My latest guest is a little bit different. Different because she’s not currently “in” exhibitions as it were, but has certainly paid her dues working for a long time in them as most recently as Chief Marketing and Customer Officer at Ascential with time also spent at Informa and Reed Elsevier. 

I’d been following Annick’s journey for a while as she was launching this new platform and this was a key reason I wanted to talk to Annick on this episode. She references the site as a platform, not as an ecommerce transactional site and I think this is where we can learn a thing or two in the events industry. Annick has married up the retail experience with delivering curated content to an engaged community. 

As we in the events space are looking at how we extend our brands year round, I think everyone should listen to how Annick has achieved this community first model.

We also talk tech and what goes into making up the ultimate customer experience for people engaging with the Immaculate Vegan brand and the trials and tribulations of selecting the right tech  “there isn’t one thing out there that does everything you want it to do” to deliver the right experience.  

If you want to learn more head over to the Immaculate Vegan website here or social channels below. 

Website - https://immaculatevegan.com/ 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/immaculatevegan/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/immaculatevegan/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcrLhzIfD2TfX9fq7v_711g

Thank you to my season sponsor HotelMap. They have created the StaySafe campaign within Hotelmap to help present to customers a clear picture of the nearby hotels, within walking distance and with each hotels new staysafe procedures implemented to reduce the risks associated with coronavirus. Have a look at hotelmap.com/matt 

You can’t help but feel calm and relaxed when you’re chatting to John Martinez from Shocklogic. Such a delight to have as my guest on the Waves Connects Podcast. 

We talk about the company, where it all started, but also the mindfulness and help and support they offer to their team. I say team, it comes across as really this is one big family that supports each other to achieve not only their business objectives, but their life goals as well. 

The companies aim is to create an environment of harmony. Wellness isn’t a fashion. It’s an integral part of a successful business to prepare your team to work in the best environment, to deliver the best products, to deliver the best service. 

To download the ebook John mentions in our chat, click here

. You can also find lots of resources on the Shocklogic website here. 

John has over 30 years experience in the events industry as a PCO and technology specialist. He spent the first 14 years of his career as a PCO, before founding Shocklogic in 1997, where he now leads an international team to deliver event management technology. John has a PHD in Quantum Physics from MIT and has previously been named as one of the "Top 100 Movers & Shakers in Events" by Eventbrite. In 2020, he was also listed as one of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in the Event Industry", and the “Top 50 Virtual Meetings & Events Innovators” by Eventex.

Thank you to my season sponsor Hotelmap.com
Head over to www.hotelmap.com/matt to find out more about their Stay Safe campaign. 

Dr Baris Onay is Co-Founder and CEO at Precision Communities

Events have been growing uninterrupted for 15 years, acquiring and stitching together, and Baris has spent his time creating digital frameworks for businesses as well as commercial and marketing opportunities so brings with him a wealth of knowledge that we share in our conversation. 

Baris joined Tarsus in January 2020 for a new challenge to accelerate the growth of the business. His first board presentation was the second week of March, just as the “world was ending” which as you will all know, was an incredibly hard time for our industry. 

Fast forward a few months, Baris found himself in the middle of the sea on his paddle board and decided to go full speed into his own projects. 

Baris is building new ways to commercialise the offering for events (that serve communities) year-round with digital additives that are more frequent and scattered. For example, starting to look at seasons (quarters) to look at the buying cycles of your customers. When can you help facilitate meet ups, networking and business opportunities. 

Listen to the podcast and hear what Baris has been up to over the last 18 months including setting up an advisory company and consultancy and his new venture Precision Communities. 

For the return of Season Three of this podcast, brought to you by HotelMap, I have two guests joining me; Iain Pitt, Managing Director at Clarion Events and Duncan Reed from Reset Connect, a recent events industry start-up. 

Now this season I intended to set up and talk about businesses or people rising up through the ashes throughout the pandemic year, but after talking to these two, I wanted to share our conversation. 

We’re talking about opportunities in our industry and what we can do to better promote the amazing industry we’re all working in to ensure we retain and attract new talent as well as foster innovation within our sector.

