Keep the faith
With his first return to in-person events Edward Poland , cofounder of Hire Space tells EN deputy editor Emily Wallin that he never lost faith in the industry .
Pictures by London Filmed
More than 450 event professionals took part in EventLAB on November 24 across in-person , online on Arena and LinkedIn Live .
Co-founder Edward Poland says that while he is delighted to see the return of live events , Hire Space ’ s ability to adapt was crucial to their survival .
He says : “ Virtual has done great things for the event sector , but now we ’ re like super event professionals .
“ So many great things have come through the technology we have learned . But the core thing , the essence , is live experience . That ’ s why we are doing EventLAB again . We knew it would be a challenging time for so many reasons , resourcing issues , there ’ s Covid-19 , there ’ s colds there ’ s flu , transport . But we thought it was really important to come out and lead by example . Do an event and create good content about the live experience .
“ We ’ ve come out and shown it ’ s possible . That ’ s testing the resourcefulness of the events industry .
EventLab at Central Westminster Hall
“ You will never replicate that magic of the live experience .”
We ’ ve shown everyone it ’ s possible to organise events safely , within the law and give everyone a great experience .”
Hire Space became a source of information and advice for other organisers and venues when the pandemic hit . By guiding others through troublesome times , they have kept their business in the public eye ready for a strong return .
“ Because we work with 6,000 venues
pretty closely and corporate event planners on the other side , within a couple of weeks of Covid-19 happening we were being inundated with emails from venues and clients asking ‘ what do we do ?’ finding it hard to work out what was legal ,” says Poland .
Hirespace ’ s safer events whitepaper became a blueprint for the industry and was downloaded 2,000 times in the first few days after being released and is still followed by thousands of events businesses .
“ Keeping our name out there helped Hire Space keep going ,” says Poland .
“ Everyone started asking us which virtual events platforms to use so we started advising our clients on the virtual events market which was growing so quickly , exploding . That led to building our own virtual events platform to help organisers tie the virtual and in person bit together .
Poland is hopeful their hard work will pay off long term – but said there were some dark moments when he questioned his judgement .
“ I think its natural you question ‘ are you doing the right thing ?’ Very often it was the right thing one week and the wrong thing the next . The way the industry came together you could really get a sense of how people were feeling and gave us the confidence to lead from the front .” EN
February — 29