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Beyond Carbon: Measuring the True Value of Events · Event Industry News Podcast

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Hello everybody, welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast
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with me, James Dixon, wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening,
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whenever or wherever you tune into today's podcast from.
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And we often hear in the events industry about measurables
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and metrics and data and looking at how
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successful we've been by looking at figures and stats and all of that
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sort of stuff. And it's something that we've talked about on, you know, any number
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of occasions on this podcast with organizers, with tech providers,
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and it's kind of, I suppose, broadly speaking, what we're gonna be talking about today,
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but framed in a slightly different way if my sort
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of pre-recording conversation is anything to go by. I'm delighted to
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say that my guest today is Matt Gray. Matt is the founder of
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Event Decision, and we're gonna find out a little bit about
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Matt, about Event Decision first of all, before we get into the nitty-gritty of today's
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conversation. So Matt, first of all, a very warm welcome to the podcast. Nice to
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have you aboard. How are you? I'm very well, James. How are you? Not too
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bad at all, thank you. We're just beyond midday on a Monday morning
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at the back end of August. Um, I, you know,
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I'm, I'm, I always reference on the podcast that Mondays,
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it's, it's a hilarious day really that we record these because, you know,
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people are usually swamped with emails, busy, busy, busy. But,
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um, thanks for joining us first of all. You've just got off the back of
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a, of a sort of a 2-hour meeting yourself, so you're straight into
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this one here. Um, are you geared up for a good conversation today?
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Absolutely, ready when you are. And Mondays in August,
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it's always a funny time in events, isn't it? You know, most of our clients,
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customers, partners, and so forth, they're still on holiday.
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They are still on holiday, yeah. For some, it's the busiest time of year,
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for some it's the quietest time of year, depending on which end of the industry
2:14
that you're working in. And so, you know, one of my guests
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earlier on today on a recording, you know, is embedded in the festival
2:21
industry, so sort of rolled in at 4:30 this morning from a site that
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they've been working on. And of course, then you talk to people who are maybe
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more geared up towards the the sort of the trade show, the convention side of
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things, where of course, you know, nothing happens. You know, I walked
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past Excel a couple of weeks ago and it was the quietest that I'd,
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I'd really ever seen it. Um, you know, because who
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runs a trade show in, in August? No, but I would
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imagine those running, uh, Reading Festival, which starts in 2 days' time, will be,
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uh, putting a few hours in. Pretty,
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pretty snowed under. Um, Matt, for those of us joining today or
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listening to the podcast today who haven't come across Event Decision.
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It's a business that I am aware of. I've seen the name.
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I've seen you in the tech circles and the event circles before,
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but I think if I'm right, this is the first time that we've
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really had a chance to talk properly. So tell us a little bit about yourself
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first of all, and tell us more importantly what Event Decision is, why it was
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founded. Yeah, probably less about myself because I'm
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just an average event prof. I spent gosh,
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30 years now, circling the globe,
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delivering events for a variety of event management,
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production, creative agencies, always agency side,
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which, you know, it's allowed me a wonderful
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career, you know, staying in some of the
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really loveliest places venue-wise and destination-wise,
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delivering, you know, activations and launches and conferences and incentives and
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all those types of events, less so on the festival side, if I'm honest.
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Over 30 years, and, you know, there's a roof over my head and my
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children's heads and all those wonderful things that come with it.
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So yeah, 30 years of— I don't know, if you
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had to put something in brackets, you could put industry veteran. But yeah,
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you know, that all came to a shuddering halt almost
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5 years ago to the week, actually, and we needn't go into
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the whys and wherefores of 2020 and 2021 in the
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events sector. But out of that were born a
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great number of new companies,
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and I'd love to say, you know, amongst the great and the good there
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is Event Decision, because we have
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really humble beginnings. We started measuring the
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carbon footprints of events, right, which is something that's probably
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a little bit more in your awareness now than was 5 years ago, and it's
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the same for most event profs around the world.
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But we've morphed within those, you know, short few years,
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eventful few years, to be able to quantify things
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like responsibility and authenticity and integrity
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and credibility, which is a far
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grayer area and amorphous terms than just
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sustainability and just carbon measurement. Because it's
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been driven by clients that are looking for a responsible, authentic supply
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chain and how can agencies and suppliers actually
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start to put proof points in place and to demonstrate really
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great product or service delivery.
