By Sydney Nolan, global account director, SoolNua
June in my home state of Minnesota, USA, is graduation season. High school, university, it doesn’t matter: it’s always a season of celebration and (my favourite part, as a 16–18-year-old) grad parties.
I always liked these celebrations in part because it made you think about your dreams and hopes for the future — or what we hoped to support neighbours, friends, and relatives to dream up and accomplish, if it was their turn in the spotlight rather than ours.
As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that one of the best things about dreams, too, is that they shape and change with us.
I’m not sure if 18-year-old me, or even 22-year-old me, would’ve dreamt at my graduation parties that I’d be working abroad, in an industry that grants access to amazing events, incredibly talented people, and more travel than I ever thought I could pack into a calendar year.
It’s with all of this in mind though that I ask: is it time for the business events industry to change the tune, tone, and shape of its own collective dreams?
The question comes after having attended an event appropriately titled The Dream, a conference organised by the House of Beautiful Business. The event – and the House – dares to ask attendees to dream up a better world for one another, that features life-centric business practices and builds toward what the House calls the life-centric economy.
The event introduced me to so many fascinating people from MICE-adjacent organisations that I hope more of us will increasingly connect to and work with, that are undertaking intriguing work to help Europeans and others think bigger and bolder about the world we’re creating and the consequences of the paths we forge through business and in life.
What I experienced over the course of three days with the House of Beautiful Business though also sparked many thoughts about how to make our own events more ‘Beautiful’, in every sense of the word.
I saw speakers get up on stage on day two of the event and directly challenge what their colleagues had said on day one, resulting in real-time debate and dialogue that made all of us think deeper and harder about the consequences of our decisions and the impact of our work; attendees and speakers alike didn’t hesitate to challenge us on heavily ethereal topics like human consciousness, the sinister side of technology, and theories of change to spur climate action.
I was thrust into conversations about these and other topics, rather than just asked what I do, what I was selling, how my business is doing, or what operations look like this year. We went deeper, together. It was admittedly exhausting by the end, but also deeply, deeply fulfilling.
There’s certainly a time and place for transactional, get-business-done conversations, to close deals and grow personal profits or, depending on what we do, even impact bottom lines as grandiose as those of actual nation-states.
But we also share a very real and solemn responsibility as event professionals to ask how we can and should be doing just better, in every sense of the word, for our clients and the people who attend the events we help plan, support, and create.
“When we meet, we change the world,” says a well-known meetings association. I know this to be true, whether we’re talking about meeting as part of a backyard graduation fete, on the floor of a trade show that draws thousands, or a Beautifully Bespoke event secreted away in the hills of Sintra.
For us to truly bring about change though, we need to be talking about, and then even more importantly, actually doing, business better. We need to infuse our business with true meaning and purpose, and be mindful of the full impact of the decisions we’re making, questioning the ever-reaching longer-term impacts and not just chasing short-term wins.
This is my challenge to us all, and the reason I want to keep doing this work and showing up for others in the industry for (hopefully) decades still to come. I’m honoured, thrilled, and humbled to share this space too, with other professionals who I know harbour this same drive.
A more beautiful world is waiting to be celebrated – once we organise the right events to welcome it, of course.
