Event Buyers Live 2022: First speakers revealed by organising team

Decision-making, crowd science, and producing large-scale events are a handful of the topics to be discussed at Event Buyers Live 2022 this November.

StandOut Multimedia, organiser of Event Buyers Live, can exclusively unveil details of the industry event’s respected education programme, alongside a series of industry experts who will facilitate the sessions.

Professor Keith Still, who has more than 30 years of consulting experience across a range of international crowd safety and risk analysis environments, will facilitate a roundtable session on crowd risks and crowd science. He will draw on his vast expertise, which has seen him advise on crowd behaviour and crowd safety considerations for events ranging from 500 people to 3,000,000 people.

Joining Still is Zoe Snow, director of Gary Beestone Associates and – more recently – executive producer of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Snow will lead a roundtable focused on the production of large-scale events and high-profile ceremonies. Snow has a huge amount of experience in international sports presentation, and immersive events and theatre. She will share her recent experiences of working on the opening and closing ceremonies of Birmingham 2022, which required more than 250 rehearsals and involved more than 1,500 cast members.

But what happens when your event doesn’t go to plan? This is the focus of the next roundtable to be announced. Led by Claire Drakeley, senior lecturer, and programme leader of the BA (Hons) Events Management degree at the University of Northampton, Decision making: When it all goes wrong will provide events professionals with food for thought.

Drakeley is studying for her PhD, focusing on decision making within event management, and has recently published two chapters in Events MisManagement, considering case studies of failure in event projects. Drakeley said: “On-event decisions can be hugely complex with multiple stakeholders, limited resources, high levels of risk, and significant safety considerations. This roundtable will draw on all our experiences to explore how we make decisions when there is a failure in the plan and what impacts the effectiveness of the choices we make.”

Event Buyers Live will return in 2022, bringing together event organisers and suppliers in a structured business and networking environment at Carden Park Hotel, Chester, on November 28-30.

Building on the success of the 2021 event, which facilitated pre-arranged meetings between organisers and suppliers, Event Buyers Live 2022 will continue to deliver for live events professionals that are looking to procure event services for future projects and participate in structured networking and insightful education sessions.

Decision making, crowd science, and producing large-scale are the first three roundtable topics to be discussed – there will be eight roundtable discussions in total.

Caroline Clift, editor of StandOut magazine and content manager of Event Buyers Live, said: “Like many other event organisers, we strive to offer our guests the best event experience. Following audience feedback, we applied some fresh thinking and created some new content ideas. These new ideas and content streams will be unveiled in the coming weeks. Right now, I urge all eventprofs to register for Event Buyers Live. It really will be the place to do business.”

If you would like to attend Event Buyers Live 2022, visit www.eventbuyerslive.com or call the team on 01795 509113.

Image: Claire Drakeley, Zoe Snow, and Keith Still