The Australian Event Symposium drew on speakers from a variety of fields, reflecting the input of the various associations who were on board for the two days.
Those associations were International Special Events Society (ISES), Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), Exhibition & Event Association of Australia (EEAA), Sponsorship Australia, Professional Conference Organisers Association (PCO), Sustainable Event Alliance and Australian Centre for Event management (ACEM).
Here are a few titbits from some three of the keynote presenters.
Laura McCulloch spent 12 years as a branding manager before going into the family event hire business in Toronto. So she was able to target her message based on industry experience.
Great branding attaches a memorable idea to a product.
Build a brand that cuts through the clutter.
Don’t water down what makes you UN-common.
Laura McCulloch
Corbin Ball has addressed many conferences in Australia on technology and its uses and impacts in the meetings industry.
Social media is shifting focus from the event planners to the user / delegate.
Use Facebook and twitter for your events – get the # for your event out there and promote it. Then monitor social media to see what people are saying about your event.
Distribute a mobile app for your event.
Virtual and online meetings will not replace face to face – but will still play an important role.
Corbin showed an interesting slide from 2001 where he predicted that mobile phones would become a WIDGET (Wireless Internet Device for Geo-positioning, E-commerce and Telecommunications) the only one of his predictions that has not yet been included in today’s smart phones is the Multimedia projector.
Corbin's predictions from 2001
Australian born Jonathan Mills is Festival Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. Jonathan gave a wide ranging, off the cuff talk about festivals through history, worldwide and about Edinburgh.
The combined Edinburgh festivals sell over three million tickets. This is third behind the Olympics and the soccer World Cup and three times the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
Edinburgh has no Arts Centres; rather it is a Centre for the Arts.
Despite vast resources and infrastructure big festivals cannot be “created” rather they must evolve and take the local population and visitors along with it.
The original Olympics were a celebration of both sports and the arts and from 1912 to 1948 the modern Olympics had medals for arts.
Jonathan Mills
