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From School Drama to Global Events: How Accidental Careers Shape the Industry · Event Industry News Podcast

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The Event Industry News Podcast is sponsored by Prezent Communications.
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Hello everybody, welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with me,
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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
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from. And as I'm recording a few back to back today, um, I always
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reference the day that we're recording. Um, it is a Monday,
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it is the Monday, uh, after Spain have won the World
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Cup. So I, I, I've already said it on one of the recordings
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today, but, but I've I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, shy away
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from anything. I'm very happy that Spain won the World Cup last night, and,
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uh, congratulations and continued congratulations to
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any of our Spanish event pals, um, on, uh, on your
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side lifting the trophy last night. It was great to watch. So on
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with today's episode and back to the important business of events, um, and back to
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the important business of catching up with one of our podcast regulars,
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Kieran Garlick. Kieran is of course from Present Communications.
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Sponsors of the Event Industry News podcast, and joins me today
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from, um, I'm gonna say sunnier climes, but it's pretty good in the
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UK still after this spell of good weather. But Kieran's joining us
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today from, uh, from Dubai. So thanks for taking a bit of time out of
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what is not a work trip. I think you're actually, um, enjoying a bit of
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downtime, Kieran. Yeah, I mean, this is a holiday officially, although if I'm honest,
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it is now half past 3 in the afternoon and
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I haven't moved away from my laptop yet. Um, so,
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you know, holiday. But you're right, it is pretty
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hot over here. I think we're— I think they're hoping to hit 43,
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um, this week, which it's just— I mean,
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look, I got Irish skin.
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Um, you know, my, my hair, I come out here and it's kind of brown.
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I go back, it'll be ginger. You know, I'll be, I'll be freckly,
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and, and hopefully I won't be too burnt. But I've been staying inside,
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and it's very well air-conditioned over here, so, um No,
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no, beautiful place, but you know, at 43 degrees, it's not
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like you can even nip out and, uh, hop in the pool at 2 o'clock
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in the afternoon, can you? You've gotta— I haven't actually found the pool yet either,
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so I've been here for 2 days. Well, somebody who said to
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me once, when you run your own business, uh, or you work for yourself,
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you're never really working, but you're never really off either. You kind of float
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in a constant state of flux between, between the two. But no,
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we appreciate you, uh, taking the time to catch up, and, you know,
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We've, we've, we've tried to set one up a couple of times and,
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and we've had to wait for you to be on holiday for actually to,
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uh, to be able to fix— pin you down.
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I hadn't appreciated that. That is so true. I'm sorry, I have canceled a few.
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But yeah, again, that, that's, that's a good thing.
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It means, it means you're busy, busy, busy. So, um, yeah, we were—
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when Kieran comes on the podcast, for those who've listened before, um, we tend to
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not really have, you know, a fixed agenda as such. We have a little conversation
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off air beforehand and think, you know, what could we about today? Are there any
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pain points or any talking points? And,
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you know, I was chuffed to find out that Kieran actually listens
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to this podcast as well as appears on it and
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is aware of some of the stuff that we've been talking about recently. On the
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subject of training, we welcomed Rick Stainton to a recent episode of
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the podcast to talk from The Power of Events, a name that a lot
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of our podcast listeners will know from the industry, and talking about um,
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this new kind of work experience project. And I've not got the notes from that
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recording in front of me, but, you know, effectively they've been working with
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industry in the events industry to, to, to develop these experience
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places. And they've been going out into schools and talking
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to young people, you know, between the ages of kind of 11, 12 and up
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to sort of 15, 16, sort of GCSE age, about the events industry,
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about roles that are available, about things that might
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possibly interest young people of that age who may not even
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be aware that an events industry exists and what jobs may be
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in there. And that got me and Kieran to sort of talking off air about
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training and about development into the industry. And I'll sort
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of throw it over to you now, Kieran. One thing that I said is that
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I'm yet to meet anybody that I can recall,
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you know, really clearly who's ever said to me that their ambition
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in life from the age of 12 or 13 was to work in the events
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industry. We still have this multi-billion dollar industry that
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is fundamentally built off people who have accidentally fallen into
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it? I remember when I
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was at school, so, and for people who have listened to me on this
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podcast or anywhere else before, I'm probably going to rehash the story
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of how I got into events, so I apologize for that. Um, but, um,
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but actually I'm gonna— I'll add this other little bit of information which I don't
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think I've ever told anybody before. But I was— so I just joined my secondary
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school. I was very fortunate to go to a very good secondary school, a grammar
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school, but, but, um, and they had a drama department, but they
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didn't do theatre as a subject. So there was no theatre studies
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or no technical theatre or nothing like that. Um, you could, you could do
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drama and you could learn how to act, but that's— I don't do that.
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That's not me. Um, anyway, so I would have been 12
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years old or something, um, and it was lunchtime,
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and a friend of mine at the time I said
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to him, what are you doing? And he said, I'm just going to the drama
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department. Apparently, like, you know, you can get involved and
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like help hang lights up or something. He was like, I'm not really sure,
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but I'm gonna go there. I was like, I'll come with you.
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And so that's how I got into events, essentially. So I went to the theatre
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and I ended up hanging lights and doing the sound and doing all the technical
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stuff. And like I said, there was no technical theatre at my school. It wasn't
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taught, so there was no teacher involved. There would— I was just very,
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very lucky that there were a couple of older boys in the school who
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really knew what they were doing, and they learned from older
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boys before them, or what. I don't know how it worked, but there were a
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couple of older boys and they taught me how to hang a light and how
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to, you know, whatever. Um, and then
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that was it. And then we, you know, we went from doing that at our
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school. Like I said, I went to a very good school and we had 60
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60 plays a year is what we tried
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to do, and we would do all of that. Me and 3 or 4 of
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us would light and do the sound and whatever. I went to very few lessons
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at my school,
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and I was very fortunate that my
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teachers turned a blind eye to that because, like I said, it wasn't an official
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thing I was doing. I just didn't go to my lessons, but it
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was not like I was out, you know, playing truant. They knew I was in
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the theatre, you know. And so then we started doing
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the other local schools, and then so that's how I got into it. So it's
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all completely by accident. So to your point, there was no kind of formal training,
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there was no formal route. I didn't sign up anywhere.
