Barbican, in association with HBAA, has launched an initiative aimed at mentoring rising talent in the meetings, conference and events industry.
As the BVEP’s National Events Month came to an end, a steering group of industry experts and rising stars came together to formulate how the scheme would work for the benefit of all.
The steering group included: Chris Parnham, Absolute Corporate Events; Jacqui Kavanagh, Trinity Event Solutions; Juliet Price, HBAA; Sue Burgess, BCD M&I; Angie Mason, Absolute Corporate Events; Paul Martins, Cavendish Conference Venues; Rajesh Vohra, Sarova Hotels; and Jackie Boughton and Rowan Lingard from the Barbican. It also has the support of other well known industry experts.
The concept for the mentoring scheme was developed by the Barbican following the HBAA forum and is designed to give rising stars across the industry the support they need as their careers develop. The steering group was keen to make it an industry wide initiative involving a number of associations and groups.
Jackie Boughton, Head of Sales at the Barbican, commented after the meeting; “The industry has a wealth of talent, both from those who have spent many years working in events and the younger generation just starting out in their career. The idea is to create an industry wide platform where people can share their experience and provide advice and guidance to those who will shape the industry going forward. I’d like to thank everybody who attended our steering group meeting for giving up their time to contribute ideas. Their valuable input will allow us to collaboratively move forward and make sure we retain talent within the industry.”
With the support of venuefinder.com, the first step will be to create an online survey to establish how the scheme would be best formatted to ensure it can be of most benefit to those it is aimed at. Details of this will be announced in due course.
Chris Parnham, chair of the HBAA and managing director Absolute Corporate Events added: “This is a great example of how the two generation extremes, the most experienced to the least experienced, can share knowledge to drive new success. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how willing the industry experts are to share the secrets of their success in order to help the next generation to create their own. It’s doubly exciting that we could be talking about association collaboration and I hope we can unite the whole industry.”
