AddingValue Blog

By Randle Stonier
CEO, AddingValue

Introduction

Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU), the UK's leading university in event management, through the country's first Centre for Excellence in Event Management (UKCEM) have just awarded me an honourary doctorate.

As you can imagine, this is a great personal honour. I remember as a 6 year old winning a school raffle for a budgerigar (it was a few years ago) - this was another budgerigar moment - I was all at once stunned, delighted, disbelieving and so so happy - things like that don't happen to me. And my mother is once again in a state of shock.

Back in 1995, I came across a small article in one for the events magazines saying that Leeds Metropolitan University was considering introducing a degree in events management and requesting feedback from the industry. I dropped them a note, saying it was an excellent idea and that if I could help please give me a shout. Never slow off the mark they replied asking for input from a practitioner and employer's persective, and so I became "an industrial advisor" - something akin to a vision technican (a window cleaner). I went on to become an external examiner for LMU's BA (Hons) and HND in their Events Management course for six years and continued to work with them on various projects.

Growth & Courses in Events

Since the early days of 1996, Event Management at Leeds Metropolitan University has gone from strength to strength, from an initial 35 undergraduates to a 2009/10 freshers intake of some 450 students, and the faculty have developed a raft of events courses and strands. On a full-time or part-time basis, students can study from degrees to postgraduate certificates, diplomas and masters programmes. These include:-

 

• BA/BA (Hons) in Events Management,
• BSc in Sports Events Management
• BA/BA(Hons) in Conference & Exhibitions Management,
• BA/BA(Hons) in Event Fundraising & Sponsorship
• BA/BA(Hons) in Managing Cultural & Major Events,

post graduate qualifications:-

 

• Certificate, Diploma or MSc in International Events Management,
• Certificate, Diploma or MSc by distance learning in Events Management,
• Diploma or MA in Responsible Events,
• Diploma or MSc in International Festivals Management,
• Certificate, Diploma or MSc in Sports Event Management

 

Randle Stonier, CEO of AddingValue, receives an honorary doctorate in education for services to events management from LMU.

LMU/UKCEM have also developed short courses designed to address specific industry professional development needs including courses related to event planning, marketing, finance, risk management and evaluation. Why the need for standards in Events I've been asked why? Why did I believe that back in the early 90's we needed a set of standards to emerge in Events Management, why did we need to professionalise the industry? In short, fully-fledged professionalisation carries the virtuous badge of statutorily underwritten integrity and expertise centred on a carefully policed register, codes of ethics and credentialism.

credentialism. We have an increasingly diverse, discerning and demanding population, including corporate and public bodies as well as individual audiences. Back in the 80's and 90's incidents and issues arose all linked to the need for rising standards and quality, which would in turn gave rise to more legislation.

This, coupled with growing international competition, and the subsequent need to generally 'do more with less', 'do better', provide consistency and transparent qualifications, meant we needed a lot less of the enthusiastic amateur (and dog) operating from their front room delivering self catered events, unintentionally providing vol au vents filled with e-colli, or parachuting groups into remote landscapes devoid of risk assessments, contingency plans and medivacs and a lot more professionalism. Professionally recognised qualifications whether from trade bodies or universities have a huge role to play in this journey.

Leeds Met - helped raise standards in the events industry

Since LMU's first events management graduate course, I've watched that baby grow - not only walk and talk but sing and tap dance. It has been an immense priviledge to work with a highly dedicated academic team (both past and present) and even more so, to experience at first hand the raw enthusiasm and progressive talent of successive waves of Leeds Met events graduates. It's more than compensated for having to wear a Dreamcoat gown and a dodgy hat.

Speaking as a doc, my prognosis is for increasing excellence in events, we just have to ensure we are now rewarded appropriately for this enhanced professionalism.

 

This is the first time I have ever blogged so I am rather excited!

But not as excited as I was at the Eventia International Awards on Friday night at London's Grosvenor House Hotel.

Surrounded by the great and good of our industry, we won Gold for the Best Event Demonstrating Corporate Responsibility and Silver for Best Long Haul Group Travel Programme.   

By Tina Morris Managing Director, AddingValue Events Wow!! Following on from our success last year when we won Platinum, you can imagine how good this felt! I was Kate, Angelina, Meryl and Kristin all rolled in to one - and I had big hair too - every girl likes to make the effort ! (he he!). The winning project was an incentive for Canon Consumer Imaging to Zambia and Botswana with a strong focus on supporting the World Wildlife Fund. Great project, great client, great team and above all, great to be helping worthwhile causes and walking 12 feet tall in the process. In these challenging and harsh times, it is so lovely to receive all the warm congratulations and best wishes from clients, from competitors and from our supply partners……

Tina Morris, MD of AddingValue Events, and Cassander van Eerd, Project Director celebrate 'Gold' for Corporate Social Responsibility on behalf of Canon.

So again, a big thanks to our industry for these accolades and support and even bigger thanks to our client and our supply partners, without whom, clichéd as this may sound, absolutely none of this would be possible.

