Building a good partnership is essential for a successful event, but human dynamics can somehow get in the way, as is normal human nature.
Take an association event, for instance. Professional event managers play a crucial role in helping the local association to bid for, and organise, a regional or global conference. However, association office-bearers, being volunteers working for no financial gain, do not like to be controlled or dictated to by event managers, even if it is in the best interest of the conference.
Instead of taking a controlling role, the event manager should serve more as a guide who has plenty of patience, and who can help the association to achieve their common objective – a successful meeting. If an event manger turns out to be a bottleneck, a convention bureau or government body should be able to overrule and come to the aid of the association.
Often, associations have difficulty justifying the way event managers try to provide one-stop service through their own subsidiary companies. An association is usually helpless and will accept this situation in the interest of the conference’s success and in maintaining cordial relations.
Again, a convention bureau should be able to step in and discourage such practices. It should then encourage the association to develop its own organisational skills through both funding and training. Such measures will reduce the monopoly of event management organisations and develop the true spirit of competitiveness.
A convention bureau could also use the help of previously successful association events and conduct briefing sessions for those associations who are yet to make a start.
Professor BVR Chowdari received the Business Event Ambassador award at the 2010 Singapore Experience Awards