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So it's a bit different to most people sort of put us in a carbon
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bucket, go, oh, you do the carbon footprints, don't you? And the answer is
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yes, we do thousands of them, but And I'm sure
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you'll come to possibly some of the most value that is
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delivered across the sector comes from some
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of those other words of how credible is your proposition, how authentic are
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you in some of the promises that you make from RFP
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through delivery and so forth. Yeah, a very different company to
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that which perhaps most people expect to
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bump into. We're still sought out after the sustainability
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piece, but actually a whole
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lot more value sitting behind that.
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What I liked sort of off the bat, if I may say so, is the
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name Event Decision. There's an awful lot of organizations and companies
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that work in the event industry whose name doesn't give away any inkling or any
6:35
suggestion at all as to what they actually do. And actually, to create a
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business that's called Event Decision, what do you do? Well, we help event organizers make
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decisions. We give them the means, you know, and sort
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of the motivation, I guess, in some respects to actually make meaningful decisions on
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their, on their business. Um, and that, that's how I understand it.
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And the first thing I thought was, well, how great to actually have a company
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that's called itself, you know, something that actually relates to what they do.
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Yeah, well, thank you. Do you know, I've not thought about that before.
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It does give us the breadth to be able to bring in, you know,
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new, new service offerings. But actually, I know I always
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used to look at these companies, and I'll make some up here, but I don't
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know, like Orange Plum or Pink Shell
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or those sort of names that are cool and funky and don't really mean anything.
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But you're absolutely right. What we do is help event professionals
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make better decisions across
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the spectrum of the thousands and thousands of decisions
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that they make every single day. You know, whether it
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is focused broadly on kind of sustainability and responsibility, but then
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the authenticity and anything that ends in -ity.
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Various ones that, that we get involved in, and it's trying
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to quantify some things that are really, really hard to traditionally
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to measure. Well, when you talk about authenticity and,
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and credibility, there are 2 things that
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my own opinion, and it's purely based on just a gut instinct, is that the
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public today are far more savvy in identifying something that
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is not credible and not authentic, that they're better at sort of seeing through
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buzzwords and buzz phrases and things like that, which when we talk about the
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subjects of sustainability is a big danger for events because,
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you know, if you are doing things as a tick box exercise and a token
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gesture, I think that your audiences are far
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better tuned now to being able to see through that. Is that something that you've
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come across in your experience of the clients that you've worked with? All the time,
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you know, every single day, and through this
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conversation over the next 20 minutes or so, you know, we'll see that regulatory
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is almost always behind. In this respect,
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especially in sustainability, because the brand environment moves so
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quickly in the event sector, even quicker than that,
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some would say. So yeah, these wonderful words
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of authenticity and credibility and therefore a bit of integrity,
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and I challenge you to go and find— well, there's a few out there still—
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an agency in our sector or a
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consumer or a B2B brand that doesn't have some brand
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values somewhere attached on the website that use words like transparency
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and honesty and all those kind of words.
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And yet, and I needn't go into the
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best-known examples, you and everyone listening will
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be able to recall many off the top of their heads of brand events that
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don't necessarily reflect A, the brand,
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or B, the agency that is potentially pitching to that brand to go,
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hey, use us, we're a lovely bunch, here's a wonderful creative
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solution, sustainability at the top of our list of priorities?
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And if truth be told, we all know it's not. No,
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for the vast majority, that it is usually a line item
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near the bottom of the budget, and the agency
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can very happily go, the client was a bit worried about, you know, they didn't
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want to pay any money for this stuff, so we took it off the budget.
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Now, there's nothing inherent about, you know, you can do a lot of stuff
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with no budget to deliver a responsible and sustainable event,
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but what you can't do is measure it and therefore prove how
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well you are delivering this event, let alone
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compare it to your peer group or by region or by event type, or be
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able to actually show the social value that you generate as part of your
10:29
event just by doing what you already do, or be able
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to say, hey, we align with 12 of the 17 United Nations SDGs and all
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that type of stuff. That will cost a couple of quid, and sometimes literally
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only a couple of dollars. Or euros or pounds.
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But that's the kind of space that we're trying to move into and
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rather successfully thus far is to be able to say, actually,
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how authentic is your pitch? Are you going to deliver what
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you say you do in terms of carbon mitigation or social value yield or
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those values that you hold dear to your heart?
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Yeah, the obvious thing to ask there and maybe other
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people are screaming it out as they're listening to this though, is that if they
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get you involved and you actually come to them and say, right, here's how we
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measure it and here's how we actually look at what you're doing here, even in
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this small— is the worry that actually they might have had no impact at
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all or even actually gone in the opposite direction?
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Well, I mean, it's actually quite hard to deliver an event with no carbon
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impact, which is what everyone's trying to squash down, rightly so.
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But it's also quite hard to deliver any event.