 

Thanks to the good folk at mashable and a few additions of our own and our visitors.

Clients and guests always ask, can you get good deals for individuals?

In short, no. Or rarely. But here are some great sites to help you on your way. 



Flight savings and more
 

CheapAir - Searches for all regular and sale fares at the same time and allows you to filter the results on the fly via Ajax so there are no reloading delays.

Momondo - Offers search for nearly 500 airlines in nine languages.

Vayama - Uses an interactive map to help you choose your airports. Also generates 3D seat maps for your plane to help you choose your seat.

CheapFlights - Also operates CheapFlights.co.uk. In the US they assist you with finding cheap tickets via JetBlue, American Airlnes, Orbitz and Priceline amongst others.

CheapTickets - Offers up flights, car rentals, cruises and even train tickets.

Expedia - Besides being able to search all the major airlines, you can also book hotels, cruises and more.

Hotwire - Sells unsold inventory from major companies and offers them at a large discount by not showing you the name until after you book.

LessNo - Specializes in flights in the USA, the UK and Indochina.

Orbedia - A metasearch that allows you to check Orbits, Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire,
CheapTickets and more in one shot.

Orbitz - Books all forms of travel from airline flights to trains & cruises.

Priceline – Name your own price for airfare, hotels and car rentals, and then see what they return to you to meet your bid.

Trabber – Searches 30 websites for the cheapest tickets for users in the USA, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the UK.

Travelocity – Probably as famous for their spokes-Gnome as their booking, they do go the extra mile giving you phone numbers to speak to an actual human if you need to.

Wego – Focuses heavily on international flights by searching numerous foreign carriers as well as domestics.

Yahoo Travel – Search all the major airlines with only low booking fees.

Airline-Network – A UK-based search that focuses on long haul flights to overseas destinations.

Cleartrip – Flight and hotel booking inside of India.

DoHop – Part-owned by CheapFlights.co.uk, gives you the ability to search over 660 airlines worldwide.

FlightChecker from MoneySavingExpert.com – Focuses on budget airlines, offers charts to show you which part of the month is the cheapest time to fly.

Ixigo – Cheap airline search limited to flights inside of India.

Jetcost – Jetcost searches multiple ticket sites such as Expedia, British Airways and more to help you find the cheapest prices.

Kayak – Searches over 140 airlines and travel agencies and gives you the tools to book directly through them.

Liligo – Offers localized search of hundreds of airlines for Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary and the UK.

Skyscanner – Leans towards broader searches for those with flexible travel dates. Also offers suggestions for those who just want to go somewhere, but can’t think of anyplace themselves.

Low cost carriers – check the latest names with Wikipedia

Miscellaneous

Travelzoo – sniffs out some of the best deals on the web

AirlineQuality – A site for rating airlines, their seats, airports and their premium lounges. Also offers chat rooms for people to discuss everything related to the airlines.

Farecast.Live – Microsoft powered service to search multiple sellers and predict for you if you should buy your ticket now or hold off for a possible price drop.

London Heathrow – flight arrivals & departures

FlightArrivals – Check on flight arrivals, departures and reschedulings in the USA and Canada.

FlightAware – Track all of the flights in the United States in real-time. You can also narrow it down by carrier and see exactly where a flight is at any time.

FlightStats – Check the status of airports in regions all over the world, flights, rate the airports and discuss on the forums.

FlightView – Get real time updates on flights and the status of airports.

FlyMyCase – A shipping company specializing in picking up and delivering your luggage to and from just about anywhere in the world.

SeatGuru – Detailed plans for different models of planes that gives you ideas of what each seat is like in advance so you can choose the best one for you.

If you want to add some others, please tell us about them and we’ll add them to the list.

By Randle Stonier
CEO, AddingValue

Climate change aside, let’s face it, the world is changing fast…

Our client lexicon incorporates Web 2.0 stuff as a matter of necessity. But already words, expressions and thoughts like blogs, wikis, Feedburner - the RSS feed creator, Ajax driven websites, podcasts and vodcasts, the PingoMatic weblog ping tool, the WordPress blogging tool, Technorati’s blog monitoring tool and the LinkedIn social network plus Digg, Reddit, MySpace, Twitter, FaceBook and del.icio.us are.... so yesterday. Now we’re talking mico-blogging, Pownce, Netvibes and PageFlakes but by the time you read this, they will also be so passé.

As quickly as we assimilate and take advantage of new technologies, the challenge for us as professionals is that something else is roaring down the pipe-line in that nano second of a heart beat.

It’s the era of rapid prototyping and rapid change. Dip in, mess around, try a few things, get the guys all playing, learn quickly and move on.

This is not a time to be faint hearted.

By Randle Stonier
CEO, AddingValue

As we've recently filed our numbers at Companies House... an abridged view will tell you we delivered a £1.26m turnover and a PBT of £83k.

Not bad for a first year that already seems so long ago (well, we're already almost half way through the next fiscal). Hopefully we'll do even better as we've doubled the number of clients...

Until next time, stay well.

By Randle Stonier
CEO, AddingValue