Thank you to my episode sponsor, Konduko.
Konduko’s simple to use, contactless and digital event platform makes events better by putting the attendee’s experience first. You can find out more about them at Konduko.com

Thank you to awesome season sponsor HotelMap
I have a special treat for you - you can get access to the same resources that Informa are using to boost attendee confidence and audience sizes by signing up to the HotelMap StaySafe campaign via a special URL using my name. Go to HotelMap.com/matt

Thank you so much for joining me over the course of my second season of inspiring conversations with some awesome guests helping me and hopefully you to look at what’s next for events. 

Some people ask how you keep it going and keep finding people to be a part of the podcast. To be honest, I’ve loved every single conversation I’ve had but what really keeps me going is that I’m learning with every conversation I have. I figure, for as long as I’m learning I’ll keep this podcast going. 

This episode gives you a little review of each of the conversations shared this season as well as an introduction to what's next. 

My guests for Season Two
Parry Malm, CEO, Phrasee
Jasper Squier, MD, Intergalactic
Stephan Forseille, CTO, Easyfairs
Tim Manning, Executive Producer, Jack Morton Worldwide
Helen Harlow, co-founder, Benchmark Collective
Jo-anne Kelleway, CEO Infosalons part of the Freeman family and Stephanie Selesnick International Exhibition Consultant.
Andrew Hickinbotham from Human Built
Adam Barber, MD, Tamarindo Group
Dahlia el Gazzar, from Dahlia+
Sarbina Meyers, Hot Hospitality Exchange
Nolan O'Connor from NOC Events
Bogdan Maran, Twigged
Marco Giberti, CEO and Founder of Vesuvio Ventures

I'd love to hear your best bits from the season. Please head to www.wavesconnects.com/review and let me know. 

What's next? Listen in to find out more. 

Thank you for listening and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. 
Matt, Waves Connects Podcast

It’s pretty obvious there has been both positive and negative disruption to the events sector over the last twelve months, that’s why I was extremely excited to have Marco Giberti join me in conversation on the latest episode of the Waves Connects Podcast. 

For those that don’t know him, Marco is founder and CEO of Vesuvio Ventures, providing early stage entrepreneurs access to coaching, partnerships, advisory and capital. He has also recently release a book with co-author Denzil Rankin from AMR called Reinventing Live: the Always on Future of Events. 

We talk about a lot, but something I enjoyed hearing when listening back was about the realization that #eventtech is no longer a luxury, but a priority to the future of events 

We also talk about:

• How events are being thought about with “tech first” strategies in mind
• The skills gap, but also the skills opportunity in this sector – there’s lots of areas to refocus on
• Communities – it’s a hot topic so we talk about the opportunity for niche communities 
• For event tech companies, Marco shares some wise words to help you find your niche – what problem are you really trying to fix? Listen to find out more
• There’s lots of problems to fix around events – not a negative, but it means there is lots of opportunity to build technology for frustrated organizers to see if you can help them with a tech solution.
• Where to go for inspiration on what we could do next? Look outside of events – education tech, retail tech, sports tech, marketplaces…  

All in, it’s an exciting time for event technology and events with technology. With audiences in their billions all getting used to an “online life”, we are creating a new customer mindset that technology can and should be a benefit to their lives.  

We also touch on Marco’s new book with co-author Denzil - Reinventing Live – An always on future of events. 

Our events industry was successful for 100’s of years, but this book encourages readers to rethink their value proposition and skills for the future. How can we unlearn skills that are no longer valid, but learn skills that are valid for our communities of the future. 

Tech, strategy, innovation, new business models – it’s all covered in this great new book and hopefully enables you to spark new ideas for your events future.

You can buy the book here   – or read more on their website here https://reinventinglive.com/  
This episode is supported by Twigged.io - your global events wallet. 

The life of a start up. 

This week I’m introducing you to one of my new ventures, Twigged, your global events wallet. 

We are going to be podcasting about our progress of launching Twigged so that you can get to know the team, learn more about the product and about the trials and tribulations of launching a startup. 

I’ll return to the normal content of Waves Connects Podcast next week, but for now, I introduce you to some of the Twigged team. 

We aim for this series to be an honest and open account, warts and all, no holds barred, always accentuating the positive, but of course with the nature of launching a business, there'll be many ups and (hopefully not too many) downs! Please do join us on our journey of launching Twigged.

This episode is about how an idea was born and then forming a team to see the new idea through to fruition and we shed a little light about the problem or rather our common goal to making event experiences better. 

