The recent pandemic. The current levels of inflation and huge price increases. The future opportunity – and threat – of AI.  

It’s safe to say that working in the events industry keeps you on your toes! But working in such a fast-paced and ever-evolving industry requires an agile approach, thinking outside the box, and being clever with budgets.  

As such, it’s important that our events specialists remain excited, curious and open to learning about upcoming trends, new products and approaches to share with our clients and their delegates.  

And let’s face it, clients don’t want the same things year-on-year anyway, and neither do we as passionate events specialists. That’s why we always strive to raise the bar on our events. I don’t just mean new creative delivery, destinations, technologies etc, I also mean how we, as individuals, turn up and deliver our best. 

But how do we keep on top of the conversation, no matter the new topic? Simple, by keeping things FRESH!  

Focus on development  

At BI WORLDWIDE, we ensure our Associates feel equipped and confident to progress in their roles and in the organisation. To support this, we offer extensive training that mixes peer-to-peer training with formal internal and external training courses and openly encourage them to participate. Our internal ‘University’ offers a wide range of training, everything from Behavioural Economics to ‘Becoming a Successful Collaborator’.  

Mentoring is also something that we truly believe helps people build confidence, encourages thinking outside the box, and brings an outside perspective. These are all key attributes that we believe create high-performing people and teams. That’s why we run a mentoring programme where we’re paired with a colleague with a specific goal to help coach and mentor. On the back of the programme, we actively encourage the Associates involved to share their learnings with their wider community.  

As well as internal mentoring, we also encourage our Associates to join external mentoring schemes more specialist to their area of work. An example of this is the Fast Forward 15 mentor scheme which encourages women in the events industry to achieve their career goals and aspirations. I’ve been lucky enough to not only be a mentee on this programme but also a mentor for the 2023/2024 cohort. It’s not only provided an outside perspective on my career but also helped me grow as a person. It continues to be an amazing experience that’s helping me to learn and build my confidence which, in turn, can be passed on to my team. 

Read up on the subject 

As a team, we have an insatiable thirst for knowledge! Whether it’s reading industry press or listening to podcasts, we’re always looking to build our knowledge. We’re also keen creators, contributors and consumers of research reports. Having released and co-authored numerous studies into engagement and motivation, we’re always on the front foot when it comes to understanding what drives human decision-making.

Enrich through experience  

With our extensive and broad range of clients from multiple industries and across many parts of the globe, it allows us to learn not only from their perspectives and experiences, but to apply it from one industry to another. A good example was a tech client who wanted to push boundaries with their event to inspire and engage their audience and really believe anything was possible. That was our invite to deliver a presentation session using a new form of technology that not only wowed their audience but also allowed us to showcase it to another client in a different industry who also used the idea to bring their own presentation session to life.

Sound out specialists  

Our global network of supplier partners are specialists in their offering and region, allowing us to keep our finger on the pulse. Whether it’s tapping into our DMC’s knowledge of the best hotels, activities, and local suppliers, or our in-country AV and print partners delivering the best and latest technology to create the right environments for our events. Importantly, using our in-country partners also allows us to minimise our carbon impact as we’re not shipping kit and collateral across the world. 

Being part of a global business community is also a huge benefit to all our Associates as we can reach out to colleagues around the world to bounce ideas and ask for their experience and learnings. To facilitate this intelligence exchange, we have monthly global calls that end up inspiring creativity for our events or help solve challenges, something which not only benefits us but for our clients too. 

We’re also not just an events agency but a multi-service agency. This is another great way to keep a fresh perspective as it allows us to bring the experiences and ideas of how we inspire participants in our Employee Programmes and Sales and Channel Incentive Solutions into events. 

Hear it first-hand  

Attending industry events is a brilliant way to ensure we’re in the know on matters that impact our industry and clients. We make time to visit key shows like IMEX, Invoyage, and International Confex, to name just a few. It’s where we learn about new technologies, destinations and venues, meet new suppliers, and hear about new legislation and topics such as sustainability. They also offer the opportunity to network – building on existing relationships and creating new ones – share ideas and challenges, and chew the fat with our peers. 

We’re also not just an events agency but a multi-service agency. This is another great way to keep a fresh perspective as it allows us to bring the experiences and ideas of how we inspire participants in our Employee Programmes and Sales and Channel Incentive Solutions into events.