You could say travel and innate desires to discover and create new experiences is in my DNA. At the tender age of two my mother and I flew from New York to Singapore, then travelled up river by oil tanker through the untamed jungles of Sumatra, to live with my father in an oil camp - the whole trip took more than a week. I in my time there I learnt to speak Dutch and Indonesian before English. Later we moved to Tripoli, Libya and spent a decade in the Middle East, before I finally settled in Australia as a teenager.
These early experiences underpinned my 40+ year career and I’ve now worked on every continent apart from Antarctica. The first half of my career was spent pioneering real-time HD satellite delivery of speakers into events anywhere in the world. My company became one of the largest in Asia with offices India, Singapore, China and Seoul as well as in the UK, Europe, US and Australia.
This technical expertise gave me a head-start for the second half of my career in the events industry where I embed technology into every event right from the start, so we rarely bring in outside skills. Our mantra, “only create an event we would want to attend ourselves.”
It’s why we challenge our global partners with “what would you love to do but haven’t been able to - yet?”, giving them the freedom to create, another reason I enjoy the industry. Every event is an opportunity to creatively bring a feeling to life via a unique experiences stimulating all five senses. It’s the adrenalin of live action and guest response that makes our work so satisfying.
The way we work gives us an advantage over our competitors because our partners bring us wild ideas and never-before concepts. They know there’s a strong probability that their ideas will more-likely fly when they work with us. Together, we strive to better our last project with innovation and technology.
Example: a 40-person incentive programme in Nashville where we met with the champion ice hockey team, The Predators, to create a unique experience. Six months in planning, we took over a training stadium, employed players as coaches, the team’s cheerleaders and their commentator/match caller, who shared stories of great moments in the team’s history. The delegates played on the ice, complete with commentary and photos ops. You can imagine the impact on the delegates and our satisfaction at creating such a memorable experience.
In my spare time I continue to travel camera. When at home I love to plan, shop for and cook meals from recipes I’ve discovered in my travels, another way creativity finds form.