I hope you enjoy the episode and look forward to sharing more with you soon. 

Have a look at twigged.io and sign up to get notified of when the podcast is live and for further updates on the product. 

Thank you

Matt

This episode, we talk about a dry-cleaning business and we get down and dirty talking about reindeer poo…yes, this conversation has it all – but ultimately, it all comes down to understanding what makes people tick and in turn, creating memories for event participants. 

We dive into how to better understand your audience, but also your team so you know what makes them tick and in turn, drives them to better build your community. 
 
 But what about unlearning something? Covid has forced us to do something that we've never done before, but... we've seen some amazing innovations come to life not just from the technology providers but also the teams pulling it all together and presenting new ways to engage with their audience. 
 
 Challenge yourself to do it differently - yes, we also talk about how I dry myself off after a surf - but start unlearning to think about things differently. 
 
 People are passionate about this industry and committed to make it work as we recover. Why? They're constantly asking questions and trying to do something to make things better in this industry - so if you're still here - congratulations and what I take away from this episode is to continue learning and continue asking questions so we can better our future. 

Thanks Nolan for an awesome chat. 

I hope you enjoy the episode. 

We’re going on a digital trip. 

No, not some 90’s rave style trip, but one that takes people on a journey to a destination…

Yes, we’re talking destination marketing. It’s not something I’m used to talking about, but I met Sabrina a few weeks ago on a session myself, Dahlia el Gazaar and Adam Parry were “hosting” on the new kid on the block, Clubhouse. 

We were talking all things eventtech and marketing, but Sabrina mentioned something that caught my attention… Stavanger in Norway. I’d only been to Norway a few times and each of those times centered around my trip to Stavanger, so I was keen to speak to someone else who was working on a project of how to promote not only this awesome destination, but seeing how they did things differently. 

So no, it’s not just another zoom call, not just another walk through, not just another VIP box and definitely not another video on safari around the destination where you’d see better quality content if you tuned in to blue planet. 

We hear how Heidi Legein, The Mice Guru, pulled together a micro community that Sabrina was part of and how they delivered a digital trip to participants to experience Stavanger and all it has to offer through a digital experience. 

We cover;

-        how to find ways to intangibly market a destination

-        what a truly immersive virtual experience looks like 

-        what goes into creating such an experience

-        what does it cost – production quality is crucial 

-        being visible in your community 

Pulling from my recent episode with Dahlia, Sabrina reiterated that collaboration is key in building your microtribe and that when you work together towards a common goal you can create great experiences. Working together, you are stronger. 

Any event organizer or destination should listen to this episode to hear how this team pulled together to create an awesome digital experience. 

Community. It’s something that is on the tip of everyone’s tongues at the minute in the event space but also is something that has been being discussed for an eon in our industry. Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to focus on new connections, new revenues and new ways to engage with audiences in the digital landscape; communities is the word of the day. 

My guest, Dahlia el Gazaar from Dahlia+ has delivered over 60 digital events through 2020 and with an “OMG attitude” about all thing’s tech and audience engagement, I couldn’t find a more awesome person to have this conversation with. 

Although the term has been discussed for years, I wanted to narrow the focus a little more and explore more with Dahlia about the subject of micro communities and how we build them. 

In this episode, we cover:

• What are communities – Dahlia’s take on what makes authentic engagement
• Going back to basics – engaging with the people in your spaces – what’s happening in their world? 
• Micro-communities  – a community within your community within your community…whaaaat? Yes, we discuss that. 
• Listening – it’s the most commonly used word in all of my episodes – there’s a reason…
• How do we make money from these spaces? It’s an honest question – with lots of time going into implementing new strategies and technologies, how are we going to monetize them? 

We also talk a little bit about the right name for “events”? Is it the right name for our future? Dive in to listen. 

What do you think? Are communities the future or are we waiting for the return back to “normal”? 

Please share your thoughts either on Linkedin (Waves Connects Podcast) or Twitter #wavesconnect www.twitter.com/wavesconnects and let’s see what you think. 

In the episode, Dahlia mentioned a new book by Denzil Rankine and Marco Giberti called Reinventing Live - The Always-On Future of events. You can see and buy the book here https://amzn.to/3tcvlSW