Business Design Centre - Creating The Event!

So, when we spoke to Kate at the BDC, she informed us that there is everything here that you will never need to set up an event such as ours. some of the BDC Partners, are:
• Corporate Conference Management

• Delegate Management

• Technical Production

• Set Design and Build

• Audio Visual Equipment Hire

• Powerpoint Animation

• Design and Print

• 3D Animation

• Video Production and Motion Graphics

• Themed Events and Parties

• Big Screen LED Technology

• Event Merchandise

For further information please contact Charlene Cairns, Hire Manager:

Email: charlene.cairns@avcproductions.com Tel: 020 7388 2068
Web: http://www.avcproductions.com/

Adjacent to the Business Design Centre the Hilton cannot be beaten for proximity and convenience for both organisers and attendees alike.
The Hilton London Islington offers 184 rooms including suites, family rooms and accessible rooms. All rooms are fully refurbished and are designed for optimum comfort and convenience. Each guest room incorporates air conditioning, high speed internet access, and the best location in Islington.


The hotel also has the bright, warm and welcoming, Mosaic Restaurant and Bar, the ideal venue for meeting, relaxing and unwinding whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner
Further information: Tel: 020 7354 7700

Web: http://www.hilton.com/


 

The Good Eating Company has a simple philosophy, to make each event the best it can possibly be.


Their food tastes as wonderful as it looks and is always different but never for the sake of it, consistently delivering style as well as content.
The Good Eating Company believes that each event is a special one. This belief inspires them to only ever provide the best quality food and service. They have a unique ability to capture the heart of the occasion and to tailor make each event to suit the client and their guests.
Further Information: Jean Betts, Events Manager

Email: jean@goodeatingcompany.com
Tel: 020 7288 6351
Fax: 020 7288 6276
Web: http://www.goodeatingcompany.com/

AVC Productions are the approved Audio Visual and Event Production partners to the Business Design Centre.

With their In-house Events team plus on-site technical experts they will ensure your day delivers the quality you expect. Across all industries and on any scale they offer a total package that covers everything from advance planning and design to live production, on-site management and post production services.

With over 26 years of industry experience AVC Productions offers a total event solution providing the creative and technical expertise of a high-end production company, with the cost saving advantage and quality assurance of owning their own kit.

Adding more than a touch of inspiration to any occasion; a conference, a product launch, a party or a fashion show AVC Productions use their expert knowledge of the venue along with your key event objectives to deliver a truly unforgettable event.

 The Event Organiser Manual

The Brochure is also available at: Whats On! < Go to Exhibitors & Organisers < Our Brouchure (pdf)

Lisa x

Lisa & Elliot's BDC Adventure!

The Business Design Centre

Well, Me & Elliot both went down to London on Thursday (28th October) to meet with Kate, the Conference Manager at the BDC. She very politely showed us around the venue, showed us the sizes of the different spaces that are available for use and gave some approximate prices which were not too bad!

Sony Ericsson & Orange were having a day there about the new 'Android' Phones, so it was cool to have a look around the stalls they had for developers (not that we were supposed to be in there mind you!) and see how they had set things up, which was pretty impressive. Unfortunately, we could not take photos in that area, and this was the area that was where we wanted to do the venue.

The Gallery, fits about 50 - 60 stalls - Right size I think!

It has its own reception area to check guests in, enough space for speaks and stalls, there is a seminar room (lots of them) next door which is easily accessed from this room and they can make that as big or as small as you like. One of the smaller rooms can be used for VIP's, in a catering / buffet style room. There is catering on site, security on site (security is included within the price or you can pay more for security overnight if leaving valuables around!) facilities, disabled access, they create the room for you - own tables, boards, can provide signage for the event and there are some big companies already located within the BDC.

Floor Plan:

Elliot will post pictures of what we found and Kate will be emailing me a list of all prices soon that I can post on here. There is a car park attached to the BDC, it is outside of the London Congestion Zone, easy enough to get to, Hilton Hotel and Ask! Restaurant next door, right next to a shopping centre full of clothes shops, food places, electrical goods, etc..

I think it is a great location for this type of event!

Only problem.... the BDC hold 2 weeks of a Design Event at the start of July 2010 which holds all University's that have Design / Digital Media courses showcasing their work. They would not be comfortable holding ours at the end of July because the two events are 'too alike' so the date may have to be changed to suit this venue - this can easily be done!

Lisa x

* Just as a point of interest, getting there without Sat Nav, Fine! Getting out of London without Sat Nav? Well....we ended up circling round for 2 hours, ended up on the other side of London and gave up n bought a Sat Nav to get me home!!

The Media Festival, The Actual Event Advertised & Setting The Date...

I have arranged a meeting with Kate, a manager at the Business Design Centre in London at 1.30pm on Thursday 28th October 2010. This meeting will be to discuss space, facilities, package of what we are after etc. Kate has been very helpful on the emails so hopefully she will be able to give us the information we need. Myself (Lisa) and Elliot will be attending and will be documenting the meeting (photographs, minutes) etc which will be available from the weekend online.


