Event Industry News Podcast

Chief operating officer Rachel Swann has been with global exhibitions company dmg Events for eight years. She is also vice chair of the AEO and, topically, on the board at Women in Exhibitions’ UK chapter. With a focus on the latter, this episode sees Rachel talk host James Dickson through her five-point career development plan. 1) Choosing the right career path and the potential in sideways steps...

Céline Laukemann, head of internationalisation at German-based ‘full-service registration solution’ ADITUS GmbH, and Elinor Honigstein, business development & international growth partnerships at LinkedIn, know the secret. In this episode, hosted James Dickson, they discuss LinkedIn’s interest in events, its Community Builder and the ADITUS role in that platform. They look at registration and...

Formerly head of events at Founders Forum Group, Jesse Peterkin took his background in high-end hospitality and international events to immersive specialist This is Beyond, where he’s head of operations, in September 2023.   Focused on engagement at in-person events, this episode sees Jesse talking to host James Dickson about the customer journey and fostering that ‘I belong’ feeling.   They discu...

Live and direct from Montreal, Canada, Jesse Gainer is VP growth and partnerships at C2 – a company spawned from equal measures of two impactful locals - ad agency Sid Lee and Cirque de Soleil. Best known for the shapeshifting C2 Montreal, ‘Canada’s leading creative business summit’ launched in response to the 2008 financial crisis, which has featured A-list speakers, Spike Lee, Martha Stewart, Ar...

With more than 12 years’ experience working in the events industry, primarily in tech, Rachel Heller is senior content program manager, events, at Github, the AI-powered developer platform.   Tellingly, Rachel wrote a blog for the Github site, ‘9 tips to go from attendee to speaker at a tech conference’ and that’s what this episode is all about.   Rachel talks about the journey; the call for sessi...

Former head of digital innovation at Reed Exhibitions, Ade Allenby launched his own advisory business in March 2023.   In this episode, Ade talks advances in event tech, the sector’s move from the fringes to the heartbeat of contemporary shows, tools that help people connect, and generating data to help organisers better understand their audience.   Prompted by host James Dickson, Ade goes on to d...

Caroline Cronin took her 16 plus years of industry experience to emap in 2021, as head of conferences then head of events.   In this episode, with a focus on the post-pandemic push for new order, Caroline details the spawn of enforced downtime, changing formulas for awards ceremonies and conferences, and how covid crushed historical data’s validity.   Talking to host James Dickson, Caroline goes o...

Ewelina Dunkley has years of experience in the live events world, working in hospitality, fine dining and private parties before joining Meta, (then Facebook, Inc) in 2016, where she’s events lead. This episode is about Hackathons, a term for a social coding event that brings computer programmers and other interested people together to improve upon, or build, new software. Ewelina talks host James...

Working at Emirates Old Trafford since 2013, Angela Hobson has been sales director at the home to Lancashire County Cricket club for more than three years. Talking to host James Dickson just after the third Ashes Test had decided the series, Australia retaining the urn, Angela does the detail about the venue’s massive redevelopment – a £45m programme over 15 years. She discusses the planning and d...

Thomas Serrano launched Exclamation Group in 2020. Driven by its ‘Events That Make A Point’ mantra the company is a ‘one-stop-shop for corporate and luxury events, cultural and sports partnerships’. And the New York/Miami-based business lists Bulgari, Audemars Piguet, Dom Perignon and Swarovski among recent clients. In this episode, the focus is on how music sews, or should sew, events together. T...

Launched in 2003, IMEX Frankfurt is the heartbeat of the global business events community. And that’s what it says on the show’s homepage. In this episode, IMEX design manager Anna Gyseman and Oli Bailey, interaction designer, detail the considerable process involved in giving a new look to the practised, proven event. In conversation with host James Dickson they discuss 18 months research – not l...

Raccoon Media Group, formerly Raccoon Events, launched in a garden shed and delivered the award-winning National Running Show, at Birmingham NEC, less than two years later. In this episode, CEO Mike Seaman talks host James Dickson through Raccoon’s growth, how it currently runs 10 shows, eight of them homegrown, two acquired. Mike discusses rebranding during Covid, delivering for the 500,000 peopl...

