Hope you have a good tent, you won’t be home this summer.

Throwback to January I had just landed a great job with an exciting event management company in Dublin with prospect of a mental year ahead. I was blown away by the event calendar and I was loving getting stuck into the wide range of events from major music festivals, college events, food markets to even the Euro 2020. The prospect of summer on the road had me buzzing.

Cue Coronavirus…

How Event indsutry responds to Coronavirus Covid-19

The Future of Event Industry in Ireland

The events industry has now been flipped on its head. My thoughts goes out to all those friends and colleagues in the industry who have lost jobs and had to give up projects that they’ve worked months on. We are a resilient industry though and while we face a few hard months ahead, but I know we will bounce back even stronger and who knows maybe this is a turning point for nightlife culture in Ireland.

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light. Campaigns like Give us the Night have been working towards a cultural shift in Ireland why not after this, by god it we’ll need it.

Give us the Night aims:

  • To support, nurture and reframe the conversation around nightlife and the night-time economy in Ireland.
  • To highlight the economic value and societal benefits of a diverse and vibrant Irish night-time industry.
  • To contribute to the creation of jobs and sustainable indigenous businesses within the night-time industry, and to broaden employment opportunities for those operating in the creative arts.
  • To ensure that Ireland adopts a more progressive European approach to nightlife, that reflects the wide range of lifestyles and working hours here.

(Image credit: 1 Plus Secuirity)

Reevaluate the Event Industry with the aid of Technology

For those of us lucky enough to still be in a job and working from home, we must use this as an opportunity to strengthen the aspects we have control of in our work. We, at 1 Plus Events, have been offering client alternative solutions to events that would have traditional taken place on site, for example, the Prestigious Maynooth University Clubs and Societies Awards we due to take place in the Glenroyal Hotel, but we are adapting it to an online platform but keeping the glitz and glam.

We have also had to look at our traditional means of marketing for our retail and corporate partners as the trends we once knew are unrecognisable in current situation, so we decided that the best way to approach this was through the means of content-based event marketing. 

 
 
 
 
 
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Virtual Responses to Social Distancing

This is an excellent opportunity to try new things and take advantage of utilising technology in the event business. I have seen tons of ingenious virtual event planning ideas from around the globe all from my bedroom. Here are a few…

 
  • Virtual Gigs:

  • Virtual Bingo:

 

 
 
 
 
 
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  • And numerous Virtual Fitness, Yoga, Pilates workouts:

 

 

While these events are great and definitely making this situation a lot easier for people, and I commend everyone for going the extra mile on them, but for me I am crossing off the days till we get back to a bit of normality, recovering from the impact of Coronavirus in the event industry. While unfortunately a lot of events had to be cancelled, a number of events have gone to great lengths to get dates later in the year, which gives some hope. I think attitudes around events will also change and people won’t take events for granted anymore, which can only be a thing for those of us that work in this industry.

This article was written and created by our Community Manager, Karl Mc Govern, with 1 Plus Events.