Our 2022 Judges

David Ball

CEO, Brandfuel

David Ball
CEO, Brandfuel
Amanda Barnes

Chief Executive, Faversham House Ltd

Amanda Barnes
Chief Executive, Faversham House Ltd

Amanda’s experience spans publishing, digital media, events, conferences and exhibitions. She led a management buy-out of Faversham House in December 2010 and subsequently bought out her private equity partners in 2013. With her fellow directors, she has been responsible for repositioning the company as a multi-media business information provider building on the company’s strong brands in utilities, sustainability and visual communications.
Robin Booth

Managing Director, Emap

Robin Booth
Managing Director, Emap

Robin joined EMAP in 2018 and is Managing Director of a portfolio of construction, engineering and public sector brands. Robin was Group General Manager at Aspermont Media between 2014 and 2018 running the UK, Australia and Brazil offices of an International natural resources media company, including one of the world’s oldest magazines Mining Journal. Prior to that Robin was Group Publishing Director at Incisive Media working across a range of industry sectors – technology, legal, finance and institutional investment.
Con Bridgeman

CEO, Trinity Events

Con Bridgeman
CEO, Trinity Events
Nigel Clear

Commercial Director, Conferences, Elsevier

Nigel Clear
Commercial Director, Conferences, Elsevier

Nigel Clear is Commercial Director at Elsevier responsible for the growth and management of their global scientific conference business which has quadrupled in size during his stewardship. Nigel has over 30 years’ experience in publishing and events and has spent most of his career serving the information, finance and scientific sectors.
He has a strong track record in launching new events and is passionate about the customer experience and how technology, underpinned by meaningful, data-driven insights, can augment this. A strong advocate of inclusion and diversity Nigel has doubled the number of female speakers at Elsevier’s events over a three-year period, and has been instrumental in launching societally important events in areas that have been underserved, most recently the inaugural World Forum on Climate Justice.
Mindy Emsley

Joint Managing Director, Smarter Shows

Mindy Emsley
Joint Managing Director, Smarter Shows

Mindy became Joint Managing Director of Smarter Shows in 2017 and oversees a portfolio of industry-leading conferences and exhibitions across the advanced manufacturing, aerospace, automotive and materials industries. Mindy has over twenty years’ experience in B2B conferences and exhibitions and has led the strategy and execution of highly successful events across a range of industry sectors including telecoms, finance, banking, energy storage and oil and gas. Prior to joining Smarter Shows in 2012, Mindy held conference production and event director positions at organisations including Informa Telecoms, IQPC, TM Forum and Eurofinance.
Ian Hemming

Managing Director Events, The Economist

Ian Hemming
Managing Director Events, The Economist

Ian has 29 years events industry experience. Ian was CEO of Informa’s Telecoms & Media division for 11 years. In 2016 he became a consultant advising events providers and private equity investors. In 2019 Ian was appointed Managing Director of Events at The Economist Group.
Michaela Jeffery-Morrison

CEO, Founder of the Women in Technology World Series, Ascend Global Media

Michaela Jeffery-Morrison
CEO, Founder of the Women in Technology World Series, Ascend Global Media

Michaela Jeffery-Morrison is Founder & CEO of Ascend Global Media and Founder of the Women in Technology World Series; the world’s largest events series focused on women in tech and the only B2B company dedicated to improving diversity and inclusion in business. Since its creation in 2015, Maddox Events, now Ascend Global Media, has exploded in popularity. In just five years, the Women in Tech World Series, has grown from one event in London to seven globally, while attendance has risen from 300 to more than 6,000. Ascend Global Media delivers content, opportunities, inspiration and knowledge to the women and businesses that make up the technology sector through a series of live events and attracts hundreds of speakers from the world’s most innovative companies and tens of thousands of attendees from across the globe.
Fiona Miller

Group Events Director, Wilmington

Fiona Miller
Group Events Director, Wilmington
Dale Parmenter

CEO, drpg

Dale Parmenter
CEO, drpg

Dale has been in the presentation and communication industry for over 40 years. He left school with one goal to run his own business, after just 3 years the opportunity arose and Dale took it, operating at first from a small outbuilding at his parent’s home as a filmmaker.

Today drpg is recognised as one of the leading integrated, full- service presentation and communication groups, winning agency of the year multiple times. The drpg team comprises of over 380 specialists across seven locations in Worcestershire, London, Windsor, Leeds, Manchester, Germany, Ireland and the USA.

drpg designs and produces communications solutions globally. Working with a wide range of clients to effectively communicate to internal and external audiences, all through award-winning film & video, events, experiential, print, design, digital, exhibition and creative solutions.

Dale is past Chairman of EVCOM and he is actively involved with key corporate clients, he works at a senior level assisting in the development of communication strategies and creating presentation vehicles.

Clients find his wealth of experience and knowledge invaluable in creating solutions that are bespoke to an organisation and are effective. Using his production and broadcast background, Dale has been able ensure DRPG’s 25 year virtual and hybrid offering has expanded to cope with the demand brought about due to Covid.