Since 2022, tellingly titled company TURF has been pitching exclusive NFTs and art prints of ‘any place on earth’.   Co-founder Garm Lucassen, who has a history in business infomatics, took his experience of blockchain and NFTs to co-found TURF, which is focused on cartographic/map-based art. Every piece in its global collection is available just once and TURF is working with First Event and Carda...

Having spent the latter part of his 10 years at Clarion Events as EVP of its energy portfolio, Duncan Reid founded Reset Connect, a sustainability show for business, investors and innovators, during lockdown. With so many people knocked out of their employment stride by the pandemic, Reid was able to put together a top team of co-founders and launch, in the shape of a week of webinars against the...

Award-winning creative agency EMC3 recently published a white paper, ‘Events as a force for good’, is focused on holistic sustainability in the industry. This episode features the company’s events strategist, Emily Maule, and Saskya Liney, EMC3’s head of sustainability. Host James Dickson does some background, not least finding out about From Now, the environmental services specialist Saskya co-fo...

With 10 years’ event industry experience in the locker, Ryan Curtis-Johnson is director of communications for Valuable 500, the largest CEO network after the United Nations.   With 15 global chief executives at its core, from the likes of the London Stock Exchange, Apple, the BBC, Sky, Sony and Microsoft, together with 485 equally important others, the Valuable 500 is working to end disability exc...

Andrew Morrow is founder/managing director of venues the Belgravia and the Block but he’s here to highlight a new venture, the Events Club. With 25-years’ experience in the industry, primarily venue side, Andrew noted how the teams coming in to put events together under those roofs didn’t have a place to go between jobs/shifts/times. After providing host James Dickson with a weight of background i...

Former Mobile Promotions and Star Live man Robin Carlisle launched RC Consultants in November 2021 to help young people with special needs find a foothold events-world. In this episode, Robin talks host James Dickson through volunteering as a governor at a new local SEN school and the impact that’s had. He discusses sustainability in some of its myriad shapes and the notion of accessibility at eve...

Since 2011, using content management systems including Drupal and Webflow, Touchdreams has been building websites for ‘e-commerce, product businesses, service businesses, agencies, accounting, law, anything you can think of’ from its offices in Cape Town and London. After giving host James Dickson some background on the company, this episode sees Touchdreams founder Dane Rossenrode talk about brin...

Rob Vass ran his own event agency, 30 staff delivering up to 30 roadshows a month, and spent far too much time with spreadsheets. “Keeping an eye on the budget and exactly what your margin was at any time was a nightmare”. And Founding event planning software Joi is a product of that frustration. Joining the podcast from Sydney, Australia, Rob Vass digs into Joi, a “productivity tool for events”,...

Five and half years with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the last six months as chief brand officer, Drew Holmgreen knows what’s expected from the association, in theory and in practice. Joining the podcast from Dallas, Texas, Holmgreen talks host James Dickson through MPI’s method behind its live events ahead of the European Meetings & Events Conference (EMEC), which comes to Brighton,...

Nicola Shaw, head of growth at Tag Digital, has been in/around digital marketing for most of her career. In this episode, having detailed Tag’s mission - how it works exclusively with organisers around the world helping to grow their events - with host James Dickson putting the questions, Nicola looks at new model marketing. Across an energised, educational 40 minutes, they talk data blindness, co...

Creative director at IllumiNaughty offshoot Visual Architects, which he founded in 2013, Lefteris Angelidis knows the value in offering audiences original experiences.   To that end he has invested in new machinery, brought in more people and grown the company to what it is today, delivering projects for Kendal Calling and Boomtown Fair through to Cirque du Soleil and Puma in the process. In this...

Muhammed Younas founded vFairs in 2014 after 12 years in a variety of roles at Bayt.com, ‘the Middle East’s #1 job site’. A remote-first company, none of the now 250 plus employees at vFairs work in a specific office, they’re at home or a location close-by of their choosing. Quite sensibly, that model prioritises right people over right location, amplified by the way Younas talks “regions” in the...

Meera Somji and Andrew Carney launched Clusivity a year – pretty much to the day – before this podcast was recorded, January 2022. A ‘new easy to implement SaaS tool’, the company is a product of the founders’ background and their want to make a difference. Clusivity mantra ‘take a data-driven approach to diversity, equity and inclusion’ is the essence of its new white paper - How diversity, equit...