 
I’ve attended Meetings & Events Australia’s conferences for two decades and always manage to find enough from the business and social programs to make the trip worthwhile.
This year in Hobart was no exception and I found my “nugget” from a presentation that had little directly to do with our industry, but on reflection spoke to the heart of everything we do in our business lives.
The speaker was Andrew Wilkie, the former soldier working in the Office of National Assessment which provides intelligence to the Prime Minister’s office. Wilkie resigned his position shortly before Australia went to war in Iraq, saying there was no firm evidence to support the contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Wilkie calmly outlined the cost of his ethical dilemma and the impact it had on his life – the loss of all his friends from the intelligence community and ultimately the unravelling of his marriage. His choice was between loyalty to the people of Australia or loyalty to the Australian government. His decision ultimately cost him his career.
Happily few of us have to make such choices and one of the aspects of living in a free society is that nobody can legislate for good behaviour. The best contract anyone should have is a handshake and it’s saddening to see to what extent people in our industry have to “cover” themselves in their business dealings with costly contracts.
Another speaker who made great sense was Leo Schofield, the journalist and arts “czar” who has run a number of successful arts festivals and has entrepeneured many other artistic events.
His message was about being bold and running with big ideas. His contention is that there’s nothing wrong with conceiving a good idea for an event and selling it well. This is certainly something association meeting organisers should consider when faced with a marketing challenge to build delegate numbers. People are bombarded with messages day and night and event promoters have only a couple of seconds to attract attention.
Educating your audience is essential as one can’t assume that people will come to a product launch or attend a conference on the basis of a website saying it’s a good idea. It’s a question of establishing a relationship and communicating effectively before you start your “sell”.
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