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And I emphasize the any because we've worked on events from global
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big sporting tournaments down to 50 people in
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a field for a day and everything in between.
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Guaranteed every single one of those events has what we call
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a social value yield. Yeah. London,
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let's go back to the famous one that you and I were probably around for
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just about In your case, London 2012. Look at the
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end of London now. Look at the legacy and look at the social value that
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that has created. Absolutely easy,
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right? And London went some way to even quantifying that.
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Paris, a bit less so, but still plenty of value added there.
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And we're just starting to talk to LA 2028. So there's
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a great deal there. Absolutely every single
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conference, launch, activation, festival, you name it,
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will generate a social value yield because it's people that
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deliver the event. Somebody scans you in a room,
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somebody checks your tickets, somebody hands you that cup of tea,
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somebody's behind the screens pressing buttons making it all work seamlessly and
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look really funky, somebody is cleaning your bedroom.
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All those, you know, sit within the social value yield
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of an event. Now we're not talking about going off and painting a changing room
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here or cleaning up a garden or doing a beach clean,
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right? Those are all great, valid,
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wonderful social— well, we have a name for them, don't we?
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CSR, corporate social responsibility.
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One can argue whether it's the corporate's actual responsibility to do that or they choose
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to do it. That's one thing and that sits over here
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almost like a team build word or a gala dinner. It's a bolt-on to the
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event. The social value yield of an event is
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the proportion of the budget that goes towards
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delivering value to the infrastructure of the event. Somebody's laying that
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carpet, somebody's going up and hanging that rigging, someone's doing the health and
13:38
safety audit, somebody is
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really experienced and is transferring their skills to an apprentice
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or a junior or an associate or something. That's skills transference.
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Yeah. Counts towards it. There's so many,
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there's so much data that is sitting there within
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an event and you're already capturing it by the way, because it's there in your
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event schedules and programs and those or whatever you call them that
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no one's surfacing. Yeah. And no one's shouting about.
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And I went to the Business of Events run a policy forum every year
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in London. And the MP who was the head of the all-party
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parliamentary thing for events was there, lovely chap, and he said,
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right, you guys at events, you shout about the £68 billion
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that UK Events in November last year identified as the value of
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the events sector. I mean, that's a big number, James, isn't it? Huge number,
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huge number. Yeah, right. The government sat there and said,
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everyone's got a big number, every sector has
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got a big number and has got people lobbying them for
14:46
more support, whether it's tax regime or employment or whatever.
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$68 billion is a big number alongside all of those numbers. It's great.
14:58
You and I work in the sector that is paid to tell stories,
15:01
and we never tell our own story. So now we could start to
15:05
say, and this is what we deliver for some of our customers,
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94% of our people were paid at or above the living wage.
15:12
X% of people delivered that or delivered Y, and we delivered, and we think,
15:16
probably in the region of £12 billion worth of
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social value yield from events in the UK. Nobody's ever measured
15:25
it, and this report doesn't even mention the word.
15:30
I said on a recent edition of the podcast, we were talking about
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training and development and bringing, you know, new blood into the industry and how we
15:38
go about doing that, that fundamentally the UK events industry is—
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I said that it's a a multi-billion dollar industry built
15:47
on people who've accidentally fallen into it. And I'm Exhibit
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A. I, I, I've worked now as a freelancer for 16 years
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at all levels of the conference events industry, trade show,
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uh, and I, I used to sell advertising
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for a magazine publisher before that. You know, I had a
16:06
background in live music, but my career was in advertising
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and selling, and I left that job
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because I was useless at it after 5 years and found myself accidentally freelancing.
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16 years later, have built a career working in the events
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industry. And, and my, my opinion, to throw it into
16:24
the hat for what it's worth, is that until we actually
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get people coming into the industry because it's been a long-term ambition
16:31
of theirs from being 12, 13, 14 years old to work in there, and giving
16:34
them the appropriate training and background on the industry to do that, we're trying
16:38
to reshape the thought processes of people who've kind of learned on
16:42
the job, like me, for the most part. I'm not saying
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that that's exclusive, but this is probably one of the reasons why
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we're so poor at measuring and shouting about some of the things that we go
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on about, because we never meant to be here in the first place.
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Absolutely. And, you know, I fell into it, as do
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many people. When I first started doing events, there weren't event management degrees,
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and we can have the debate of the value of them another day. I'm sure
17:07
they've been incredibly useful to many and there
17:11
wasn't the power of events and there's doing school programs and all those things.
