EEMA (Event and Entertainment Management Association) is a fabulous attempt at bringing a highly fragmented industry together. In this very short span since its inception, the association has made a headway on several fronts; taking up the permissions issue with the government, giving inputs on event education etc.
The recently concluded EEMAGINE conference was another fine example of the good work being done by EEMA. The content was pithy and entertaining. The sessions covered everything of interest, and there was something in it for everyone. So we had sessions on relatively new avenues like sports marketing and getting press for your event, while also covering age old issues like risk management and music licensing. yet there was not a boring moment. They remembered to 'kill the darlings'.
'Kill the darlings' is a phrase often used in literary circles to mean the elimination of superfluous content by the authors even if they are emotionally attached to it. William Faulkner popularised this concept when he spoke of eliminating words that are unnecessary, no matter how attached you are to them because of the effort that you (as the author) have put into creating/carefully choosing them. The 'authors' of the EEMAGINE convention have done just that. I imagine they chalked out all that needs to be discussed in the BTL universe (and there must have been many!), then they worked out the relationship each of the issues had with each other. They picked those topics that were intrinsically woven into a story, one that somewhere involved all the individual topics. It is almost as if they chose only those topics that were separated from any other by a maximum of a single degree of separation. If the connection was too tangential, then they just eliminated it, no matter how close it might have been to them or how much time they had invested in considering it.
The well scripted conference ended on a great note with the announcement of the EEMAX awards. Considering how hard the industry works, it seems only fair that there be some light at the end of the tunnel. The awards were mostly won by the usual suspects, but what was encouraging was the odd gold being won by a lesser known agency.
It's heartening to see that organised thought is greater than an unorganised industry.
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