Trends? Predictions? Or Just an honest conversation?  This is a bit of a longer episode than normal...

Trends? Predictions? Or Just an honest conversation? 

Every year for probably the last 10 years I’ve written some sort of trends blog or article about what I thought might happen over the year ahead. However accurate mine and others trends may have been, no-one predicted the year we’d have in 2020! 

I couldn’t think of two more awesome #eventprofs to have an open and honest conversation about the year ahead with, so I introduce you to Jo-Anne Kelleway, CEO of the Info Salons Group, part of the Freemans Family and Stephanie Selesnick, president of International Trade Information an international exhibition consultant and writer for our industry. 

You can find out a little more about my guests at www.wavesconnects.com/guests 

I first met both of these ladies at IAEE ExpoExpo New Orleans a decade ago and have enjoyed meeting each other face to face annually (and more often than that tbh!) at various events around the world. So, not getting my normal Jo and Steph fix in 2020, what better way to start 2021 with a pre-dawn podcast recording with them both. 

For me, it was 6am, pitch black outside and a balmy -3 degrees and I had a strong coffee on the brew. Jo joined us from outside of Sydney enjoying a nice glass of wine in the afternoon sun and Steph joined us from the city of Las Vegas where the blinking lights had resided to not light up her apartment for a brief moment 😉  

I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation and please do let us know your thoughts or feelings on anything discussed. You can tag us @wavesconnects on social media or hashtag #wavesconnects and we’ll pick it up. 

We covered a lot of topics, below is just some of them:

• Complacency – lets not be complacent and fall back into old models – the world is changing. Everyone is trying at the moment and people are trying new things – a time for evolution is now.
• Quality of the entire event ecosystem – content, connections and experiences
• Re-look at the entire event business model – all event stakeholders to get together to get out of this situation and build a future. How do we come out of this financially and that the money trickles out through the whole ecosystem. 
• Community – will we see real personal specialism in sectors, truly engaged in the markets and help to spearhead the change in the business model.
• Our future generation – our next gen of “kids” coming through, they’re not going to sit through a 30 minute lecture… how do we really engage them?  
• Bring back the fun! – It is SHOWbusiness after all. 
• Seamless tech connections and seamless experiences – “log in once” 

We also cover things like how having free WIFI is like having toilets. Yes, we talk about toilets on this episode. 

Goodbye see you next year signs - let's get rid of them.

In the session I mentioned the Discord platform – I got that wrong and mean to say Kahoot – it was 6am after all. 

Jo-Anne is the CEO for the Infosalons Group, part of the Freeman family. To find out more about Jo and what she’s up to please visit www.infosalonsgroup.com 

Stephanie is president of International Trade Information and you can find out more at www.internationaltradeinformation.com or connect with her on most social platforms @stephselesnick

We’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with what we discussed? Disagree? Tweet @wavesconnects and let us know. 

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