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And the reason that I'm in events is because one day I was walking
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past the theatre and thought that would be cool.
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But had I not, you know, like, I don't know how other people would have
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done that. There were only a very few of us at my school who had
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that opportunity or whatever.
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Yeah, I don't know what the formal
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route in would be for something like that. I mean,
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again, that's, you know,
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until somebody comes along and kind of says to you, all right,
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you like that? Well, did you know that you could do this, this, this,
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this, and this? Yeah, and I remember,
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I mean, I'm of an age where, you know, the internet was
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just in its infancy and you used to have to sort of load up,
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you know, discs, CD-ROMs with
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encyclopedias. Did you get the free CDs through your door with FreeServe?
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Was it FreeServe from Dixon's? Yeah, and I remember going on to this
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program. So, so, I mean, for context, you know, I did my GCSEs
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in '96. I stayed at secondary school till '98 to do A-levels,
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so I turned 18 in 1998. So do the maths from there, everybody.
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Um, and I remember sitting with a careers
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officer who came into the school who sat at this,
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you know, PC with a CD-ROM,
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and we literally like did this checkbox thing on this computer. And the
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idea was is that you entered all the answers to
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all these questions and it would spit out jobs that were ideal for you.
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And I, I can't for the life of me what this remember what this
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computer spat out, but it was nothing like,
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uh, you know what, I don't think any of it inspired me. Um,
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and, and my— it's interesting listening to you tell that story because
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my story is, is bizarrely familiar, um, and similar.
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You know, I picked up an electric guitar when I was 15.
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My nature was that I wanted to find out how that worked,
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how the amplifier worked, you know,
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basically open up anything, take a screwdriver to the back of anything, or if
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I could unscrew it, open it up, look inside it to figure out how it
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was working, that's exactly what I would do. From there I learned
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how a microphone was plugged in, how that gets amplified through a mixing desk,
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how to operate that, all purely by just seeing something
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in the corner of a room. And ended up doing something similar at
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school where I'd end up, you know, on a mixing desk and pushing buttons
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on MiniDisc players to activate music for, for school
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shows. I, I, I know. And at no
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point did I ever think that that
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would be a career or there would be an opportunity. Yeah. Now fast forward to
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the age of 45, 46 next month, and, you know, last week
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I'm sat behind 2 iPads, 2 laptops with a
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Vision Mixer, and one of the iPads is controlling remote controlling
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a mixing desk and I'm running sound and, and up doing tech ops at
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an awards event. And the day before that I was at a conference. And it's
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bizarrely similar, sort of 30 years on from that, that I'm now earning a living
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doing that. But nobody had said to me that that was possible when I was
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15, 16. And bringing it back to how I opened sort of today's chat
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about, about training and development, you know, I, I would just
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reflect on that recent conversation with Rick Satan and, and say that it's brilliant to
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see what they're doing with their organization. Yeah. And getting into schools to
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get these messages in at an early, an early stage. Have you,
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as an organization, have you interacted at all with academic
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institutions? Have you had approaches from people saying, yeah, how do we get involved with
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the industry? I mean, we're a small company, so it's difficult,
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and we've looked at apprenticeships and things like that, but it, but it's tough.
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What we do do, uh, and we've done for a number of years, is like
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work experience placements and stuff like that. Um, you know, we've done
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them with local colleges and schools, we've done them with, um,
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corporates like Global, for example. Um, so we've
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done lots of that kind of work experience, and some of that's quite long-term,
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you know. People like Global are putting, you know, doing like these, these placements for
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like 2 months. Um, wow. Um, so, so, so yeah,
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so we've done something like that. I guess a lot of the challenges that,
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um, and again, I don't know, I'm sure there's people listening and they
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can, they can probably inform me where I've gone wrong here, but To
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your point, people don't really think of events, or in my case technical events,
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as a career. And so when you're talking to organizations
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about apprenticeships, you know, like we
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do a lot of live streaming on TikTok and stuff like that, so they go,
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oh, so you're a media company? No, we're not, we're not
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a media company. So it's really difficult to get that match and to find
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young people who are studying or who are specifically
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interested in events, you know,
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we— it's much easier, for example, you know, we sell—
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we do technology for live events. They go, oh, sound, you know, we've got sound
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engineers. Well, yeah, sound engineers is great, but that's like one bit, do you
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know what I mean? Like, so it's very difficult to get that matched up right.
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So that's the challenge that we've had.
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Yeah, and I don't know what the answer is to that.
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Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure somebody will email in hopefully and tell me where
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I should be looking. Well, more, definitely more communication
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at an early age, I think, you know, if— and the same could be said
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for any industry. So it's important, you know, that we sort of, you know,
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stress— obviously you can't just have people going into every school talking
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about the events industry, you know, because, because every industry will want their
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sort of slice of the pie to an extent. But, you know, even if we
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fast forward and you look at the pharmaceutical industry or the— or law,
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for example, you know, industries with very good connections
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to academic institutions who are very much got their fingers
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on the pulse of the best students and who's doing really well on certain courses.
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You know, the amount of people that get recruited straight out of university in
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certain industries is significant because they've got long-standing relationships
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with academic institutions, and that's how they've historically
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recruited into their industries. Um, they'll find the people at the
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top of their class So there's another organization,
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are we allowed to do shoutouts? Yeah, of course.
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So a good friend of mine, Joe Chilvers, he runs the training department and
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I was at lunch, I think he's been on your podcast as well. Absolutely,
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yeah. So they run the training department now off the back of the production department
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and I was having lunch with him and a number of his other kind
13:55
of suppliers the other day and a lot of them were production
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experts and I say production insofar as, you know, they were CAD
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designers or creative types of some kind or
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set builders, and certainly very
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different to what we do, but I was surprised, especially in the kind of creative
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and design businesses, they were very involved
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with higher education institutions,
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whatever they were. A lot of them had links, so I was surprised.
