An Exhibition for Successful Event Organisers

As an event assistant, I would hope I’m on my way

The SquareMeal Exhibition that myself and my colleague, Muminah, attended was held on Wednesday 20th September and Thursday 21st September 2017 at 1 Old Billingsgate Walk, Lower Thames Street. After spending a spectacular 20 minutes (it should have only been five, of course) to find our way to the event, we eventually managed to visit some fantastic and informative stalls. Naturally, being an events exhibition, they were all based around events companies, experiences and venues. As well as this research into prospective clients and venues on the day, we allotted ourselves onto two seminars based on awards evening (namely; the Glamour Awards) and social media.

Though not being quite what we expected, the Glamour Awards seminar was useful for informing event coordinators about how an awards evening is run. This included how certain problems can be dealt with; such as different celebrities’ requirements and maintaining the area. The Social Media Matters seminar, in my opinion was of more value and was quite informative and was all about how businesses should deal with the different platforms available to them for further marketing and monitoring opportunities.

Making our way around roughly 18 stalls, Muminah and I collected business cards, leaflets and brochures along the way from event or similar companies that took an interest in us or vice versa. The first stall we stopped at, ‘Superbooths’, did not have any of these available that I was able to see, which was unfortunate as it was a photography mirror and it interested me for future use at events. You stand in front of this full length ‘selfie’ mirror, able to see yourself, whilst a camera attached behind the glass took four images that you were counted in for.

Moving on and heading for lunch, we saw a variety of stalls such as ‘Designer Flowers’, ‘LEO’ and ‘Lick Me I’m Delicious’. If you wanted a party and event flower specialist, ‘Designer Flowers’ are the company to go for! They offer wonderfully creative centrepieces strewn with flowers and lovely LED lights, as well as chandeliers and feathers, dependent on the event theme in mind. ‘LEO’ classifies themselves as a meeting and event space, where they have a variety of different types and sizes of meeting rooms, available in 37 locations across London. For you event to be really special, however, the ‘Lick Me’ company was really quite something. With edible bubbles, edible mist and edible fragrances, as well as the tipsy fountain and bespoke branding chocolates, this company really made an impression on me. Whether your event is supposed to be an enjoyable or a professional evening, this company will encourage some light-heartedness to make the function special and unique.

After lunch we encountered some more business stalls, such as ‘etc.venues’, ‘D&D’, ‘Team Tactics’, ‘Aqua Shard’, ‘ICE’ and ‘The Caterers’. Though I have not had contact with some of these companies since, I can proudly say that we worked with etc.venues on an annual event for one of our clients, held at County Hall London. Through the exchange of our business cards, our company were invited to a launch party at Aqua Shard. Since then, we have been considering using their venue for another one of our clients’ events.

These communications in themselves show that the SquareMeal exhibition is very useful in venue finding, networking and client-finding. If you would like to become a successful event organiser and pull off impressive functions, I would suggest taking a visit to the next exhibition on 19th and 20th September 2018. For a list of more event venues, click here.