What is the scope of your company?
Shumovich. Our company specializes in the professional organization of conferences and seminars. Unfortunately, in the course of this work, we faced a rather serious problem: many companies organize conferences and seminars and not always at the proper professional level. When dealing with customers, we encounter neglect quite often. This is due to the fact that there are no universally recognized standards in this industry, and those who organize conferences and seminars mean very different things by this. Customers, faced with low-quality services, transfer this to the entire industry and to other companies that do this at a completely different level. This state of affairs has existed for a long time. There are very professional companies that do everything at a very high level. And at the same time, there are companies that have just begun to do this, they train on clients.
Last year, we started training in event management. This applies not only to conferences and seminars, it is our intrinsic motivation. We invited a consultant from the USA, a person with an education in the field of event management, who developed methodological courses. We held several very successful seminars, they trained a large number of people from different industries. These are event-managers from companies, these are executives, employees of companies specializing in event-management. I mean event-managers from companies for which this is not a profile activity, managers from some very large organizations that make internal holidays. Since this industry has a certain logic, which, in general, coincides for different types of events, we talk about how the holiday is organized as a project. Not everyone thinks that this needs to be done professionally. We realized that the topic is in demand, having received a fairly good response from the market. The reviews showed that there are such people who organize events. They lack information, but they want to learn. We interpret training not as our global mission, but as one of the tasks. We want to enhance the culture of this market, to develop the industry as a whole.
After the seminar, the conference was a logical step, where we invited companies with a very good reputation, with very high quality standards, with great experience and from various areas of event management: for organizing holidays, business events, etc. They shared their experiences.
The first conference was built on an industry-wide basis. Speakers spoke on the organization of various types of events: an official event separately, a marketing event separately, business and entertainment separately. After analyzing what was happening at that conference and hearing the recommendations of the participants and some speakers, we decided that the next topic would be technology for organizing events, various technological nuances, and moments that would be useful for managers. The past conference, in principle, answered these questions. Of course, the topic is big, you can say about any topic that it is very big and you can talk about it endlessly, but we have moved forward a bit, looked at what tools the companies use.
Have the following topics already been decided?
Shumovich. Yes, we will make the conference regular. There are annual conferences that analyze what happened during the year and consider the prospects for next year. Our conferences are regular. When the industry changes fast enough, we make a conference more often, say, we conduct a personnel management conference once a quarter, and we get four conferences a year. Sometimes less often. We had event management three times a year. In winter, summer and autumn before the new year.
It turns out that your events are aimed at some significant events: winter holidays or summer?
Shumovich. The conference at the very end of spring is aimed at the start of the summer season, barbecue, field trips, etc., therefore, our focus is on outdoor events. And in the fall, we will choose the theme so that people get ready for the corporate new year. Separate seasons we were preparing for the spring holidays, for the eighth of March, Easter, etc.
What product, solution, analysis becomes the outcome of the conference?
Shumovich. Our product is the knowledge that we transfer. Since we are a commercial company, this is done on a paid basis, that is, participants pay for participation and receive the information that the speakers share with them. Participants also receive all materials from the past conference, possibly in electronic form, on our website.
Interviewed by Igor Uvenchikov
You can read the full interview in No. 3 of the Corporate Culture magazine