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I don't know whether it was that little niche, 'Cause it's not something,
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you have White Light again, like White Light are well known for their
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kind of apprenticeships and whatnot. So there are companies out there doing it.
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But yeah, I think it's just about raising awareness and also the other
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challenge is that there's so many different niches, right? There's so many different, people will
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say to me when I tell them, you know, we do AV for events,
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they go, oh, you do music? No, not really.
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You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, you do, I don't know, awards dinners.
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Kind of, you know. So there's so much
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different, you know, so many different kind of niches, I suppose.
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And the other thing is— sorry, go on. No, no, you made me laugh because
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my— I've got 2 boys who are 23 and 20 now.
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I've worked for myself now for 16 years, and when somebody says, oh, what does
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your dad do? They always, they always laugh because they said, we don't— we can't
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really explain it. Yeah, those say the same thing. Oh, he does
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events. Oh, he's a sound engineer. He can do that,
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but he doesn't. What does he do? Lights and video. Well, yeah, that. What does
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he— does he plan them and run them? Yeah, he does bits of that.
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You know, what else? And, and nobody could— and again, maybe that, maybe that's a
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problem, you know, maybe because it can be so difficult to, maybe to,
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to, to give a job description or to identify until somebody starts in
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the industry or finds themselves accidentally doing a role. Maybe they don't find
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it. Maybe do we need to clearer define roles in the industry? I don't know.
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Or define them less, you know. I don't know, maybe, maybe,
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yeah, maybe like when we talk about being a sound engineer, people are like,
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well, I don't want to be a sound engineer, you know. So maybe, I don't
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know, I don't know what the answer is. But go on.
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Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, you know, there's also, you know,
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it's a very technical role, I guess, what the way
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that I came through, if you like. And so for
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me, it's not just about learning,
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it's not just about knowing about the industry and the jobs, there's also where are
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the opportunities to actually learn, you know, how to do this stuff.
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You know, I can go to a school and learn about theatre,
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I suppose. There are probably apprenticeships I
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can do in broadcast, but I'm not
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sure again, maybe someone's going to email and tell me I'm wrong here, but I'm
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not sure where the actual kind of technical education opportunities
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are for the events industry. It's all very well saying we need to get people
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aware of what's going on in events, and then what do they do, you know?
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And then where do they go and learn about how to be a sound engineer?
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I mean, again, I can go and shadow somebody at a live music venue,
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you know, and I can pay £100 a night and they can teach me how
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to mix a band, But that's not really what we're talking
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about, you know. Um, so I don't know what the next steps
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are as well. There's a whole ecosystem, you know. Yeah. And I mean,
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if, you know, looking outside of sort of the technical production element, you know,
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the actual organization and the planning, you know, you take— yeah,
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you take your average trade show now, the amount of tech platforms
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that, that are in use, you know. Yeah. People, people who've
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got a historic or, you know, a, a youth background
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in coding or gaming, you know, anything that's
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IT heavy, if we can use— if that, if that's a way of describing it,
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you know, it strikes me as somebody who'd be brilliant to work on,
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you know, coordinating the tech stacks that are prevalent in every
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sort of big event now, whether that be the registration platform, the event app,
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you know, the ticketing, the badging, and making it all work together,
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making it all work together that, you know, the, the young people today are so
18:06
technically savvy that they might not even realize that,
18:09
that, or they probably don't realize that actually some of their interests and their tech
18:12
savviness could be really, really useful to big event organizers now.
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They could probably learn some of these tech platforms in half the time of people
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who are having to adapt and learn who, because they've done it in a
18:24
more traditional way. It's funny, isn't it? Like in, so in, in the
18:28
technical world, you know, the if you're a sound engineer or
18:32
you're a PowerPoint operator or you're a lighting engineer or whatever, becoming IT literate
18:37
has become critical over the last 10 years. You know, a sound
18:41
engineer or a lighting engineer 20 years ago did
18:45
not have to know, well, how to run anything digital, let alone how to build
18:48
a network. You know, now you have to know how to build the network.
18:51
And I suppose maybe, yeah, you're right, that's coming in for production
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as well. You have to know how to plumb all these things together. Maybe the
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next thing is, you know, taking, you know, your marketing executives
19:03
or whatever have to know how to— I was reading this thing the other day,
19:06
sorry jumping around, but a lot of these platforms now obviously integrating AI.
19:11
Yeah. So it's how do you manage, you know, that?
19:14
How do you pull data out of your platform when actually you've
19:18
got 6 platforms? And maybe that's the next
19:23
thing in events industry. But again, going back to our original point, who's training for
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that? You know. Yeah, well, if you look at corresponding industries, this occurred
19:30
to me recently, is that, um, yeah, you know, if you'd have looked at,
19:32
uh, in football, you know, speaking of football, the World
19:35
Cup has just finished. So football,
19:38
25, 30 years ago, and you just said,
19:42
right, we're going to recruit somebody to work under Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest
19:46
who's going to do data analytics and statistical analytics of players.
19:51
The old school thinking would have been, what an absolute load of nonsense,
19:55
we don't need data, computers involved in football. And now,
19:59
yeah, could you even contemplate anybody even remotely connected with
20:03
football of a decent level? And I'm talking sort of in the UK, right down
20:08
to sort of 5th, 6th tier, you know, non-league football. Even those sort
20:11
of top, you know, upper-level non-league clubs, they'll have somebody
20:15
who's got a laptop and an iPad with them who's monitoring players,
20:19
who's looking at data. You know, and they're all probably wearing armbands as
20:24
well, tracking their heart rate, all wearing trackers. So, you know, when you— that film,
20:28
what was that film? Is it Moneybags or something? Is that what it was?
20:30
Oh, Moneyball. Moneyball. Baseball. Yeah, yeah. Looking at all of that, and,
20:34
and I just think, you know, in the events industry, you know, we've, we've slowly
20:37
but surely stepped forward now. And, you know, people are worried about AI taking roles
20:42
away, but I, I think there's a completely counterargument to that that says,
20:46
well, it could be creating brand new roles. It could be creating roles for people
20:49
that we didn't even know we needed. And we don't get left behind, you know.
20:52
Yeah, yeah, there's no evidence that,
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you know, people, people are complaining to AI in the same way that they complained
20:59
about the Industrial Revolution, you know. And, you know,
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everyone thought machines were going to take away jobs and cars were going to take
21:05
away jobs. And, you know, it won't. You're right, there'll be new roles. Um,
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the challenge is just who's gonna, who's gonna step up and take them. It'll be
21:13
a redistribution. Maybe we're gonna find different people. I think part of the challenge is
21:16
that As you'll know, the events industry is a very relational,
21:21
very personal industry, you know.
21:25
We don't sell ourselves on social media.
21:28
I mean, I do quite a lot of social media, but that's not— people don't
21:31
look at it and go, oh, he looks like a really good event manager,
21:34
or whatever. It doesn't work like that. People need to see you and meet you,
21:37
and they need to shake your hands and look in your eyes. And the events
21:40
industry has always been like that, I think. And the amount of times I've
21:43
lost work because the event, the client
21:47
knew somebody else, you know, and it's not because they're better or it's not because
21:51
they're cheaper, it's because I knew them, I met them, I trusted them.
21:55
And so I think that's the fear with AI,
21:58
right, is how does that fit into a world? And that's
22:03
why part of me thinks that actually AI isn't going to take over in the
22:06
events industry. I was reading a really interesting thing the other day I
22:10
can't remember the name of the author, but he was an AI expert and he
22:13
was basically saying the thing that people have underestimated is what he called
22:17
the human friction, is that people don't want it to take over.
22:21
So I think the events industry will always be very personal,
22:25
but that said, that doesn't mean AI and other tools don't have
22:29
a place. And whoever gets on board with that and knows them
22:33
and learns them and accepts that, that's who's gonna, you know, be winning in the
22:38
next few years or whatever. Well,
22:42
absolutely. And, and, um, I, I'm using it— oh,
22:46
I'm not gonna say on a day-to-day level yet, but particularly in
22:50
the last 2 months, I think I've used it more than I've ever
22:53
done before. But just for really for mundane tasks,
22:57
um, you know, proofreading award scripts,
23:01
um, yeah, you know I, I was doing— how
23:05
does that work? I've got to ask the question. If you— I mean, presumably you
23:08
proofread them yourself anyway, but I mean, that'll do a lot of the hard work,
23:11
the AI. Well, yeah, you know, you know the old
23:14
classic wood for the trees and all that stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally—
23:19
I, I, I, I, I uploaded, uh, the awards presentation
23:22
deck and I uploaded the script and I uploaded the
23:26
list that I've been sent by the client of the shortlisted finalists and the other
23:30
list that I'd been sent of the, of the winners of each category.
23:33
Yeah, yeah. And I took all 4 of those documents and I banged them into
23:36
an AI platform and I said, analyze all of these and tell
23:40
me if anything doesn't quite correspond, you know, even down to things
23:44
like, you know, is it spelled right?
23:48
Yeah, you know, it, it, so a lot of companies use lowercase letters instead
23:52
of uppercase. Yeah, you know, just as a cross-reference. And did it pick up those
23:55
things? Yeah, it picked up 3 things. It picked
23:58
up a company name. A lot of tech companies, um,
24:02
have got like sort of, you know, they might have a .com in their
24:05
company name or whatever it may be. And, um, and it picked up
24:09
on some, some inconsistencies, not with spelling
24:12
but with formatting. It's formatted like this in the script, it's not formatted
24:16
like this on slide 3 of the deck, and they've won
24:20
an award and it's formatted differently as well. How would you like it to be?
24:23
You know, does it need to be consistent? And I did. I made some,
24:26
made some subtle changes to it, you know. Um, I, I,
24:30
I've used it, like I said, for, for mundane things.
24:33
Um, and it's been, it's been bizarrely,
24:37
um, brilliant. You know, I was doing a gig last— I did a gig 2
24:41
weekends ago. It was a hen party.
24:45
And, uh, I was dropped, I was dropped in
24:49
last minute. I was parachuted in last minute to play bass. Now I'm
24:53
a guitar player, I play a bit of bass. It was something called Rocky
24:56
Oki, right? Yeah, I know it. Yeah, yeah. So you play and they
25:00
sing? Yeah, they sing. Amazing. There's 200 songs on our list.
25:04
I was parachuted in with 5 days to go and
25:08
thought, crap, I ain't got time to learn 200 songs again,
25:12
brush up on 200. So I put the Rocky Oki song
25:16
sheet into AI said it's a hen party,
25:20
here's the rough ages, the sort of demographic. Could you analyze anything
25:23
on this list that you think could crop up at
25:27
a hen party? Give me the sort of the top 20 that you
25:31
think might be requested. It was frighteningly accurate,
25:34
really, because what we then did is we send the list to the client
25:38
and we say, look, before we arrive on Saturday evening, send us
25:42
your list of requests. We need 20 requests to fill 90 minutes of music.
25:48
And 60% of what AI told me would likely crop up eventually
25:53
landed on their request list. Amazing. It was, it was, it was,
25:57
it was weird. And, and it meant then that in the 5 days
26:01
I sort of brushed up on a handful of stuff rather than 200 songs.
26:04
And then when the list arrived, I could boil it down a bit more.
26:07
Honestly, it, it's, it is kind of event related because it's live music
26:10
related, but yeah, it's just an example of using the tool to sort of analyze
26:13
and say, look, Give me a fighting chance here.
26:16
Yeah, what do you think this could do? And, and I, and I see that
26:20
being used. I, I, you know, having done that, I could see myself doing that
26:25
in events, you know, for other stuff. Um, you know,
26:28
putting just bits of information in there. And we talk about data analytics,
26:31
you know, and, and, you know, just having somebody competent. You don't even need to
26:35
be a data analyst or a coder or anything like that. If you've got somebody
26:38
who's savvy enough and knows how to work these tools that's
26:42
creating potentially valuable, a valuable job role in an organization.
26:47
You and I both, you know, run small businesses. I mean, there's an element of
26:50
small business stuff that can be done in, in the back end.
26:54
You know, we're looking at the moment, um, uh, how we get
26:58
all of our invoicing done by AI, for example. Okay, because there are multiple
27:01
platforms. Um, but also things like, you know,
27:04
we, we as a business, we specialize in, in kind of hybrid
27:08
events, um, live and hybrid, but you know, we've, we've, you know,
27:12
very good at the kind of broadcasty kind of stuff. As a result,
27:15
a lot of our quotes, there are similarities between
27:19
a lot of the projects that we do. You know, if you're filming something,
27:22
there are cameras, you know. Do you know what I mean? And so,
27:25
and so actually, do we need to raise the same quote every week and
27:29
every week and every week? Or can we just say to AI, AI, we've got
27:32
this job coming up, client wants XYZ, it's kind of similar to this other
27:36
project we did, Um, do me a quote, you know,
27:39
bang. And so, so we're looking at how— because we, we can't do that at
27:42
the moment, but wouldn't it be cool? So there's a lot of that kind of
27:45
stuff in the backend as well. And also, you know, client has spec'd this,
27:49
what does that look like in terms of a, you know, project scope or whatever?
27:52
Or, um, or you've raised this quote for a client,
27:56
have we missed anything? Another, you know, great thing.
27:59
Um, so yes, so there's a lot of stuff like that, but again I'm
28:05
looking at now, do I have to bring in somebody who knows about AI to
28:09
build stuff like that? You know, because people
28:13
in the, you know, the people who we already employ,
28:17
technical people, but in events, that's not their bag.
28:20
It's just too new, isn't it? I suppose so. Well,
28:23
it is. I think, I mean,
28:27
I'm no prophet, you know, and there's many more wiser people
28:31
than me in this industry, but you know, I see people coming in in
28:34
the next 10 to 15 years, or even sooner than that, with skill sets,
28:38
um, and personalities that are maybe slightly different to
28:42
what we traditionally see. I think, you know, people who work in events for the
28:46
most part, I mean, are very personable, extrovert in some respects,
28:51
you know. But I see because of the way that technology is playing
28:54
its part now, and perhaps the demographic of people
28:58
who are most associated with using that in a really sort of high-level capacity,
29:02
we're going to see people of a more neurodivergent background, maybe people who
29:07
are a little bit more introverted. I'm gonna call you out on this one,
29:10
James, because in my world we've got plenty of neurodivergency.
29:13
I can assure you.
29:18
God, and the video engineers are, um,
29:22
well, you may not have met them because most production companies or agencies,
29:26
they hide them from clients. You know, we put them at the back,
29:31
not because they're not good at their job, but just because You know, everybody's stressed
29:35
on a live event and there's a lot of, uh, hormones and tempers and all
29:38
that kind of stuff. And the last thing you want is,
29:41
um, is, uh, is a very honest engineer telling a client
29:46
how it really is, you know. Um, well, that's bizarre
29:50
that you've said that because I literally, I worked on an awards a few weeks
29:54
ago and I needed a lighting up on it and,
29:57
and the guys that I work with were phenomenally busy as
30:01
well. And they said, oh, so-and-so's available. I won't say his name. So-and-so's available,
30:05
we've worked with him before. Said, oh yeah, he's great. And he's a video engineer
30:08
and he runs his own kind of freelance, you know, and he does a lot
30:11
of sort of motorsport stuff, you know. He's always around the world doing motorsport,
30:15
um, filming and, and all the rest of it. And he is exactly like
30:19
that. He doesn't do lighting a lot anymore because he's special in his video,
30:23
but he's literally— there's no filter. Yeah,
30:26
there is no filter. He came in, he came in and instantly went,
30:30
why is that like that? Why is that like that? Right, take that, that we
30:33
need, we need to sort it. But for me, it's like a technical manager,
30:34
that's amazing because I've got nobody,
30:37
yeah, bull lying to me. I got,
30:41
I got nobody telling me fibs, trying to hide anything or whatever. Like, that's amazing.
30:45
But you can't put that person in front of a client like 30 minutes before
30:49
doors when something's not working or whatever. And those kind of people—
30:53
anyway, back to the original point— those kinds of people, I imagine, would be great.
30:57
I mean, already in the kind of video conferencing, what you— what we used
31:01
to call video conferencing and, and, uh, um, and webcasting world,
31:04
we would get people like that anyway because it was— you were,
31:08
you were sitting between video and audio and the internet.
31:11
And so that was a big thing years ago, and so you'd get
31:16
a lot of people like that. Who knew how to do live streaming because they
31:19
understood the internet. And, you know, don't forget when we started live streaming,
31:23
you know, a lot of hotels didn't have internet. You know, that's how long ago
31:26
it was. So yeah, so when they start putting internet in and you have to
31:29
do— we used to use— we used to run Cisco encoders
31:33
and, you know, you'd have to speak to the IT teams and get them to
31:36
patch you through the firewalls and all this stuff. Anyway, I'm going off on a
31:39
tangent, but so there's a lot of people with interesting
31:44
personalities who got into that early doors, and I
31:48
suspect it's those kind of people who will probably lead the way in
31:52
AI. I mean, I already worked on a big event the other day, and there's
31:55
a video engineer, again, won't name him, but absolutely phenomenal,
31:59
who runs the whole show off his laptop, just button presses,
32:03
and, you know, the lights are triggered and the videos are getting— there's cameras flying
32:06
in and the screens are moving and there's graphics on the live stream.
32:10
And he's just sitting there doing it off his laptop.
