B2B Digital Broadcasting - The good and the ugly

Let's move on. And then we've talked about the financials. I want to delve into the learnings as to. Okay, you've got one event behind you. The good, the ugly. I guess, if. Is there anything ugly that you.

I don't know, plenty. Is there anything that you want to.

Share with us on the Ugly that probably the audience can learn from?

Yeah.

It'S.

So I think there's. I guess it sounds like there's. There's small points, there's teething points on it. One of them is quite, quite literally, you know, if you think about it in terms of building a studio, you know, at the very beginning, I should say apologies if there is screaming behind the scenes, welcome to lockdown. This is my children arriving home from school somewhere. Um, but we, yeah, we, we actually, we. We struggled with, obviously, because of the restrictions in place in the UK at that time, having too many people in the space working on the project and that, that created a problem, you know, because we had to be very focused around who was, you know, who was working in that studio space at one time. And that stopped us from having sponsors in the building, which was a challenge. So that was a problem. And also, you know, again, I don't know, this is probably a separate discussion, but I said we use Spot Me. Broadly speaking, the Spot Me platform for us worked as it should. But the. As we all know and as we've all worked out through live event software, they've all been sort of developing it as quickly as we've been looking for it, as it were. And we had challenges there on immediacy and response times on the customer service side, which did reflect on the event itself. The other small issue was redundancy on. On Internet lines and bandwidth. You know, we had a team in a sort of separate, separate room prepping sort of speakers and sponsors. You know, we had three people at terminals kind of, you know, prepping speakers and briefing them, ready for their panels, etc. And that, with the studio at some points created a problem with, you know, broadband. And we had, we had a. We had a line drop at one point for 15 minutes, something like that, which it didn't fall out entirely, but it created a problem that we then had to work through. And again, we used it to our advantage in the end. But at the time, I mean, I think I went gray rapidly during that period. And it's a small point, but that was a big worry.

Many events and media business kind of say, oh, that they miss the buzz and the adrenaline that happens. In a live event, well, that's kind of adrenaline for you at a very big dose if they miss that.

So.

Okay, so that's great. And also I think you've mentioned as well, and they're getting kind of links. I just want to reiterate the fact that you had your own in order, you had your teleprompter and everything ready, but. And then it just dropped at some point and if you want, it did. Yeah.

So actually that was. There was a key story which I've forgotten we talked about offline on that. Yeah, the tech team had, had been working with us in advance on a teleprompt system and you know, it was the first time they'd used it, but they said that, look, there's no problems with it, it'll all be fine, etc. And I just, having worked on like in a stage environment before, you just know that you kind of, you know, don't trust tech animals or children when you're working with them. Right. And it was kind of like, well, there's going to be, you know, there's going to be something that goes wrong here. And I remember being sort of mocked slightly for sort of saying, well, you know what, I'm going to have a copy of the script just close by with me on set, just in case it falls over, as it were. And true to form, I think it was day two, everyone was a slightly more relaxed, you know, we knew that when we were walking back onto set, you know, you count down and it was. There was a good buzz in the air, but there was that moment where for whatever reason the tech, the tech that was controlling the auto cue hadn't quite kept pace and we were at the wrong point. So it falls over and there's that moment where it's like, well, it's only because we've got a square script to hand that we can use that. It's a small point, but I remember thinking if I hadn't had a script with me, that would have been a problem.

Okay, I think that's kind of, again, very funny because not many of us in this industry are used to using teleprompters and all that kind of sort of stuff. And it is always the pre planning that highlights the fact that this is kind of extremely critical. Now let's talk about the good and because I think ultimately as a business owner, you're doing this for a reason. Right. And we have discussed in various forums and the various groups that we probably share that we belong to LinkedIn everywhere the key fundamental aspect is that an organizer will take the. Will go through this massive undertaking because they want to build barriers to entry for competition. They want to raise the bar with the quality of what they do. Again, you are very, very true to your values on creating tremendous amount of value for your audience, for your members, for your community. And so this is kind of. You've taken two, three, five steps forward to make sure that this happens. So the good. What is the good of all this, Adam? So why spend X amount of money, why spend X amount of energy, effort, brain cells and everything when you could have done zoom? Although you already clarified that, that you just. It was just boring. You just want to do something different. So what are you going to take from all this that many people in the audience can take themselves as well?