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So we're getting there, but where Event Decision sits is really at the
17:18
end of that chain. All the infrastructure and the ecosystem
17:22
around an event, as you'll know and all listeners will know, venue,
17:26
agency, production, technical, creative, catering, da da da da
17:30
da. How big that puzzle, jigsaw puzzle is dependent
17:34
on the size and scope. Of the event. But every single event has
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a common outcome, and that is the event itself. And that is the bit that
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we measure. It's not an accreditation of part
17:46
of that supply chain. Oh, you know, we've got this accreditation
17:50
or that accreditation. Great. What does that mean for your output?
17:53
Most other industries measure their product.
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Yep. Trustpilot makes a good living in doing that.
18:01
If you've noticed, Uber based the entire proposition on,
18:05
do you want this driver with 5 stars? That's their product,
18:08
his product, that person's product. He could be the agency or the venue
18:11
or whatever. He can sit there and go, my product has 5 stars.
18:16
And yet so few people in the event sector measure
18:20
their product in terms of sustainability, responsibility,
18:23
credibility, etc. There are some very clever, intelligent people
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working away on the ROI in terms of sales attribution for those big conferences,
18:31
for those big brands. Quite what the ROI is on a festival.
18:35
How do you measure that excitement and happiness? You know,
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we're doing this 3 days before Reading and my children are going and they're gonna
18:42
have a wonderful time, I'm sure. But in terms of the
18:46
E and the S, which I'll say again,
18:49
events are absolutely tailor-made to deliver, and then the
18:53
kind of boring but super important G— insurance,
18:56
risk assessments, health and safety, etc. Nobody's measuring
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that end piece. What is it that the client, whether they're
19:04
a festival owner or a corporate or a brand or an association,
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how good is that product they get from building up all that supply chain?
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And that's the bit that people are just beginning
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to realize there is enormous value in
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quantifying and benchmarking the event.
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How do you actually do that? How do you go in and do that?
19:28
How does it manifest itself if you go in and you want to do that?
19:31
What are the tools that you're using to help sort of create these,
19:35
not outcomes, but you know, the reports, the metrics, the data in order to lead
19:39
ultimately to decisions being made? So 2 main ways, James.
19:43
The first one is fairly well known as we talked at the beginning, carbon.
19:47
So you can measure the carbon footprint and you can slice and dice that data
19:51
and say, You know, our largest chunk was travel too, always the way.
19:55
And you can have some learns from that for the next time.
20:00
The vast majority of our customers and our partners tend to do that
20:04
post-event. Yeah. So they're learning the lessons, but in retrospect,
20:09
and they take those learnings, should that person stay with the organization, should the
20:13
event not evolve and change format, location, destination too
20:17
much. And so you're learning with a drag,
20:21
if you like, and that's great. And it's called
20:25
carbon accountancy in the real world. It's not
20:28
the main reason that most people enter events, that most of
20:32
us fall into events, as you just said, because they want to
20:36
go and measure the carbon of it. It is, of course, an important
20:41
global building block and way to compare and measure activity.
20:44
So that's one way in which we can start
20:48
to measure that. From Event Decision, it's called Track and it's delivered as a
20:52
service, so there's no accountancy for you, we just deliver you the
20:56
output. The second and the rapidly
20:59
growing way we do that is what we would
21:03
call an impact review, which looks at the E and the S and the G
21:07
of your event, and it looks at how many factors across E,
21:10
S, and G you are actioning and taking
21:14
account of and trying to improve on each
21:17
and every event, and that then starts to put data points in.
21:21
So it's not always, you know, some very large events within
21:25
the Impact Review tool, within the database, with very large
21:29
carbon footprints. Nobody— does it have
21:32
to be those though? Can it be smaller events? It can be large, medium,
21:36
small, left, right, up, down. It really doesn't matter what type of event.
21:40
Any type of event. And in fact, it's carried out by agencies,
21:43
by brands, by corporates, and also supply side, so technical
21:48
and production and audiovisual, but also by venues.
21:51
Because as I said, all we're looking at is the event.
21:56
How good is the event, or how good is your slice of the event?
22:00
Now, I often have to hand one of these, which you may recognize.
22:04
Ah, they're Trivial Pursuits. Yeah, trivials, you know, that's an event
22:08
if you measure it all with all the constituent parts— travel, accommodation, food and beverage,
22:12
technical, etc., etc. You can run an impact review
22:17
if your view is this whole thing, or you
22:21
can run an impact review if it's just the yellow slice or just
22:25
the pink slice. That's fine because the factors that we ask
22:29
you about, the things that you are or are not carrying out, are exactly the
22:34
same. It doesn't matter. So you can start to then build up
22:37
a database to go, okay, of all the constituent parts, this event
22:41
is— and we'd normally put people in quartiles— but it's this good,
22:46
or this good, or this good. It doesn't matter.