32:14
So yeah, and I think that, yeah,
32:17
they're the kind of people— it's like anything, isn't it? You know,
32:21
certain types of people will always thrive, and yeah,
32:25
I suspect those people will have their day when AI and
32:29
everything kind of is key to what we do. So yeah,
32:33
and yeah, I think I see it all
32:36
the time. I, I'm on LinkedIn and I see that so-and-so's spoken
32:40
at a panel session, or there's an industry event going off and one of the
32:44
topics is going to be the use of AI. And, and the conversation we've had
32:48
today, you know, you could probably find 1,000 other conversations similar to that somewhere
32:52
in the events industry. I, I suppose it's, it's always good, and I've said
32:57
this on the podcast many times over the years, it's always good when these conversations
32:59
are happening. You know, I don't think you can have too too many of
33:03
them because all it's doing is exposing the subject matter
33:07
to more and more people. If more of these conversations are happening, more people become
33:11
aware of it. More people might think, oh, do you know what, I'm a bit
33:14
behind in actually sort of looking at some of the AI tools I could use.
33:17
Maybe I need to do that. If it prompts one person to go off and
33:20
have a look at it in a little bit more detail, then, you know,
33:23
conversations like this are, are good.
33:26
You know, they're worth having. I think, I think also, you know,
33:30
We live in a world, in an events industry rather, where everything's
33:34
very— there's blurred lines for everything.
33:38
And what I mean by that is, as an events manager, you might have to
33:41
know something about lighting, or you might have to know something about how the sound
33:44
system works, or you might have to know something about the event registration platform.
33:47
I think AI is coming in, and whether you
33:51
are going to be an AI expert or not, you need to
33:55
know what the capabilities are. In the same way, you know,
33:58
an event manager will know that if somebody's speaking from the lectern, they need a
34:02
lectern microphone. You know, I mean, you know, you have
34:06
to know that as an event manager. It seems obvious, but we've all been there.
34:09
Well, of course it seems obvious because we know,
34:12
right? But maybe
34:16
somebody who isn't in the industry or is new, they might not know. And it'll
34:19
be the same with AI, you know, over the next few years, we'll start to
34:22
learn that there are certain things that are expected. And certain things that work well
34:26
and certain things that don't. And you can be— you don't have to be an
34:29
AI expert to know those things, you know, just like you don't need to be
34:33
a sound engineer to know that you need a lectern mic if you've got somebody
34:35
speaking at a lectern, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've always said a lot of
34:39
it, a lot of it's about common sense, but also, you know, what is obvious
34:43
to somebody who knows is not obvious to somebody who doesn't know.
34:46
Of course. And we're going to spend a few years now getting caught out on
34:49
stuff. So, you know, a lot of people will know that you need a lectern
34:51
mic because one time they didn't have one Um, and, uh, and they got caught
34:55
out. So, you know, and that will happen, you know, it's a learning experience,
34:58
isn't it? Yeah. And there's things that no amount of training
35:02
or, you know, industry work experience can teach
35:07
you. You only develop that by being sort of on site.
35:11
And this is, as I said, where the human element is retained in the
35:15
industry. I was doing a business conference for care home managers
35:19
in Nottingham 3 weeks ago And I found out from the client a week before—
35:23
they give me very sketchy information, which has never happened before
35:27
in the events industry. Nobody's ever had sketchy information. No,
35:30
my brief has always been full and complete. Nobody's ever had sketchy information
35:35
from the event owner or organizer in advance.
35:38
Um, and I found out a week before that it was in a marquee,
35:41
a permanent marquee venue. Nice. Uh, this hotel,
35:45
the week that it was hitting kind of 36, 35,
35:48
36 degrees. And that there was no air conditioning
35:51
and no way of controlling the temperature inside the marquee.
35:54
So we were literally in a greenhouse, and at 1:30 in the afternoon,
35:58
we clocked the, the internal temperature to be 38.2 in
36:02
this marquee. And we're trying to retain people's— you know,
36:06
we tried every trick in the book to try and— you know, we were pointing
36:09
fans out of doors at one end of the marquee to try
36:13
and promote airflow out whilst putting fans
36:17
in opposite directions. You know, there's no training school for
36:21
that. Yeah, that's the sort of thing that you, you just, you just need people
36:25
who have a, a certain, you know, instinct, or, you know.
36:29
Yeah. And also coming back to the training thing, so from a,
36:33
from a technical point of view, it's the same as well. Like, I can— you
36:37
can learn the principles of audio, for example, or video,
36:41
and you can learn how it works. And I always say to people if you
36:44
really, if you want to be a good problem solver, like, you need to know
36:46
how this stuff works, um, from the beginning, if you like.
36:49
It's all very well, um, understanding how to do audio
36:52
on your iPad, um, you know, mixing sound on your iPad, but like,
36:56
if you don't know how mixing desk works, that, that becomes a challenge,
37:00
right? Um, and I, yeah, and I think that's the same all the way through.
37:03
Uh, so, so I think it's important that people learn those,
37:07
you know, really kind of technical You know, things like, I don't know,
37:11
what's the voltage of an SDI cable?
37:14
Like, it's important because when something goes wrong, that information might
37:19
help you fix something. But you're absolutely right,
37:22
a lot of this is learned on site. And I was on a
37:26
job the other day and it was really interesting. I had this young sound
37:30
engineer who I probably wouldn't tell you his name,
37:34
but I can't remember anyway. Um, but he, but he was a young
37:37
guy and he was clearly very fresh. He was clearly very,
37:41
very intelligent and, you know, he wasn't silly and he knew, you know,
37:45
he knew what he was doing. So in no way was he like
37:50
unable to do the job or whatever. He was, he was a good sound engineer.
37:52
However, I watched him as he was setting up
37:56
his desk. It was a bit complicated what we were doing and I
38:00
was like that is a really weird way to set up your
38:04
desk. Like, why? Like, that doesn't make any sense to me. Because,
38:08
um, have you considered, like, if this happens and this happens and this happens,
38:12
then that's— you're going to make life really difficult for yourself because you've set your
38:15
desk up wrong. Yeah, I would say wrong.
