Opinion
COSPAR 2021 virtual exhibition designed by ICMS Australasia
Why we mustn’t forget what business we’re in The delivery mechanisms for events may have changed over the past 12 months, but the outcomes remain the same, writes Emma Bowyer, managing director and owner of event management company ICMS Australasia.
E “Our challenge since March 2020 has been to remind our clients that we are in the communication business.”
12 Spice Winter 2021
ver since I completed my business degree, I have often heard the adage that change is constant and how we must continually adapt to change to remain ahead of the game. The impact of COVID-19 on our industry is, for all intents and purposes, yet another change in a constantly evolving world. I agree it’s a big one, but I would argue it is a change we were better equipped to handle as organisers. What COVID-19 has demonstrated to me is that we have to be willing and open to change when big shifts occur. In the world of business, you only have to look back a little way to understand what happens if you don’t have that mindset. I’m talking things like the impact on taxis when ridesharing was introduced or when Kodak failed to recognise the effect digital photo sharing was going to have on its printing business – filing for bankruptcy protection in 2012 when a few short years before it had been a billion-dollar company. Our challenge since March 2020 has been to remind our clients that we are in the communication business. Yes, prior to then we worked in a traditional live environment for communicating. Now, on the whole, we are orchestrating and managing events virtually. These are two different delivery methods, but both share the same required outcome: for groups of people to communicate together for a particular purpose and outcome. Having now run seven virtual meetings I can confidently say that we understand what it takes to run an event online. And, equally as important to many of our clients, we have been able to monetise these events.
The largest of these was in late January this year for the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) 43rd Scientific Assembly in which we had over 2,000 paying delegates beaming in from all over the globe. At the assembly’s conclusion ICMS Australasia recorded 5,283 downloads of presentations, 99.8 per cent online engagement, over 1,500 individual delegate interactions and 1,088 interactions between sponsors and attendees. As this event is on demand, these numbers continue to grow. Equally as pleasing was that we had created a communication platform that allowed space scientists and researchers to collaborate with one another for the benefit of the industry as a whole. If you’ve read anything about Elon Musk’s ambitions in space it’s not hard to understand that this sector is one of the new darlings of industry globally with the potential to generate jobs and investment everywhere, including Australia. COSPAR 2021 and the other virtual meetings we have run and managed in the last 12 months have led to us developing a white paper, which outlines our recommendations on running online events successfully, including returning a financial surplus. Moving forward, we currently have over 40 meetings in our forward calendar out to 2024. Certainly not all of these are virtual but are rather a mix of virtual and live and sometimes a combination of both, or hybrid as we know it. I anticipate this will be the way forward for our international meetings for at least the next two years and perhaps even longer. We should remain open to the opportunities this disruption has created for us all. n