I received an e-mail from Nabeen at The Media Festival, Manchester 17th - 19th November 2010. The tickets are currently at £729 for 2 tickets, I have managed to whittle him down to £200+VAT for 2 tickets! IF we book by the end of the week. I think Adam had the idea to ask Sarah Barrow (Head of Media) if we could 'represent' the University at an event such as this one, and if so if the Media dept would be able to contribute towards the cost of the event.
I have arranged with my parents that the four of us can stay at their address as they only live about 30-40mins away from Manchester so that saves us paying for accommodation and if I drive to Manchester and back the total price of petrol would be around £40-50 which we can split between us all. So hopefully we can get this booked soon, it will not interfere with our studies and I think it will be very beneficial to us to attend.


ALSO....I have been a busy body and created an actual event! This will be advertised online on this site only for now, just to see if we have any response for it... now currently it is showing that we have actual tickets available for sale...should anyone pay for these tickets, I will reimburse them immediately as this is not an actual event. 


The Actual Event!

I have set the date for 29th - 31st July 2010. It is just after everyone has graduated so the graduates will have their best work available, the industry will be looking for graduates to join their companies...I think it is a good time to do the event.


So thats me so far! Updates after Thursday and hopefully a team meeting next weekend before we all go back to University (week 7). 


Enjoy Reading Weeks Guys!!


Lisa x

Library meeting (today)

Today, Elliot, Adam and myself all met in the library to discuss how things are going with this project and what individual jobs we would be able to do. We eventually came to an agreement that Elliot would look into producing an offline working prototype of the website, research how to fund the website should it go online and help Lisa look into the cost of the venue renting (when they both go to London to meet the manager of the venue). I would be looking into researching security, getting contacts for more possible sponsors and Adam would be researching costs of t-shirt printing and work out what sort of benefits volunteers would get from helping with the event. We also mentioned a job that Lisa could possibly do which would be to perhaps produce a typography-style advert for the event.

Also, there is a Media Festival taking place in Manchester in November that would be of great benefit for our project and for our future careers! However, even with the reductions from £750 to £100, the cost would still be too much for our personal budgets and so we went to speak to Sarah Barrow (head of school) to negotiate if she would perhaps subsidise the cost by 25%.

We are yet to receive a reply from her so fingers crossed!

Meeting 24/10/2010 posted by Luke

Just an update of things. We all met up in Tower Bar and discussed the layout of the website that Lisa came up with. We all agreed with the layout and suggested a few things that would make it stand out a little more. For example Elliot mentioned that we should have a glowing around the selected page link so the visitor will know where they are a bit clearer. Just something to make it look a little more presentable. I then suggested that we should have a section for video and photos to be uploaded so that the audience will look at what it is like and possibly make the decision to attend.

We then had a discussion about the budgeting for our project which we all knew was the most important element of all. We made a list of the sorts of things that we will need to look into to make a hypothetical budget so we have something to show for the potential sponsors. We agreed that we need to look at the following:

- Prices for venue
- Car park, catering and accommodation prices
- Security
- Volunteers and how we would be able to get them (possibly universities?)

Lisa and Elliot are going to London to visit the venue for our project ,the Business and Design Centre, on Thursday where they can meet the manager of the venue to discuss the prices for the renting of the rooms, security, catering, equipment and people to set up the equipment for the day.

More emails sent! By Luke

Just to let you guys know that I've now sent a few more emails out to Apple, Nikon and Samsung using the email Lisa sent Wednesday to Toshiba as a template and will send a couple more emails out to Broadcast and Skillset some time today if I get the chance (I'm pretty swamped with dissertation stuff and single camera today!), if not I will do by first thing tomorrow morning.

Was also thinking since this is a multi-media event perhaps get in contact with Nintendo and Sega for example to incorporate game design into the event (both for showcasing technology and the tutorial days so people can compose their own mini games or something. Just a thought!)?

EDIT: 22/10/2010, 5:56pm:

Just had a reply from Apple and they said they can't support us because they get loads of emails for sponsorship and stuff and they said they can't accept them being too busy for it. Still hearing from the rest of them though so fingers crossed!

EDIT: 05/11/2010, 3:57pm

Received a reply from AIME, they said they can't give us any information of sponsorship since we don't have anything to show for it online. Maybe try and get a working prototype up and running soon? Just a thought

Website Idea

Idea for a website...

What do you think? The logo in the corner and the boxes at the top are loosely based around Elliot's Idea with a bit more colour added to it.

The arrows just show things that we could have as a drop down box with more options to click on.
It covers all areas including sponsorship, volunteering, tickets, competition, showcase, event planner (day), travel to the venue, accommodation close to the venue, google map of the venue....etc!


Just an Idea! I can make this quick enough in iWeb also to get it online for the presentation, with possibly a page for each?


Lisa x

Logo!

Each of the group are coming up with their own version of a logo I quickly designed, this is the version I have come up with that I like. Colours can be easily changed to fit with the final style of the event once we have sorted this.


