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Cover Story
B
to be back in the cabinet room
or walking the halls of the Palace
of Westminster? Surely, they
can’t wait to have face-to-face
meetings with each other and
with journalists once more.
I submit a theory for your
approval: I don’t think the
government, or journalists for
that matter, realise that their
lives are a series of events. From
cabinet meetings and sessions
in parliament to press briefings
and secret liaisons at the back
of car parks; these are all
events.
An ‘event’, they think, is
Wimbledon or Glastonbury. They
are indeed events, but so is The
Business of Events forum, the
venue showcase I went to at the
QEII Centre last year, a Micebook
roundtable for agency CEOs, the
Ideal Home Show, the World
Economic Forum, the EN
Awards, the press launch for a
new car, a soiree in a wine bar to
say thank you to partners, and
the hiring of a meeting room
somewhere for me to conduct
an interview for my magazine.
Prime Minister’s Questions is an
event. They range from the big to
the small, from 100,000 people
to two people.
An event is the facilitation
of a real-life experience: it
matters. We have been knocking
on the door of Number 10 in an
effort to get a modicum of
recognition of this importance
for a while.
www.conference-news.co.uk
I wonder, though, have we got
it the wrong way around? Rather
than trying to explain what the
events industry is to
government, should we be
campaigning to raise awareness
in the national media? Some
corners of the press have a
taste for it.
Exhibit A: you may have seen
that ExCeL, or specifically its
owners Abu Dhabi National
Exhibition Company (ADNEC),
was accused by a national paper