Best Overseas Conference or Event (over 1000 attendees)
Attendable, Inclusive Africa Conference 2022
Working with African NGO inABLE, Attendable, the UK-based accessible events specialists, delivered the ambitious Inclusive Africa Conference 2022.
For many of the estimated 300 million people with disabilities in Africa, digital services and products are unusable. The Inclusive Africa Conference provides a platform for disability and accessibility experts, people with a lived experience, business and government to accelerate digital access for disabled people and ensure that no one is left behind.
The brief was to deliver an inclusive and accessible event and grow the audience by at least 25%. Challenges included overcoming the digital divide, poor internet connection and barriers including large geographic distances for delegates to travel and the unaffordable cost of travel.
The hybrid event combined a two-day in-person event in Nairobi which was live streamed to a large online audience. The conference was free to attend online and an innovative sponsorship arrangement with Google established 14 watch parties in 14 African countries, overcoming the digital divide and facilitating national coalitions to help accelerate digital accessibility.
Registrations were up 56% on 2021 and the event saw the launch of Africa’s first-ever digital accessibility standard for products and services for people with disabilities.
Bray Leino Events, UK National Day
UK National Day was an unprecedented celebration of UK culture, brought to a massive stage, the World Expo site in Dubai, for one day.
The concept was ambitious. Encapsulate thousands of years of history, art, science, creativity, and innovation.
The numbers were mind-boggling. 48 separate events. Across 8 different venues. Engaging an audience of 140,000. Hundreds of artists, musicians, suppliers, exhibitors, crew, and VIPs.
The first challenge was to bring key government stakeholders together with our creative and production experts to envision how we would deliver this feat.
Then, covid. Expo 2020 Dubai was delayed by 12 months, then travel restrictions and disruptions wrought havoc with our carefully prepared plans.
Despite this, the entire project was brought in under budget. We delivered a cultural and visual spectacular – incorporating sports stars, a royal visit, a parade, a full music festival, and a world record breaking 360-degree laser projection – that delighted stakeholders and audiences.
Capacity Media, Metro Connect USA 2023
Metro Connect USA is a vital meeting for North American C-level digital infrastructure leaders. In 2023, Metro Connect took place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, having moved from its home of 21 years in Miami. Attracting over 1700 delegates, this year was the largest event to date, and marked the kick-off of annual deals and trading between a vast number of senior leaders within the North American digital infrastructure, who line up $bn+ deals with partners, raise capital, and build out business road maps for the year ahead. Networking and private meetings sit at the heart of Metro Connect, and it boasts a high-class, relaxed and business-focused atmosphere, alongside a leadership-led conference. The sheer rate of growth, along with the development of networking & content features at Metro Connect USA 2023, is what makes it a contender for the Best Overseas Event award, with event targets being surpassed across the board. A concerted effort was made by the team to provide enhanced and tailored experiences for all attendees, which resulted in significant overall growth, fantastic customer feedback, and an overall uptick in brand recognition in the market.
Hyve Group, Africa Oil Week
Africa Oil Week puts Africa at the heart of everything we do.
Following a 3 year gap and following the covid dust settling, the AOW organisers set about returning to Africa, embracing the global energy transition and growing the event to pre-pandemic levels.
Hyve, Investing in African Mining Indaba
In 2022, the fallout from COVID meant it was down to the wire as to whether Mining Indaba was going to run. Having been postponed twice, we were preparing for a considerably downscaled version. Then, just six weeks before the event was due to begin, the South African government lifted restrictions – and it was all systems go! The team worked flat-out to bring together a powerful line-up of speakers and turn the focus on the industry’s most important topics. The results were incredible, in many cases surpassing Mining Indaba 2020 (MI20) which was held pre-pandemic.
In the run-up, the uncertainty meant that our targets and budget were very conservative. We didn’t just meet the target budget of £5.015m, we doubled it, to finish on £10.6m (106%) – exceeding MI20 revenue by £1.3m! SPEX revenue reached £6.9m, exceeding MI20 revenue by £700k and exhibitors had a 83% retention rate generating £4.2m – with £2.9m of that in onsite rebook. Total revenue was up 32% on MI20!
IFS, IFS Unleashed
Unleashed is the IFS flagship event aimed at customers and select prospects. Following a company rebrand in 2021, we also re-branded the event from IFS World Conference to IFS Unleashed. Taking place in Miami in October 2022 this event took a unique approach… we broke away from the usual conference objectives of updating our customers, prospects and partners on the latest company/product updates and instead focused on demonstrating how the right technology and success plans can dramatically liberate and accelerate business outcomes.