Lisa x

First E-Mails Sent!

We have sent emails to Toshiba regarding information about sponsorship and if their company would be interested in showcasing their new technology at an event like ours.


We have also emailed the Business Design Centre regarding pricing, space, floor plans, catering and security. 


We will wait a few days then try call if there has been no response. We will see what type of response we get before sending out more emails, and then maybe adjust our technique to obtain better information.


Lisa x

...and one more thing

We have decided to go ahead with using Adam's location choice dependent on costs. We are waiting for corespondents on this issue.

Posted by Luke

Contacts for possible Sponsors (Posted by Luke)

I've been doing some scouting around the internet and i have found a few contacts that I could try and get hold of. I have found the following:




Toshiba Media Enquires


media@toshiba.eu




Samsung Online Marketing


onlinemarketing@samsung.com




Nikon PR Office


proffice@nikon.co.uk


Broadcast


Chris Curtis: chris.curtis@emap.com


Skillset


Claire Doughty: claired@skillse.org


I will try and get hold of a few more that we could all try and get in contact with over the week and will hopefully have a few in the bag by next week's meeting.

(Elliot) Draft Plan of the event timetable

Planner Draft One

Day 1: Business and Freelancing

11:00 Tickets booth open and registration for events

12:00: Main doors open

12:15- 15:00 Company showing off latest software on the show floor.

13:00 -14:00 A seminar on 3D technology and how it might change the media.

13:15 -14:15 Company A giving talks on their products.

14:00 -15:00 Seminar on how to start off being a freelancer, covering how to sort out finance and what pieces of kit would you need.

14:15 -15:15 Company B giving a talk on their products.

15:00-16:00 Company C giving a talk on their products.

16:00-17:00 Company D giving talk on their products.

18:15 Events closed

Day 2: Talent

11:00 Ticket booth opens

12:00 Main doors open

12:15 - 13:45 Talk to the finalist as they show their work and explain how they made their product.

14:00-17:00 show casing the talent, judges on the day will make the decision their and then. 

17:00-18:00 winner receive prize and give a brief speech.

18:15 Doors closed

Day 3: Teaching

10:00 Tickets booth opens

11:00 Main doors open

11:15-11:45 Introduction of the day, whats going to happen and what the kids might learn form it.

First Half:

11:45-12:45 A hour lunch

13:00-14:00 getting kids into groups and talking about making a story

14:00-16:00 Kids go out and film

16:00-17:00 Basic editing of film (ROOM A-B)

Second Half:

11:45-12:45 Kids get into groups and talk about making a story

13:00-14:00 A hour lunch

14:00-16:00 Kids go out and film

16:00-17:00 Basic editing (ROOM C-D)

Both Groups:

17:00-18:00 Final rap and show some of the films made on that day.

18:15 Event Closed

Web Site draft one

Here is a look at the basic website layout.

This is to show where links, adverts could be on the website for now.

Another possible venue (Posted by Luke)

Found another possible venue for our event.

Birmingham Hippodrome


http://www.birminghamhippodrome.com/default.asp


This place is fairly big and has quite a few rooms. Was thinking we could have the technology/talent show case in the Patrick Centre for the 'technology' and 'talent' days.

"A large, versatile space suitable for small scale performances, large scale meetings, presentations or banquets. Accessible from Thorp Street and the main foyers, The Patrick Centre has 209 retractable seats, a lighting grid and three dressing rooms." Was then thinking we could have the tutorials for the interactive day in the IMI Suite (see the floor plan below). It's just about the right size for the kind of things we want to have if we were thinking about having tutorials on cameras, digital studio/editing software etc. " The ideal space for entertaining on a larger scale in the unique atmosphere of a dance studio. Easy access to best circle seats in the auditorium."

Possible Venue (Posted by Adam)

Business Design Centre
www.businessdesigncentre.co.uk

Located in london

the venue has a large open area for events. also of not is offices on the premises which we can look into and maybe find a company already on site that may be of benfit to the festival/expo.

located near public transport and also has onsite parking which is a strong pulling point with regards to visitors having good accessibility to the event. also hotels are located near by that would be usefull selling point to get people from all over the country to visit. also the venue is outside of the congestion zone

Useful Contacts

For exhibitors manual/floor plan:

Bradley Cordes
Tel: 02072886493
Email: bradleyc@businessdesigncentre.co.uk

Confrence Manager:

Kate Simpson
Tel: 02072886493
Email: kates@businessdesigncentre.co.uk


Planning Information:

Tom Edwards
Tel: 02072886557
Email: tome@businessdesigncentre.co.uk

Possible Security Firm (Posted by Adam)

Safe Shield Services

www.safeshieldservices.co.uk.

Key Info:

Email: - email via website contact section, also note the quote section on the webpage.

Telephone: 01865 854865

Areas Covered

• Oxfordshire
• Warwickshire
• Northhamptonshire
• Buckinghamshire
• Gloucester

this firm caters in Mobile Patrols and Event Supervisors.