Join the Events Management Community: Learn, share and drive the future of events at the University of Edinburgh

Are you involved in planning, organising and running events at the University of Edinburgh (UoE)? If so, we would love for you to join our community and hear your voices to help drive the future of events and their provision.

Potential stakeholders and staff members from across the UoE are being encouraged to join the Events Management Community which is being created by the Information Services Group (ISG).

Joining the community is an exciting way to share knowledge and learn best practice and will bring a range of benefits to stakeholders as well as ensuring you are at the forefront of events strategy and procurement.

Catherine Hetherington and Dawn Dodd, Collaboration Services Team Managers, said: “There is a wealth of event management experience across the University. The user group for the large scale events platform, EventsAir, has already brought together many stakeholders and the group has played a key role supporting and learning from each other with respect to online event management during remote working. 

“As we look beyond 2023, to the future of events management we need to ensure that the needs/requirements of stakeholders across the entire estate is represented and look to build a wider community that can continue to support and learn from each other and develop best practice.”

Currently, many tools are in use across the UoE which support all stages of events management. Although each of these tools was initially selected to meet specific needs and requirements this has also inevitably meant that there are now multiple tools in use across the UoE with similar functionality.

Additionally some centrally run tools need investment or procurement to meet the needs of event organisers and their attendees. These include the Event Booking Service on MyEd and the EventsAir platform which was procured as a tactical solution. EventsAir has played a key role in helping to deliver high-profile events across the University.  And more recently, the platform played a part in supporting the Postgraduate Recruitment Team to win the Gold Award for ‘Best Open Day experience’ at The Heist Awards 2022.

We recognise that we have a new set of challenges for events teams. They now must consider the implications of delivering hybrid events to meet the changing needs of attendees who expect a variety of delivery methods and parity of experience for both in-person and remote attendees.

This transformation demands a revisiting and reappraisal of what our events management services need and desire and a re-evaluation of how we want to deliver to meet these demands. Growing our Events Management Community will help us on the right path.

Among the activities stakeholders can get involved with are the events showcases currently underway and running until the end of Q1. These include EventsCase, EventBrite, Gecko and Best Practice for Hybrid Events using MS Teams; with more showcases being scheduled for early 2023.

To get involved with the Events Management Community please contact Catherine Hetherington and Dawn Dodd via: catherine.hetherington@ed.ac.uk dawn.dodd@ed.ac.uk