38:18
Um, and so we had that conversation,
38:22
and, I mean, he had set up his desk wrong, but the reason
38:26
he set it up wrong is because he'd never shadowed another engineer. He was really
38:29
smart, really capable, and he'd got a mixing desk and he'd worked out
38:33
how it worked and he'd worked out what he could do, and he could absolutely
38:36
do the job, like I said. But he hadn't shadowed
38:40
somebody or had training from somebody who's had that real-life experience where
38:45
all of a sudden, I don't know, you know, you thought you were doing a
38:48
panel for 4 and now it's a panel for 8, you know, but you got
38:51
3 minutes, go! And you've left yourself no room for
38:56
And you've left yourself in there, yeah, or whatever it is, or, you know,
38:58
all of a sudden, you know, did you know there are actually 2 camera crews
39:01
turning up, or, you know, person B is now going to
39:04
present remotely, and you, you know, how are you going to put that on your
39:08
desk? How are you going to sort that out? And it's, oh well, I hadn't
39:11
really thought about that, because you hadn't had that real-life experience.
39:15
So yeah, so it's a mix, isn't it? I suppose it's—
39:19
I think it's really important to understand the technicals and you know,
39:22
the real in-depth— because there are very few engineers out there now,
39:27
I think, who really understand their trade. Like,
39:30
really, you know, like, I don't know,
39:34
like, you know, how does DMX work, for example?
39:37
Sure, yeah, you know, they can run the iPad,
39:41
but can they actually— they can run the iPad, can they set all the addresses
39:44
correctly on the lights as they're going on the truck? Well, we get it with
39:47
vMix quite a lot, and I had this conversation with with somebody a
39:51
couple of months ago, and she was saying,
39:55
yeah, I can run a show on vMix, absolutely. I was like, okay, cool.
39:58
So when we have to add a hybrid thing at the last minute, or you've
40:01
got to set up some extra video buses, or can you set up some extra
40:03
mixers? She's like, no, no, no, I can't do that. I can run a show.
40:06
I was like, well, that's great. So now I need somebody to build it and
40:10
somebody to run it. Well, actually, I could just— do you know what I mean?
40:14
Yeah. And I'll tell you the analogy. I don't
40:17
know whether this is a good one or not, but she was talking about,
40:19
well, what can I do and what can't I do? And I was saying,
40:21
well, you know, if my car's broken,
40:25
I don't take it to a driver to fix it, you know, I take it
40:28
to a mechanic to fix it, you know. If I've got a specific show that's
40:33
really complicated to run, then maybe I do need a race car driver, but 9
40:37
times out of 10, what I actually need is a really good mechanic who's going
40:39
to make it work, because if they do that right,
40:43
the show's easy, you know. If your prep work is done right and you understand
40:47
your systems and you've built them correctly, the show's easy. The show should go off
40:52
without a hitch. Um, yeah, in theory, if you, if you've
40:56
prepared right. You're absolutely right. And I'm gonna,
40:59
I'm gonna kind of not wrap things up, but I'm gonna give one more sort
41:03
of real-world sort of observation, uh, if you, if I
41:07
may, is, is what I call the Bose, the, the curse of
41:11
the Bose Stick PA. Yeah,
41:14
it's the tale of the Bose L-Series,
41:17
the Bose Stick PA system. Yeah. And, uh,
41:21
there's a lot of really lovely sort of pubs and places in little villages
41:25
around where I live in South Yorkshire. And it's become a really big thing over
41:29
the last few years where they all do like a little bit of live music,
41:31
you know, 4 o'clock on a Saturday, Sunday afternoon, you'll have a singer. Sometimes it's,
41:35
it's a guy or a girl with a guitar, an acoustic guitar and a PA
41:38
system. A lot of the time it's somebody
41:42
with some backing tracks on their phone or on iPad and the Bose Stick
41:46
PA. And many people out there who've, you know, might know
41:50
what I'm talking about. And they Bluetooth their device
41:54
to the Bose Stick PA, they plug one microphone cable straight
41:58
in. All there is is a knob to turn up the volume and a knob
42:01
to turn up the volume on their backing tracks. And I,
42:05
um, a friend of mine runs a few bars in the town center near where
42:09
I live, and I've kind of installed and configured sound systems in there so
42:13
that if he has a live singer on, they can literally just turn
42:17
up with no equipment, with their acoustic guitar, with the backing tracks, and bang,
42:20
there's a mixing desk there ready to go on the wall, really easy to use.
42:23
But— and the singer phoned me in a panic, and it was like sort
42:27
of 5 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. She said, I've got here, I was told
42:30
there's a PA system, I've no idea how to use it. She'd never seen a
42:33
mixing desk. She'd been gigging for years but only with the Bose stick PA,
42:37
because the technology has been simplified and dumbed down so
42:41
that the computer is doing all the work, the brains inside the box
42:44
is doing all the work. Work, all she's ever seen is a single knob that
42:47
says volume on it. And when you actually give her the actual, you know,
42:51
the full tool to use, has absolutely no clue. And that,
42:54
that's, that's potentially a danger there, not just in technical production
42:58
but in, in, in event operations,
43:01
in life as a whole, that things are being made so easy.
43:04
One-touch compression. Exactly right. Yeah, exactly right.
43:08
And, and things are being boiled down and being controlled
43:12
by brains and microchips to the extent where we can do everything with
43:16
a touch that nobody actually knows how to do it properly should that break.
43:21
Um, and I think that's a wider— that I tell that tale as a
43:25
sort of a wider story, that the, the tale of the Bose Stick PA,
43:28
you know, is, is, is something that probably translates into
43:31
many other aspects of modern life. Yeah, I'm gonna—
43:35
I'm gonna— I just— I know we're wrapping up, but, um, One thing
43:39
that's really, really been bugging me— I should have mentioned this an hour ago— but,
43:42
um, have you had anyone on the podcast
43:46
recently talking about rates for freelancers? No.
