PCO PERSPECTIVE

Our future depends on our ability to adjust the fundamentals

Business events are all about people, bringing people together for purposeful engagements and meaningful meetings and about those who design and facilitate these encounters. We have been in a rut for so many years. This placed event management in a linear innovation trajectory that adjusted to developing influences such as technology and environmental impact awareness sentiments, among others, that allowed us to effect change at a comfortable pace and as a result, we got good at it. Concepts of decentralised meetings were seen as experimental and too far into the future. That future was, however, dropped onto our laps with Covid-19.

Pieter Swart

By Pieter Swart, CMP, CMM, managing director & business events strategist, Conference Consultancy South Africa (Pty) Ltd

We are dealing with major distractions, continuously shifting between those within and outside of our control. This affects our emotions and our emotions have an impact on our decisions. It is a natural or human response to emotion that now calls for exceptional emotional maturity and emotional intelligence to get us to a space and place of clarity and objectivity. Whilst frustration is mounting about irrational decisions that affect our lives and livelihoods it is upon us to figure out how we will surface. The narrative of how we got here, our response to change and what we decide for the future is only one book in the library of resources within this industry we chose to serve.

Our stories are different. No template fits all. But we may read each other’s stories, learn from that and even take a chapter from someone else’s book to map our future. These times have taught us the value of agility. Change is happening fast and all around us. We are discovering what works, what should be retained and where adjustment or entirely new approaches are required. We are mindful of new risks, those that we may anticipate but then the odd curveball is also thrown our way and we get forced back to the drawing board. This is exhausting simply because it is not a planned progression or innovation process but rather a forced situation. Change and uncertainty often lead to procrastination. More time than necessary is spent on scenario planning when everything we are considering is merely assumptions. The brave will pick the most sensible and viable option and run with it. On the other hand, those lacking confidence for whatever reason, will hold back and then, when a decision is taken, it is often too late. The latter seems to be an increasing trend – transpiring into much shorter lead times. We have a responsibility to guide our teams and clients towards realistic goals, timelines and expectations and point out the consequences of overlooking that.

Confluence is the juncture where two streams meet – the old and the new, the present and the future, expectations and reality, human and machine, physical and digital. Sensible advice from worldrenowned experts such as Prof Salim Abdool Karim and Dr Francois Venter is that Covid-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future. Just as HIV/AIDS has been our reality for 30 years, we will have to learn to adjust and live with Covid-19. This is therefore another stream that meets us at our juncture and influences the way we have to plan for our future.

Very few realised the extent of change required to adjust from 'analog' to digital meetings. The immediate need was to find ways for continuity, and online applications were the solution. Learning the operations of these applications became the focus. In so doing, the context was lost or misunderstood; instead of approaching this as a ‘location’ change and reconsidering the impact of that in accordance with the existing fundamentals generally accepted as the tools and techniques of event design, planning and management. The continued relevance of event management standards was either misunderstood or completely ignored in the wake of digitising events. This mistake was soon realised and today we are seeing it as we should have from the start – that the event management planning and ecosystems that had existed before are as much relevant today as they will be for the future – we are just required to apply it differently with change.

Digital events or decentralised meetings are inviting exploration and experimentation. We are learning through the discovery of possibilities. What started as basic streaming or broadcasting to radio and television has evolved into interactive personal engagements with two-way exchanges of insights and experiences with much fewer barriers, across borders and time zones. Experience is a driver of expectation. What was potential yesterday, became possible today and the norm for the future. We will return to in-person events but it will be different, blended with digital technologies and engagements.

Our future depends on our ability to adjust the fundamentals or standards of our profession to meet the changing needs of the community we serve within the environment in which we operate. We have to craft viable solutions that instil confidence to move our business forward in a safe and sustainable manner. Looking ahead, this could also translate into a much closer interface between humans and robots as machine learning and artificial intelligence in a big data environment emerges as the next frontier. Let’s honour all those we have recently lost, remember and celebrate them as we journey forward into our new future.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities