Why I Chose to Work in the Events Industry

When I was younger, contemplating what career path I should follow, I never for one minute considered the events industry. I doubt I was even aware of the many conferences, exhibitions and tradeshows that took place across the globe. In my defence, this was in the early 1990’s, when kids were, well, just kids. Keeping in mind that the world-wide-web was only launched in 1993 and there was no such thing as smart phones or tablets, Facebook or Tick Tock, so I was in no way as advanced or as aware as many of the teenagers are today.    

I stumbled upon the exhibition industry a few years after entering the working world. Once I dipped my toe into the great unknown, I was well and truly hooked. Having both creative and academic qualifications, the world of exhibitions appealed to me as it had a good balance of both. What thrilled me was seeing the flat floor of an empty exhibition hall transform into this other world of brightly coloured carpet tiles, uniform exhibition booths and creative custom-made pavilions. The energy on the trading floor was electric, intense, and infectious and I soon became completely absorbed by the industry. Within months, I was designing exhibition floorplans that accommodated hundreds of booths, rolling-out marketing campaigns, negotiating contracts with suppliers to ensure my budget stretched and my profit margins grew.  

 The deeper I immersed myself into the industry, the more I craved, where I was soon travelling to foreign countries to manage country pavilions that intended to attract business and boost economies across the world. It was at a Business Tourism tradeshow in Geneva when I started to realise that the events industry was far more than I had ever imagined. Although the exhibition or tradeshow was contained within four walls, their reach was limitless. The introductions, negotiations and networking all had a higher purpose, they created wealth, raised awareness, and impacted lives.  

Now, I pause to consider how you, the reader may think this is bordering on fiction, questioning how events like exhibitions, tradeshows and conferences can have such an impact, allow me to explain.  

Let’s start with something you may be more familiar with, a consumer exhibition, that is an exhibition with a common theme, open to the public, where an ordinary person like you and I can stroll the aisles and be exposed to hundreds of shopfronts in one place at the same time. The exhibitors have a captive audience who are engaged and very interested to meet with them, to purchase the goods they are selling. Visitors have the convenience of shopping with ease, be exposed to a wide choice and have all this in the comfort of a climate-controlled venue that usually offers a variety of snacks, meals, and refreshments, enticing them to linger longer. This perfect formula usually results in the visitor (aka: consumer), to be caught up in the bright lights, appealing colours and “show-only” promotions where they end up purchasing far more than their budgets intended. 

The exhibitor (aka: retailer) profits from the sales, where they in turn, purchase more merchandise from their suppliers, thus increasing the demand, which means that the supplier needs to increase their stockpiles, so they hire additional employees to meet this demand, positively impacting the unemployment rate and boosting domestic economies.  

Another way that the events industry impacts the world in which we live and the lives that inhabit it, is through providing a meeting place, in the form of conferences, congresses, conventions and seminars, where professionals, academics, governments and the like, can congregate to deliberate on the latest innovations, debate hypothesis, discuss cures and find solutions to the many world challenges.  

Take for example the UN Climate Change Conference, otherwise referred to as the Conference of the Parties or COP for short. This is an annual event that attracts approximately 20,000 delegates from around the world to discuss the critical state of our changing climate and the devastating impact this is having on the environment, or the International Aids Society that has an attendance of over 25,000 global participants, for the primary purpose of “convening leading minds to accelerate scientific discovery” as their website boasts.  

I was privileged to be working as the Director of Operations for Africa’s largest Convention Centre, when we hosted both the COP17 and the International Aids Society Conference a few years later. Being in the heart of such important work, and feeling the passion exude from people of different nationalities, race, and culture, who together are all focused on the same end goal, was humbling. I was so aware of the fact that we were facilitating events that could change the course of history. When you consider this, you realise that the world of events, specifically conferences and tradeshows play such a huge role in the world and the future of humanity. 

Twenty-five years later and although the transformation of an empty exhibition hall still ignites the excitement within me, I have grown wise to the fact that as people of the events industry we are not simply building exhibitions, or providing meeting rooms, we are changing lives. This knowledge makes me proud of having chosen this career as my destiny, it is the reason why I remain loyal and why I still wake up each morning with genuine passion and exhilaration, thinking about the potential a new day holds with the start of another conference.  

Article by Nicolette Elia – Director of Event Services 
Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre (Proudly managed by ASM Global)