Major Events Specialists in Brazil

Dennis Mills CEO of Major Events International and Piers Lawson, newly appointed Client Relationship Director are in Brazil throughout November attending the Soccerex Global Convention and Expo Estadio where MEI have are exhibiting, courtesy of Eyemotion. Expo Estadio, a tradeshow and conference for the design, construction, furnishing and management of stadiums and sports venues will run from the 22^nd – 24^th November in Sao Paulo and MEI will be joined by Major Events Network Members, AMS Acoustics and Rapsican Systems who receive bespoke services from MEI. The team will then move to Rio de Janeiro for Soccerex, the world’s largest football and business event which runs from the 26^th – 30^th November. 

In addition to these two exhibitions, MEI will be travelling around Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro  where Dennis Mills will speak at Brasil o Pais do Esporte. He will speak on the panel “Infrastructure and New Equipments, valuing sport practices”, before returning to the UK on the 1^st December.

MEI and Populous to host a briefing on Innovation for Venue Design

Throughout November 2011, MEI is looking at venue technology in the context of venue design at major events.  With this in mind MEI and Populous will hold a briefing on Innovation for Venue Design. This is a great opportunity to hear from some sector experts about their experience and lessons learnt about innovation for venue design.

The event will take place at 2pm on the 7th December at the Holiday Inn Regent's Park. Speakers will include, Tom Jones of Populous, Roy McGowan, Director of Steer Davies Gleave and Jon Coxeter Smith of Sagacity

There are still places so if you would like to attend please contact abrice@majoreventsint.com to secure a place at this briefing. It is free for Members of the Major Events Network and £50 for non members.

Major Events Network has first members meeting.

On the 16^th November 2011, the Major Events Network which has replaced EVTG and DEG, held their first members meeting in Waterloo. The idea of these bi monthly members meetings is to provide members with an opportunity to offer MEI feedback and discuss opportunities in the major events market. It was attended by Simon Ancliffe from Movement Strategies and Ashton Doherty from Systech-Solicitors. The meeting was chaired by MEI’s newly appointed Client Relationship Director, Piers Lawson.
 

The meeting kicked off with looking at the event calendar for 2012, which is attached, the next briefing on Innovation for Venue Design on the 7^th December in London. Furthermore Jane Roy, MEI’s Country Director for Scotland will working on bi monthly events in Scotland which will be announced in early 2012. Moreover the Major Events Network will be launched in Brazil in the New Year which will witness the network expand into Brazil and open new windows of opportunities for existing members in the UK. What’s more MEI is hoping to arrange a site visit to the Lambeth Police Command and Control Centre which will be announced in 2012. In addition to our briefings, MEI is always keen to organise missions for those companies looking to visit a new market, this will be discussed at each meeting and arranged once there is enough interest.

As some of you may be aware MEI have media and industry partners where MEI gets free passes to attend these events, sometimes there is a chance that MEI can pass these passes to its members, click Media Partnerships for more information about MEI’s partnerships and how you can make the most of them. Furthermore MEI is exhibiting at Soccerex and Expo Estadio in Brazil this month and are hoping to repeat this next year and getting more members to share the stand with them, AMS Acoustics and Rapiscan Systems are sharing a stand with MEI at Expo Estadio in Sao Paulo. If you are interested in taking up this fantastic opportunity for November 2012 please contact Piers plawson@majoreventsint.com.  Lastly MEI is a commercial partner with the Counter Terror Expo in April 2012, so if you would be interested in us representing you please get in touch.

Again as a member each month you will receive London 2012 procurement opportunities by email as and when we receive them, the feedback was that they are not always of interest or relevance to you but that they are good to received, in response to the MEI will now brief what the opportunities are so you don’t have to open each one and work out their relevance. In addition to these we are now collating Brazil opportunities which are highlighted in the Brazil Journal each month. Furthermore MEI is collating procurement opportunities around Scotland for Glasgow 2014 and the Ryder Cup for those who prefer to do business closer to home.

The selected discussion topic for this meeting was about the benefits of attending SportAccord which is an Exhibition for Olympic and non Olympic Sports Federations to meet and do business. The discussion was around the relevance of MEI attending in order to support members. It was discussed that generally MEI’s members like them to be at as many conferences and exhibitions as possible to keep abreast of new opportunities and whether they attend will depend on their strategies and relevance of the event.

Finally Piers announced how MEI is always looking to expand MEI’s team experts and looking for Sector Heads to take the lead on Briefings and assist other clients MEI has just welcomed Chris Phillips as the Head of Security and Resilience, there has been talk of Jeff Burke of ES Global to head up the Temporary Overlay sector, we would be delighted to hear if you would be interested in heading up a sector.