22:50
And you compare, of course, when you're benchmarking. You can say, hey,
22:54
our event is this good compared to global event performance.
22:58
Or only events in the US, or only events in EMEA or APAC,
23:02
or only for tech clients, or only for manufacturing clients,
23:05
or event type, only conferences, activations, exhibitions,
23:09
and so forth. So there is behind something
23:13
called an Impact Review a really exciting database of
23:18
how many event planners and deliverers are delivering up
23:22
to 30 different factors across their events in E, S,
23:26
and G. Some of them are very large events with very
23:30
large carbon footprints. Doesn't necessarily score them
23:34
badly because what we're looking at is, are they trying—
23:37
are they recording it or measuring it, and are they trying to mitigate it?
23:42
And you and I both know if you're going to fly to Vegas
23:46
for a gig, you're going to have an associated high carbon footprint. And if you've
23:49
got 10,000 people flying to San Francisco or
23:53
Vegas from EMEA, it's going to have a very high carbon footprint.
23:56
The best thing to do is how do we mitigate that best and
24:00
not go offsetting? So that's how impact reviews work and
24:03
they're really simple to carry out. In fact,
24:07
it probably only takes you, James, 7 minutes to complete
24:11
a full review and you will get so much value. And I
24:15
think You're about to ask me about the value
24:20
walks out the door. I was
24:23
actually, if I may, I was going to ask you more about smaller
24:28
events, something that I've referenced regularly on podcasts, and I'll tell
24:32
you why and what my train of thought is, is that when I speak to
24:36
people like yourselves and organisations and we use phrases like
24:40
agencies and reports and, you know, analytics and everything,
24:44
there's a kind of an— there is a whole strand
24:49
of the events industry that I think gets almost sort of forgotten and
24:53
disregarded in many respects, and that's these, the small events
24:56
that form the bread and butter of the events industry up and down the UK
25:00
every day. And the examples that I'm going to give you is stuff that I'm—
25:04
and I consider myself lucky enough to work on. I'm a one-man band. I get
25:08
to work as a freelancer in bigger teams for bigger events, but The day-to-day
25:13
jobs that I do tend to be me on my own helping a small organization
25:17
organize a small conference in a hotel or a venue somewhere around
25:22
the country, maybe 50 to 100 people. I turn up on
25:26
my own, I help them do their registration, I help them do their AV,
25:28
their technical and everything, but they tend to be small events run by companies
25:32
who often don't consider themselves to be event organizers. They're organizations that
25:36
are running a little conference 3, 4 times a year for the people that they
25:40
represent or the audience that they serve. And there
25:44
are so— they disregard themselves sometimes because they think, well, it's— I'm just— I'm not
25:48
really part of the bigger industry because I'm just running 2 or 3 small events
25:51
for 60 or 70 people, you know, 3 times a year.
25:54
But there are hundreds and hundreds of similar events of those types taking
25:57
place that if we were able to measure those ones more
26:01
effectively, we would actually have a much better data set across the
26:06
entire events industry rather than reports and analytics being
26:09
generated by big events with the, dare I say it, the budget to actually go
26:13
and generate reports like that. And that's the point I wanted to make. I wanted
26:17
to sort of understand where you sit sometimes with these smaller organizations.
26:20
How aware are they that organizations like yours exist to
26:24
help them and that they are part of that bigger industry?
26:27
It's a really good question. And of course everyone chases the big brand names and
26:31
the big sexy events, right? Because that's how you deliver well-known
26:36
events. But actually, there's absolutely no reason, and a good majority— and on the back
26:40
of your question, I'm going to go and look up after this call— the
26:45
average number of delegates at an event decision reported,
26:48
don't be frightened by the word analytics or report.
26:52
You know, there's just as much value in 50 people for a
26:56
day or a day and a half in a hotel in northeast England and just
27:01
as much, I will argue until I'm blue in the face, that you can deliver,
27:05
there's just as much value you can do in looking at the environmental aspects of
27:09
that event as well as the social value. It doesn't
27:12
matter, you may have a few more levers as the events
27:17
get larger, the numbers will almost certainly get larger,
27:23
and here's one thing to think about, definitely in the carbon side, the more people,
27:26
because travel the largest factor, but also in the social.
27:30
Don't forget, we're continually trying to depress carbon.
27:33
We continually should be trying to
27:37
push up the social value yield of an event. So it
27:41
really doesn't matter the size of your event.
