2
3
1 Elon Musk draws a crowd. 2 The opening
ceremony at the Adelaide Convention Centre.
3 On the exhibition floor.
Rising to the occasion
Adelaide-based event company All
Occasions Group was tasked with
managing IAC 2017. Managing director
Anne-Marie Quinn shares her insights
on managing South Australia’s largest
conference to date.
The International Astronautical
Congress took nine years, two bids
and $200,000 to win a $20 million
piece of business.”
working with aerospace and defence
companies on systems technology, making
it a major player in shaping the future of
Australia’s new national space agency.
The conference has already secured some
promising legacies; Adelaide SPACE
start-up Fleet announced a partnership
with French space agency CNES to track
and support Fleet's first nanosatellites
once launched. Italy’s largest privately-
owned space company SITAEL signed a
letter of intent with local start-up Inovar
to jointly establish a multi-million dollar
company in South Australia dedicated to
the development and integration of nano-
micro and mini-satellite based innovative
satellites and space mission concepts.
This includes deployment and operation of
satellite ground station.
Former Space Shuttle commander Pamela
Melroy also announced she will migrate
to Adelaide to work with Nova Systems.
UniSA, the International Space University
and the SA Government have signed a
Memorandum of Intent for the specific
implementation of the yearly Southern
Hemisphere Space Studies Program. It
includes a study for the development
of short courses in the field of space
entrepreneurship and a study for the
creation of a joint Institute in Adelaide to
create a sustainable base for joint activities
in the space field.
“This conference has set the benchmark
for IAC events and Adelaide, Australia
should be justifiably proud of the legacies
it will leave,” says Brett Biddington, chief
executive of IAC 2017.
“It was very successful given some of
the challenges we had with increase
in registrations including last minute
ones. Our target was 3000 and our final
number 4472 people. It was even more
difficult as well over 2000 came in the
last four weeks before the conference.
We even had almost 300 registrations
onsite turning up during the five days
which is almost a conference in itself.
“This event took over the whole
convention centre, which had only
just launched the new East Building
two weeks prior, and they were very
cooperative. The convention centre went
exceptionally well because we had the
whole team involved. Government was
so heavily invested in this along with the
convention centre that nobody was going
to let anything go wrong!
“We had over 3000 people in the
auditorium for the opening ceremony,
but the security and ushers and the
way they moved people through was
seamless. We had over 200 volunteers
assisting and many of those were
retiring who just had a rea