43:50
Okay, the reason I ask is because— and it links in with the, with the
43:54
question— is that, um, uh,
43:59
I— there are, there are, uh, there's a wide range of experiences
44:03
and training and all that kind of thing. Um,
44:06
and maybe this is one for next time, as I think about it. This is
44:10
a big question. Um, but, um, it'd just be interesting to know what
44:13
people's thoughts are on, uh, levels of experience,
44:17
training, qualifications, and how that impacts rates.
44:22
Yeah, anyway, right, that's going to be a big— because I get— I hear a
44:25
lot of people saying, um, you know, it's expensive to live, you know,
44:29
I, you know, Uh, I need to get paid XYZ.
44:33
And, uh, but I also see a lot of people who haven't had the training
44:36
and the experience, like the young lad I was talking about who's very smart but
44:40
doesn't have that, you know, experience, um, of live events.
44:44
And anyway, yeah, that is a— it's a bigger question. I've scribbled it down.
44:47
We're gonna talk about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what, I, I've put that—
44:51
I just realized what I've done. I've just gone off on a tangent that's complete—
44:54
that's a whole nother podcast. It's, it's an episode hand grenade.
44:57
We're gonna— we'll go with that next time. And can I— I'm gonna do something
45:00
we wrap. The last thing I'm going to say today is I'm going to give
45:03
a shout out to somebody, and I don't know their surname. A couple
45:07
of times today we've said we won't mention names. I'm now going to just mention
45:10
a name, and if anybody knows who this guy is, can they put me in
45:14
touch with him? So I ran an awards event in London a few
45:18
weeks ago, industry awards event,
45:21
and it was at, uh, the Ministry
45:25
in sort of Southwark, connected to Ministry of Sound,
45:29
and there was a freelance sound engineer there And his name was
45:32
Pedro. He was Portuguese.
45:36
I know exactly, Portuguese, uh, young guy,
45:41
one of the nicest AV technicians I've ever had
45:45
the pleasure of working with. Personable, knew his stuff, had everything set
45:49
up in a few minutes while still chatting. Is this the guy— he's full-time at
45:53
the Ned? What is— I, I,
45:57
I don't know. I just said, are you freelancing here all the time? And he
46:00
came in with like a branded Ministry shirt But he says, no, no freelancer coming
46:03
in here, and I'm one of the regular guys here. But he had everything
46:07
set up, microphones tuned perfectly, nothing was
46:11
hassle. It was a fairly simple award setup in terms of what we needed and
46:15
everything, but he just made it easy. It sounded great.
46:19
I didn't have to ask for anything. It was all, well, yep, brilliant,
46:23
levels are great on that. Yep, that's clear as a bell. Yeah. Oh, you've EQ'd
46:27
that, brilliant. Can I have the lights changed for this? And yet, no problem.
46:30
And I just wanted to give him a shout out because He's a young guy
46:34
and he's going to go far. And if anybody knows the guy I'm talking about,
46:36
put him in touch with me because I'd love to send him a message and
46:39
say thank you. It was one of those classic examples where you arrive at sort
46:42
of 3, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you get everything set up, you shake hands,
46:45
you spend an evening with somebody, you say thanks very much, great working with
46:48
you, might see you again. And the chances are I'll never see him again,
46:51
uh, which is a real shame because he's a good guy. Track him down,
46:54
track him down if you know who I'm talking about. Portuguese, uh,
46:58
it's either Pedro or Pablo. Worked, uh, freelance. Could it have been Pietro?
47:02
No, definitely not Pietro. I'm sure, I'm, I'm sure.
47:06
But yeah, thank you very much. If you, if you listen to this, if you
47:09
listen to the podcast or you pass this on to him to listen to,
47:12
thank you very much. It was great to work with you. So, you know,
47:15
love to know what his background is and how he came to where he's working
47:18
now. That'd be— yeah, that'd be good. Get him on next time you're on and
47:22
we'll have a— we'll quiz it. We'll quiz it. Um, Thanks,
47:25
mate. Really good to catch up with you. And, you know,
47:29
taking time out of your downtime, holiday time. There's no such thing
47:33
as downtime. It's time to reset, enjoy some good
47:37
food, maybe a few drinks. You know, I don't know what your
47:40
beverage persuasion is, but, you know, whatever you enjoy, I hope you enjoy it.
47:43
A bit of everything, I think. Good man. Um, thanks very much to everybody for
47:47
listening. Thanks again, as always, to my guest Kieran Garlick from, uh, Present Communications,
47:50
who are of course sponsors of the Event Industry News, uh,
47:53
podcast. Um, yeah, continued, uh, thanks and continually
47:58
grateful for the support that they offer the podcast, which certainly this year you
48:02
may notice we've been out and about on our travels a little bit more,
48:04
and there's a lot more of that to come later in the year. I've got
48:07
some really exciting stuff booked into the diary with the podcast later on this year
48:11
that's going to see the podcast back out on the road in autumn at several
48:14
venues. TBC. Um, We've got some
48:18
event intranews-related sort of venue showcases and things like that
48:22
that are in the pipeline that we're going to be taking the podcast along to
48:25
alongside those sort of venue showcase days to record some episodes with
48:29
these venues and with other guests that are coming along to those events. So yeah,
48:32
keep your eyes peeled, there's some really exciting stuff happening with the podcast
48:36
in autumn, a lot of which, uh, can be done thanks to the support of
48:40
Kieran and the team at Present Communications. So, uh, yeah, and it just remains for
48:44
me to say, uh, thanks for listening, thanks for watching if you've listened today,
48:47
make sure you go over to the website to watch video versions of the podcast.
48:50
If you've watched today on the website, make sure you go in the opposite direction
48:54
and subscribe to your audio podcast platform to get all the latest news,
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49:01
And of course, if you're on the website and you are looking for a product,
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supplier directory on eventindustrynews.com.
49:12
Kieran, Pleasure as always. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you for having
49:15
me, James. We'll see everybody on the next edition of the podcast. Cheers everybody,
49:24
bye! The Event Industry News Podcast is sponsored by
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