27:45
We measured an event in Manchester last week
27:48
for 28 people. There you go. Delivered a
27:52
quantified social value just with those 28 people turning
27:56
up. Thank you, Treehouse Manchester, turning up at an event for a breakfast
28:00
meeting for 2.5 hours. It wasn't huge, but you're
28:04
never going to get huge output from 28 people in a room for 2.5 hours.
28:07
But there was one, and that is, you know,
28:11
they were able to say, we've generated this much social value, this is how we've
28:14
done it. And actually, in going through the review process,
28:18
as I said, which is really quick and easy, we've identified
28:22
ways to improve our event performance
28:25
next time. Yeah, absolutely. Can I ask,
28:29
is there still a— not confusion, but is there still a
28:33
misalignment between a term like carbon impact and sustainability
28:38
in the events industry, where people think that you use the
28:41
term sustainability and they mis-reference that as carbon impact? Or yes, we need
28:45
recyclable coffee cups that are made of tree bark, you know.
28:49
It will— yes, have terminology helped
28:55
us or hindered us when it comes to phrases like carbon impact and sustainability?
29:01
I think yes is the answer. Terms are used interchangeably.
29:05
If you draw a Venn diagram of all the terms, it's a right mishmash,
29:09
if I'm honest. Carbon reporting fairly
29:13
says what it does on the tin. You've got corporate social
29:16
responsibility, you've got social value yield, you've got all these different— you've
29:20
got event legacy, you've got local economic benefit, you've got all these things.
29:24
It's really hard to— there is no, and probably never
29:28
will be, a hard and fast, this is
29:32
the right term and this is the wrong term. The ones we use,
29:35
sustainability is slightly catch-all, but generally
29:38
the event sector takes it as carbon.
29:42
I like the word, and we like the word responsibility,
29:46
because it automatically broadens you out into what are some of the social benefits
29:50
that we can add to this. Those are real positive things, but with
29:54
that comes a governance piece as well. Of course there does.
29:57
And funnily enough, it's the technical side that has been leading this
30:01
because they're the ones that hang heavy things from ceilings and play with power
30:06
and things that explode on occasions deliberately— fireworks
30:10
and whatnot— but hopefully not accidentally. So they've had a whole
30:14
raft of regulations which those boys and girls we'll make sure that they
30:18
abide by. But, you know, to be able to look at E
30:21
and S and G, and we've noticed this term
30:25
come up more and more recently, whether we've had anything
30:29
to do with it or not, is we are part of a responsible supply chain.
30:32
We deliver our product responsibly. Yes,
30:35
there is a carbon impact, but— and it doesn't counterbalance it—
30:39
there's also a huge social impact, and we take part
30:44
of the governance, which you could put— call boring but important,
30:48
yeah, of H&S and RAMMS and insurance and
30:52
cancellation and all those exciting things. So actually, the word responsibility
30:57
allows you to say we do what we do and we do it
31:02
well. Hence, back to like your Uber
31:06
driver rating or your Checkatrade rating. It's It's
31:09
what is the product and how good is it, and that's something our sector
31:13
has been missing for, you know, as long as I've been in it.
31:16
I'm pleased that you referenced the sort of the technical aspect of the industry and
31:20
the drives that they've made, because I think about if
31:24
you look specifically at outdoor audio at a big event
31:28
and how that has developed in the last 25, 30 years,
31:32
the developments of the systems that they now use to deliver
31:36
live sound at a big concert, an outdoor event, and there are
31:40
any number of examples that we could probably give of events
31:44
that 30 years ago or 20 years ago couldn't have taken place because
31:49
they couldn't have been able to control the sound in the way that they can
31:52
nowadays. So that there's tram lines, for example,
31:55
in Sheffield— I'll pull that out as an example because I was there a few
31:58
weeks ago— that takes place in Hillsborough Park that is surrounded by residential.
32:03
You know, it's literally at the top end of Hillsborough Park is Hillsborough High Street
32:06
in Sheffield. You know, a busy, you know, commercial shopping area.
