insight in the event and exhibitions industries. You can listen to that podcast here: https://www.eventindustrynews.com/news/podcast-measuring-the-success-of-your-event

2018 was a bumper year for Exposure Analytics with highlights including 2 Event Technology Award wins, a successful event of their own at the Baftas HQ with a fine dining experience. They also hit a major company milestone helping clients to evaluate over 2000 events; 1000 of these were in 2018 alone. They now have a huge bank of data to help current and potential clients plan and evaluate their experiential activity.

In this latest podcast Rob shares more information about how to measure the success of your event, how their data - presented in a simple to understand and useful format - can be used alongside other performance data to calculate return on marketing investment.

If you’d like to find out more about the event Rob mentions, connect with him on LinkedIn.

Nick Gold from Speakers Corner on how to book the right speaker

Joining host James Dickson on this week’s Event Industry News podcast is Nick Gold, director of Speakers Corner.

For many years, the company has been a leading supplier of event hosts and speakers, with a vast portfolio of clients. The company’s roster includes celebrity names, but also a vast list of specialised speakers that can be booked for sector-specific events. 

However, during the podcast Nick explains why having a speaker that comes from the same background as the audience is not always the best option, and how some of his company’s most memorable bookings have come from the opposing scenario.