The Leadership Symposium 2018 was the fourth running of the event, which brought together senior individuals from the food, drink and grocery industry, including commercial managers and suppliers, for an interesting and lively event that attracted around 300 guests.

The conference featured speakers exploring the challenges of leadership, whilst sharing best practice with the audience. Last year’s event included presentations from Tesco CEO Dave Lewis, Innocent Drinks CEO Douglas Lamont and Fareshare founder Kris Gibbon-Walsh.

The charity GroceryAid support people in the UK who have or are working in the grocery industry and need a little help to get by. GroceryAid raises money through a variety of fundraising events and corporate sponsorship, with this event one of the year’s highlights.

Event experience delivers success

Since its inception the one-day event has been organised by TMB Events, one of the UK’s most respected event companies and a long-standing client of TechPro.

Responsible for events of all sizes and complexity, TMB Events prides itself on ensuring its clients objectives are met, the participants enjoy a memorable time and events deliver value for money. And that is where TechPro pick up the story.

Planning starts early for this event, with discussions around what is required and how much it will cost starting soon after the previous year’s event.

Whilst not always possible, planning a long way in advance helps TechPro book all the necessary equipment and people for an event such as this, which helps keep the costs to a minimum Event experience delivers success.

Since its inception the one-day event has been organised by TMB Events, one of the UK’s most respected event companies and a long-standing client of TechPro.

Responsible for events of all sizes and complexity, TMB Events prides itself on ensuring its clients objectives are met, the participants enjoy a memorable time and events deliver value for money. And that is where TechPro pick up the story.

Planning starts early for this event, with discussions around what is required and how much it will cost starting soon after the previous year’s event.

Whilst not always possible, planning a long way in advance helps TechPro book all the necessary equipment and people for an event such as this, which helps keep the costs to a minimum.

Integration is key to cost-effectiveness

The venue offers all the basic equipment necessary to stage events, but with GroceryAid delivering so many presentations and hoping to make a real impact on the audience, this had to be supplemented with video, light, sound and graphics from the extensive TechPro inventory.

To help improve cost-efficiency, the challenge for the TechPro project team was to design the event around the in-house equipment, only introducing the need for their own lamps, lighting desk, projectors, mixing desk, etc., when required to enhance the audience experience.

Set-up for the event took place the day before and started with all the TechPro equipment arriving in a 7.5 tonne lorry, along with the 3 technicians who would rig everything and TechPro Project Manager Adam Taylor, who ensured design plans and deadlines were adhered to.

Whilst using the in-house auditorium sound system makes sense, the additional TechPro equipment and mixing desk ensured closer control of the soundtracks, microphones and speakers used for all the different stages of the event.

Although cost-efficiency was important for this charity event, with such high-profile presenters, TechPro called on all its experience to minimise the risk of any technical failure, utilising its own quality-assured equipment where appropriate.

The auditorium projector and screen were utilised, with TechPro providing the video/graphics control laptops and switching system. In the same manner, the in-house PA system was augmented with an additional Yamaha audio console, D&B loudspeakers and Sennheiser radio microphones.

The venue lighting was supplemented with TechPro lamps, intelligent LED fixtures and an Avolites Tiger Touch Pro lighting console, combined to accommodate more interesting effects. Simple but effective branded panels added the finishing touch.

Reasons to engage TechPro

Many aspects of the event are the same each year, but the project team will always make a site visit to liaise with the venue event team and better understand what in-house equipment could be utilised.

Knowing TechPro understand what is trying to be achieved and have delivered successful events each of the previous years, allows the TMB Events team to leave TechPro to handle all the technical aspects and them to concentrate on the small, unique details that make the event memorable.

The TechPro team is trusted to deliver the technical performance on the day and are capable of scaling the event up or down at short notice, with the final number of attendees rarely settled until days before the start.

Essential to a successful event is the confidence TechPro instil in their client and indeed in the client’s client, who also now trusts TechPro to deliver on the day. It is this trust that has ensured negotiations for the 2019 event followed quickly after the successful conclusion of the 2018 event.

TechPro ensure the Project Manager, in this case Adam Taylor was always available at short notice, even out of hours to answer questions raised.

One notable reason amongst many, that TMB Events engages TechPro is their ability to plan the efficient use of resources, people and time to deliver a memorable event, while keeping costs under control.