32:11
And an event like that couldn't take place unless they had the technology available
32:16
in order to satisfy local residents, to be able to control the sound in a
32:20
way that they can. And that's all become from people continuing to develop new
32:23
ways and new ideas and new products and looking
32:27
at their responsibility. And that's just an example
32:31
of how we continue to drive events, but events that couldn't
32:34
take place without those developments having been made. So we're seeing improvements in sound
32:40
across events, but it's not just in trying to ring-fence the sound and keep
32:43
it within the specified areas. Those of us who live close to
32:47
Boomtown can attest, and it's not necessarily a bad thing,
32:50
but, you know, the sound within an event is continually
32:55
improving. And to be able to deliver these large events
32:59
where actually, you know, you're not getting echo and reverb and all those horrible things
33:02
near the back end, and I'm probably using the wrong terms, and I'm sorry,
33:05
noise boys and noise girls, but to be able to run the
33:09
delay and all those wonderful things with your arrays that you hang from all over
33:13
the places to deliver an absolutely pitch-perfect
33:17
sound wherever you are in the audience is
33:20
incredible. So if we're not about improving the
33:25
sound, the lighting,
33:27
the visual stuff around the screens and the LED and all those amazing
33:32
things that the technical people do, you know, it's probably
33:35
one of the fastest moving parts of the sector, isn't it? There's always new tools
33:38
and gadgets, but actually how they bring it all together,
33:42
and I would wager that the average visitor,
33:45
guest, attendee, festivalgoer, concertgoer won't
33:50
notice the difference but will absolutely appreciate what they
33:55
are seeing and hearing and receiving in return for their ticket money.
33:59
All we're doing is saying, hey, rest of the sector, like,
34:03
are we improving the end product?
34:06
So there was some noise made— not literal noise, there was
34:10
some column written, I think, about whether it
34:15
was this year or last year's London Fireworks going, it's so overmanaged, parts of it.
34:18
Now we get the health and safety and all that stuff, Yeah, but someone wrote
34:22
a story about how they were put into this small space where there was nowhere
34:26
to get food or drink or sit down and were kept within
34:30
that sector, that little section on the embankment, for a
34:34
fairly long period of time. And it was all very understandable in
34:38
terms of health and safety and knowing where people are and having all their data
34:41
to hand on the things that the iPads that people are carrying around, but the
34:45
experience was not great. Yeah, so what are
34:49
we doing to improve how well we deliver our product as an
34:53
event sector environmentally, socially, and in governance terms
34:57
overall? And that's where Events Vision sits in terms
35:01
of how good is your product. We can benchmark you.
35:04
How many SDGs do you actually align with? What is the social
35:08
value yield of your event in pounds, in euros,
35:11
or in It doesn't matter what type of event. It can be 10,000
35:15
people, it can be 50 people, it can be
35:18
in western Texas, in southern France, or in Singapore.
35:22
It doesn't matter. It's an event. The building blocks are the same,
35:26
and therefore we can benchmark you and show
35:29
you if you're not where you want to be, how to get there.
35:33
It's really simple. Absolutely.
35:36
Event organizers and people who worked in the industry obviously lost huge
35:41
amounts of business 6 years ago and 5, 6 years ago. Would it—
35:44
would event decision exist had it not been for the pandemic?
35:48
And would we be having conversations around sustainability
35:52
and carbon impact had we not had the pandemic and it forced organizers
35:56
when they did have the opportunity to come back to actually look at budgets and
36:00
go, oh crap, you know, we're gonna have to really, really just monitor things
36:04
a little bit more closely? Was it a bit too much of a cavalier attitude
36:08
prior to the pandemic? I think probably not. I think
36:12
we were all consumed so with delivery, you know, events are all
36:15
special, unique, and bespoke, and different, and creative, and deliver ROI, and that's
36:19
great. But actually, at global or even national level, they're like
36:23
oranges flying off the shelf of a supermarket, you know, there are
36:26
tens of thousands every single day. We were so
36:30
busy delivering, delivering, delivering, and delivering, trying to deliver more
36:34
creative solutions, that perhaps I will never say COVID was a
36:38
good thing, but it certainly gave the event sector a huge number of headaches,
36:42
literally and figuratively, I guess. But also gave
36:45
some people within the sector the chance to sit back
36:49
and go, oh, can we do this better? And how will we reapproach
36:53
the market post-COVID? So I would never go as far as
36:56
saying it was a good thing because clearly it wasn't by
37:01
some margin, but actually some people had some time for
37:05
thought, and the speed with which conversations around sustainability came to the forefront
37:10
may have been something to do with lack of delivery pressure
37:14
during those years. Absolutely, no, no,
37:18
I would agree wholeheartedly with that. Not a good thing, but led
37:22
to a lot of good things arguably because of the ability
37:26
and the luxury that it gave, which you don't often have in an industry like
37:30
the events industry, of time. Of being able to actually take
37:34
a step back for a bit and go, okay, we can't do what
37:37
we usually do, what can we do? What are the things that we would like
37:41
to do that we never get a chance to do? And I think that it
37:46
was a pathway that was opened up that was unexpected but arguably much needed
37:50
and has brought us to a better point as a result of it. I can't
37:54
agree more, and it's up to now us and other companies like Event Decision to
37:58
maintain that momentum and ensure that people follow through with
38:02
the promises that they make on the outside of the tin with
38:07
the content within the tin, if you like.