Major Events Network gets excited about Life Beyond 2012

     

Following the success of the Life Beyond 2012 briefing in September, on the 3rd November 2011 MEI re ran this event focusing particularly on Brazil. This briefing was sponsored by Nabas Legal International Lawyers and delegates were a mixture of London 2012 sponsors and members of the Major Events Network which has taken over what was EVTG and DEG. All delegates had an interest in where the opportunities life after London 2012.

    Sponsored by NABAS Legal - leading international experts in Brazilian, Portuguese and South American law.   

Delegates were lucky enough to hear from Vitoria Nabas, Founder and MD of Nabas Legal International Lawyers opened the presentations with some hard hitting facts about the legal implications of setting up a business in Brazil. Vitoria, explained how processes move slowly in Brazil with a lot of Bureaucracy and ever changing tax policies makes it difficult to feel as though you are progressing. However her message was clear “doing business in Brazil is tough but doing business in any other country including the UK is tough” and it is important that you know the reality and implications from the outset in order to succeed. For more information on Nabal Legal International Lawyers please visit www.nabaslegal.com. 

Eduard Picino Key Account Director at Major Events International looked at future events beyond London 2012 in the UK, Russia and Brazil. Seeing as there is a lot of interest and endless opportunities in Brazil due to it being one of the BRIC countries and the 5th largest country in the world, Eduardo gave some staggering facts on the extent of the opportunities in Brazil particularly around infrastructure regardless of Major Events let alone those that have come about as a result of the World Cup 2014 and Rio 2016. UK companies have an advantage as Brazilian buyers are looking for the UKs lessons learnt from 2012 as well as the expertise that UK companies can offer in Brazil. For more information on the scale of the opportunities on Brazil please contact Eduardo epicino@majoreventsint.com. 

Andrew Bacchus Head of Construction & Global Sports Projects at UKTI introduced the British Business Club to the delegates, which is a free online tool that British and International companied who can register to receive information on business opportunities around London 2012 and beyond across all markets and countries. To register for this one stop shop, please visit https://www.ukti.gov.uk/britishbusinessclub/register.html. 

Finally Dennis Mills CEO of MEI and Piers Lawson Client Relationship Director of MEI introduced the new Major Events Network and discussed the benefits of joining with regard to preparing your business for life beyond 2012, whether your interest is in Brazil, Russia or event Europe, the Major Events Network will provide businesses with high market profile briefings and networking opportunities. For more information on this network please contact Pier plawson@majoreventsint.com and for information on some of the extra more bespoke services that MEI can offer to support your company beyond 2012 please contact Dennis dmills@majoreventsint.com. 

It has been decided that as a result of the interest around this concept of a briefing MEI will continue to run this on a regular basis. What came out of the briefing was that with Brazil in focus there are many opportunities to take advantage of and that you should not let the legal implications hold you back, however know that there are experts that MEI can put you in touch with who can support your journey to export. Finally there are also many UK based Major Events such as the Commonwealth Games beyond 2012 which businesses can certainly make the most of.

Realising a Culture of Environmental Sustainability: Festivals, Events and Tourism

On 24^th November, the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation hosted a conference promoting the importance of sustainability for festivals and events.  Speakers included Ben Twist of Creative Carbon Scotland, Dr Calvin Jones, an economist from Cardiff Business School and Emma Synnott, from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Andrew Coulton of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, who presented some very imaginative and innovative measures his team has employed to encourage a low carbon approach to running a major international festival.

New Start Scotland

On 18^th and 19^th November, New Start Scotland held an exhibition, seminar and workshop event at the Glasgow SECC, with advice and information from some of Scotland’s best known business experts to help budding entrepreneurs start and run their own businesses.  John Swinney MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, spoke about the importance of new, small and growing businesses to the Scottish economy and the government’s long-term ambitions for Scotland. Glasgow Chamber of Commerce hosted a Breakfast Network Meeting followed by a presentation by Nathan Kosky of AEG International on the commercial opportunities offered by the forthcoming Scottish Hydro Arena, a magnificent new entertainment and sports venue due to open on the Clyde waterfront in Spring 2013.

Construction Scotland and BRE Scotland joint Annual Conference

130 delegates attended the above event in Glasgow on 1^st November to discuss the complex challenges associated with lowering the carbon impact within the construction industry.  Speakers included Fergus Ewing MSP, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism in Scotland, who confirmed the Government’s commitment to reducing the country’s CO2 output by 42% by 2020, Gordon Mathieson, Leader of Glasgow City Council, who described the role that the 2014 Commonwealth Games would have in driving change and Dr Peter Bonfield, CEO of BRE, who explained that lessons learned during the procurement phase of London 2012 could lead to world class innovation in terms of products, materials, technologies and processes.