Here we go again but once again an informal meeting struck a cord that I wanted to explore.

I was in a meeting having an informal chat with a journalist, a council employee, a business owner and a bank manager...this sounds like a joke but that's not my style so I'll get back to the story!

We were talking about different ways that school children could raise money and one of the group caused instant silence when they said that organising events was easy, it was the easy option.  The rest of the room went quiet as we let it sink in that she could have just insulted me and my profession.  I tend to be a fairly easy going person and so wasn't hugely offended, especially since it's a fight I have to fight every time I win business.

Why are we considered that way?

Humans are naturally organised and naturally pig headed - hence do we all think we can do everything?  I actually agree that event management is not a mysterious art - it's just a case of being organised, starting at the beginning and just ticking things off a list. Isn’t it?

Well let’s not get into the different ways that people learn and manage data other than to say that to some people being organised is harder than getting to the moon on a balloon.

I just fundamentally think that knowledge and experience enable me to do my job much more effectively bringing major cost and time savings to my clients.  Does everyone explore why they attend events?  Whether or not it’s really a good idea or just the MD having a need to prove that his company is great?  What are your objectives – branding, PR, sales or a combination of all three?  Do you want to make money directly from selling on the stand?  Do you know which suppliers can do the best job for that particular event? Which ones are all talk and no trousers?

It’s all about experience and knowledge – I’d love to put it in a bottle and share it with you but I haven’t found a way yet.  However, by hiring a professional you can borrow their skills and build some very successful, stress free events.

To me, events are easy but are they easy to people who don’t do it everyday and prefer mind maps to To Do lists?

It's been an interesting week - one that has questioned my assumptions and led me to question the role of an events professional.

This week, I had my first Linkedin originated meeting ie I didn’t know the person before we met on Linkedin. I met up with another person heavily involved in the events industry and inevitably our talk turned to the future and how events would fare in the new Social Media world.  I've always been keen to promote the benefits of events to companies large and small and compared the ascendancy of our services to that of PR agencies.  My position being that many, if not all, companies now recognise the need for someone to help them write and manage PR - it is seen as a profession.  Events, unfortunately are still considered a “nice to have”, an expense and not a must have.  My vision was for Events to evolve and become the third essential hand to marketing managers.

Hence I was interested to hear at this meeting that he felt that PR was a dying industry!  If they were dying where did events now stand?  It was a fascinating conversation, more so as it was the third time in 7 days that I’d heard this.

No, I don’t think PR is dying, I think it just needs to evolve and evolve quickly.  Do PR consultancies merge with Social Media agencies or do they just switch focus from printed releases to including a plan for social media?  Printed PR has it’s place, particularly in specialist industry magazines but surely PR consultancies now need to prove that they can manage a social media campaign effectively and that they can use their skills to best use on this media.  In this new world many companies will think that their staff can manage the Twitter feed but wouldn’t it be so much better to use a professional who can write effective, focused copy?

I do believe the same can be said for events.  Anyone can organize events but a professional can really focus on the essentials and get you further quicker and with less stress.  However we also need to evolve and whilst events will not be replaced by online meetings and virtual exhibitions we need to work out how they can be combined effectively into the promotional plan for the event.

I firmly believe that we'll be much worse off if we don't meet face to face, if we don't explore new products with all senses and not just eyes and ears.

So maybe PR is evolving and so are Events - we just need to keep focused on our clients and what their clients need.