I remember being asked that question by multiple people throughout the process, not least our team and my project manager lead, who was sort of, you know, he was, you know, absolutely saying yes to all these crazy ideas along the way for us. Really? Again, you know, we talked about this sort of briefly before, but, you know, it was. I'm a firm believer that, like, you know, this, you know, while this. While Covid has been. I'm trying to put this sensitively, but while Covid has clearly created absolute turmoil in the events industry, I'm always a glasses half full kind of person. And I do believe that out of that there is a lot of opportunity that has to come from it. And for us, it was about how we level that playing field. It was like, how do we wind that clock Forwards however far? 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, whatever. Like what? You know, it's almost like when we step. Walk out, blinking into the sunlight, you know, and start meeting in person again in whatever way that that happens, what are the events that are gonna sort of. That are gonna survive, as it were, and perhaps not just survive, but thrive in that kind of next era. And, and, you know, what are, you know, and why. Why are they gonna do that? And my sense was that, like, for us, our community, the event series we run is called Financing Wind. And the membership community that is underpinned by is a word about wind. And as I said at the beginning, it started with a membership base, but really, if you scroll it right back, it started with a newsletter that I wrote on a beach years ago to build a community with an audience that I didn't know and I wanted to get to know better. And if you kind of scroll all the way through those scenarios and you scroll through building out A membership platform, investing in an editorial team, building out an events program, building out an awards program, doing all these sorts of things. Our membership has grown and stayed with us because they've always given us the benefit of the doubt. They've always recognized we've been transparent with them about what we're doing and that we want to try new things. And they've always recognized the power of being part of that community, and that in order to be part of something like that, they've got to be prepared to kind of take the good with the bad, as it were. And for our events, that's really how we viewed it. My sense was I kind of want to roll the dice a little bit on this. It's a managed risk, right? It's the same reason why we set up in business at the very beginning, because we felt like we had an idea and an opportunity and we wanted to back it. And if we can't back our own ideas, I mean, crikey, right now it's like betting the stock market, right? I'd rather not bet the stock market. I'd rather bet our own business, because I have far more control over what we can do than anyone else. And that was really the opportunity. It was kind of like, how can we give back to our community and give back willingly and give back to our sponsors? And so that they see that in a really positive light? And that's where I wanted to get to. It was like I wanted them to get to a point where, you know, we're in November now, whatever it is, November 4th, 5th. This is the point in the year where everyone starts looking at those budgets for next year. And I want to be at the top of that list because there's gonna be competition for it, you know, and it's. We want to be in the rebooks, is we want to be in the thick of that. And we. You know, that for me was that that was actually really what was at the heart of it. It was kind of like if I spent. If I'm investing, you know, whatever it is now in this event, great. You know, I would almost write that off as BD work, as marketing work, you know, effectively. I viewed the studio as a giant marketing campaign, you know, that just so happened to deliver some exceptional results for our sponsorship. And that was key. That was really, really key. And it was about turning everything to our advantage. It was all about flipping it on his head and thinking about what we wanted, what happens when we get to December 2020?

And I think that's amazing from the point of view that because you said this is a big marketing campaign, I want to be top of the list when discussions in 2021. And I love the fact that you thinking even 2022 so that we're looking at our rebook strategy all that long in advance. And we want to be at the top of that conversation because we would have already delivered some tangible value that is beyond what. Because what we were. The talk with all of entrepreneurs right now is, okay, the barriers have come down. Anyone can just launch an event business or it can launch on a virtual event from the back of the room, from their apartment, in their flat. Now, doing all this that you've done, then that just basically again raises the bar and it makes it no. 1, not many. And then we've seen that reflected in the, in the statistics both from this audience, but from what we've seen out there, 90% of the people have not done something like this. So this means that you now have a massive advantage. You have a seat at the table or at least on the top of that pile that's going to differentiate you among the crowd.