COLUMN: INDUSTRY VIEW
New horizons
Rachel Parker, director of the Associatio of Event Venues, on the
association’s 15th birthday and what the future might hold
L
ike the moment on a long walk
where you stop to take a breath,
glance back and marvel at the
ground you’ve covered, the AEV’s 15th
birthday this year has made us think
about just how far we’ve come, and the
changes we’ve seen on the way.
The landscape behind us seems
very familiar, but when the AEV was
first constituted, The O2 was still the
Millennium Dome, Manchester Central
was still called GMEX, the wonderful
Earls Court was a busy, thriving venue,
and ExCeL London, an AEV founder
member, was a relative newcomer to the
capital.
We can look back on plenty of
achievements during the last 15 years, and
while it’s fun to remember a time when
MySpace was the latest thing in ‘social
media’, and about a quarter of us had
broadband internet, we have to keep
looking to new horizons.
Reflecting on this from the AEV’s
perspective, there’s plenty to look
forward to in the short term. The
association has a new chair, Dan
Thurlow. Our working groups are
asking to meet more frequently, and
already collaborating in smaller, cross-
association groups to find pragmatic
solutions to shared issues and challenges
more quickly.
Obviously, there are obstacles to future
planning, not least that the further
forward you look, the hazier the picture
becomes. I know, for example, that we’re
planning to celebrate our 15th birthday in
a few different ways this year.
If you were to ask me what the world
of events is going to look like in another
15 years from the venue perspective
it’s clear that new venues will be built,
existing venues will expand and diversify
just as they are now, and new venues
will join the market, to vie for a share
of the burgeoning variety of new events.
The range of places and buildings that
now offer venue services is almost
unbelievable, and the trend is for greater
diversity in location and character.
But the rate of change in the
location and character of venues is
sedate, compared to the rush of new
technological applications.
Reliable facial recognition and artificial
intelligence coupled with the surge of
‘voice agents’ like Siri, Alexa, Cortana,
or Google, means that the experience
of attending an event is going to change
radically over the next decade and half.
The audiences of tomorrow aren’t going
to stand in a queue for registration at
a conference, they’ll expect to be able
walk right in, they’ll talk to their device
and ask it for directions to the nearest
vegan food outlet or ask it locate another
delegate.
Machine translation will give events
the option for simultaneous translation
“It’s up to the whole
industry to keep the
trust and interest of
audiences as well
as bring them the
experiences of their
lifetimes”
without a booth full of
interpreters.
Given the unknown
expectations, and the rapidly
changing technological
landscape, not to
mention curve-balls
like Brexit, it may
seem impossible
to prepare our
businesses and
our industries for
whatever is coming.
Part of the solution
has to be building
resilience throughout
the industry.
Naturally, I believe
that building strong trade
associations is essential to that goal.
There are straightforward benefits of
membership, like access to industry
surveys and data, or best practice
guidelines, but it’s through building a
broader and larger community of venues,
suppliers and organisers that we will be
able to withstand the kind of shocks and
rapid changes that might characterise the
next 15 years.
We will need to be deft and agile,
responding to audience expectations, but
leading them too. It’s up to the whole
industry to keep the trust and interest
of audiences as well as bring them the
experiences of their lifetimes.
That is going to require a leap forward
in sustainability and sustainability
collaboration across the whole industry.
We will need to use the ballooning
quantity of data collected by events
in imaginative but, more importantly,
transparent and ethical ways. And we’re
going to need to treat every individual
audience member as a VIP without
devaluing premium offerings, making
their visit a bespoke experience, tailored
to their needs and preferences.
15 years from now it will be the
talented young people joining the
industry today who are going to be the
ones looking back, chuckling at the
clunky technology and primitive devices,
wondering how we managed.
But, like us, they will be living and
working in a world of increasingly rapid
change, and will need to reach for new
horizons to stay competitive and
thrive.
exhibitionnews.co.uk | February 2019
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