38:10
It's not always the case, and you and I and most listeners will know that
38:14
it is not always the case, and it never will be, but we
38:18
can certainly start to push people to say the end product
38:22
is getting better, and better and better. And that's really
38:25
why— would Events Vision exist because of it? I don't know is the
38:29
honest answer. Who knows? We can't rewind the clock and find out.
38:32
The point is that we are— you are here and we are here indeed.
38:37
So yeah, and what a fun and exciting— and we're vastly different
38:41
to where we were 5 years ago. You know, we started— I remember measuring the
38:44
first carbon footprint for the first event we measured, and the invoice is still
38:47
on the wall over there. And yet, you know,
38:51
within those 5 years, we're now over 200 event
38:54
organizations, whether they're supply-side, agency,
38:58
corporate brand. We've got destinations using these tools now
39:01
to prove how well they can deliver their product when their
39:05
guests arrive. We've got agencies using it to win business.
39:09
As you say, you turn up at the pitch, hi, we're a lovely bunch,
39:12
here's our solution, it's obviously within budget, and here's
39:17
how well our solution benchmarks against industry
39:20
data. We've got enough data now. We're not a Google
39:25
data lake, we're more of a puddle, I would say. But there are north
39:28
of 10,000 event data points now within the tool that say it
39:32
can show you where your event sits in ESG compared to
39:36
other events. We will never publish your data,
39:41
it's your data. Yeah, but if it comes out well,
39:44
should you shout about it? Absolutely you should. My word,
39:49
and that's back to our sector, just doesn't shout about
39:52
the positive news stories and the positive social
39:57
stuff that we are already delivering. Last year,
40:01
I will wager our sector in the UK alone developed $12 billion—
40:05
billion dollars in the UK? What am I talking about? Billion pounds
40:10
of social value just by doing what we all— what you
40:14
do what the technical guys do, what the agencies, the logisticians,
40:18
food and beverage people, catering companies I
40:21
think they're called, what would you do? And no one's counting it.
40:25
So why are we not doing that? Because you can.
40:29
Yeah, absolutely you can. And if you want to find out more about that,
40:33
I think, Matt, Event Decision is your website, isn't it?
40:36
eventdecision.com? eventdecision.com. There we go. So if you want
40:41
to find out more about what Matt and the team there are doing, eventdecision.com.
40:43
And I dare say find you on LinkedIn, the socials, all of that sort
40:48
of stuff. If people inevitably get to the end of today's podcast and go,
40:51
why didn't you ask that question? If they want to get in touch with you,
40:55
all the socials and LinkedIn, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it's all there,
40:58
ventdecision.com, and then I'm Matt Gray.
41:01
I'm trying to be all over LinkedIn, so do me
41:05
a favor and find me there. Fabulous. It's been great speaking to you today,
41:08
Matt. Really interesting conversation and one that it can lead
41:12
in so many different directions. Is the beauty about this, this sort of conversation.
41:15
You know, you can focus on specific areas. It's quite a broad conversation that
41:19
we've had today, so if you do have something more specific that as an organizer,
41:23
as we've discussed today, big or small, as an agency, if you want to find
41:27
out a little bit more about what Matt and the team there are doing and
41:29
you've got specific stuff that you want to ask, use those, those methods that we've
41:33
just shouted out to get in touch with them, because it's a really, really important
41:36
part of the industry regardless of the size of event that you're organizing. That you
41:40
look at this in a bit more detail and take it beyond the kind of,
41:44
you know, overarching conversation that Matt and I have had
41:47
today. But yeah, it's been a real pleasure to talk to
41:51
you today, Matt. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you, James.
41:54
Just a couple of things for Event Industry News before we wrap up today's podcast
41:58
finally. As always, if you are watching today's podcast on the Event
42:02
Industry News website, thank you very much for doing so. Please do make sure that
42:06
you take a few moments to look at the news features, special supplements that are
42:09
all available on the website. Of course, course, along with this supplier
42:12
directory. If you work in the events industry and you are looking for a product,
42:16
service, or supplier, the chances are that you will find it in the comprehensive
42:20
supplier directory that's available on this very website.
42:24
You may have started your journey today by listening to us on your audio
42:28
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42:32
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42:41
episodes, and do take a few moments when you finish listening to us to
42:45
head over to eventindustrynews.com and check out all of those things
42:49
that I have just mentioned. My thanks again to my
42:52
guest today, Matt Gray from Event Decision. My name is James Dixon. We'll see you
42:55
all on the next edition of the Event Industry News Podcast.