Dale is passionate about nurturing new talent and putting his people first. drpg has appears in the Sunday Times best 100 companies to work for list at number 16 and in 2020 has been awarded the Investors in People platinum standard, one of only 70 companies in the UK. In 2015 he was presented with the events industry personality of the year and in 2016 honoured with a fellowship award for services to Communication, presented at the House of Lords.
Isobel Peck

Chief Marketing Officer, Informa Connect

Isobel Peck
Chief Marketing Officer, Informa Connect

Isobel has moved between central and operational roles for the Informa Group working across publishing, exhibitions and conferences & training before joining Informa Connect as Chief Marketing Officer in 2014.

Having managed marketing, sales and customer service functions, Isobel became the business sponsor for Informa Connect’s digital transformation programme with the objective of moving the business from a transactional outbound marketing model to a customer experience led digital inbound model.

Her role is focused around establishing a strong digital presence for Informa Connect’s events, products, services and communities and designing a 365-day engagement programme for its customers marrying valuable, rich and compelling content with cutting edge, market-driven face to face meeting and learning opportunities for high calibre decision makers.
Sandeep Saujani

CEO, Contentive

Sandeep Saujani
CEO, Contentive

Sandeep Saujani, CEO at Contentive started his career in risk management consulting at MMC group and then worked his way up to Head of Americas for Ascend, a PE backed B2B information business based in New York. After this, he joined Econsultancy to grow the B2B Enterprise subscriptions service in digital marketing. He then went on to becoming a MD at Centaur Media, a UK based media and events provider. After leaving Centaur Media, Sandeep went on to lead Contentive in 2016 where he is currently the CEO. Contentive is a global B2B media and events business that connects buyers and sellers in B2B markets. Sandeep specialises in B2B information, analytics and advisory and has an Executive EMBA from Columbia University and London Business School.
Rick Stainton

Founder & Group Executive Director, Smyle Group

Rick Stainton
Founder & Group Executive Director, Smyle Group

Founder & Group Executive Director – Smyle Group

Founder – One Industry One Voice

Rick, 47, oversees the growth strategy of Smyle Group. It owns leading creative agency Smyle, that delivers live, hybrid and virtual experiences for some of the top global brands and organisations in a range of sectors including IT, Telco and Media. It has won UK Event Agency of the Year award a record 7 times in last 13 years – including in 2020/21 at the Campaign Experience, DRUM, EVCOM and C&IT awards – a first for any agency.

Smyle has also been recognised as one of the fastest growing leading agency in the UK Events industry through its entry in The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 in December 2018 and The Sunday Times HSBC International Track 200 in 2019 & 2020.

Rick founded the One Industry One Voice coalition in August 2020 that aims to use a clear unique mandate of cross representation and collaboration across all the core sectors of the events industry, for the first time – Business Events, Exhibitions, Music, Sport activations, Arts/Charity/Cultural events, Festivals/Shows and Weddings. It has the support of all the main industry associations and businesses of all sizes and sectors as well as the various current campaigns aligned to OIOV, including #WeCreateExperiences B2B campaign launched on 7^th December 2020 and the B2C campaign in March 2021. This positive messaging campaign aimed to remind and inspire the business event decision makers, public and national media about the power of events and their true value to society, our well being and the wider economy. It delivered over 150 PR broadcast/print pieces across the Four Nations, and the campaign videos have received 1 million views and over 3.5 social media impressions to date.

The campaign also focused on reassuring and inspiring messaging content, that showcases the UK events industry’s world leading expertise in audience management and logistics that enables it to deliver safe events in 2021.
Sean Willis

Managing Director, Terrapinn

Sean Willis
Managing Director, Terrapinn

As Managing Director of Terrapinn’s London business, Sean directs the creation and execution of B2B events across a range of industries, markets and geographies. He also serves on the group’s board of directors.

He joined Terrapinn as a conference producer in 1997 and has worked in production, sales, general management and has previously managed Terrapinn’s South African business, the launch of Terrapinn World Congress, and a range of events across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.

Judging Information

The Conference Awards will be judged independently by an esteemed panel of conference, event & venue professionals across a wide range of market sectors.
The scoring will all be conducted online, without any reference to other scorers and based solely on the submission of the entrant. This will ensure the scores are unbiased and judges are not swayed by the opinions of other panel members.
Each entry will be scored by at least 4 judges in total. The organisers will collate the individual scores and use the average marks given to initially decide the finalists and ultimately to determine the award winners.Where the average scores are so close that it is too difficult to determine a winner, then other judges will be asked to evaluate these entries as well in order to make a final decision.
The information provided to judges will be used solely for the purposes of assessing the entries. Potentially sensitive information will not be made public.
Judges will absent themselves from any discussions where they have a vested interest.
The judges’ decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into and no reasons given for decisions.
If you need help with your entry or require any clarification, please contact Sian Jones on 020 8788 3710 or via email sian@globalconferencenetwork.co.uk.