In honour of our fifteenth birthday, we’re sharing 15 things that will remind you of the events industry in 2001. Warning, this list may cause nostalgia.
1. Guests were constantly leaving the event to head outside and get some more bars of signal on their Nokia 3310’s.
2. Britney’s VMA performance meant that pythons were an unofficial trend and people half expected them to appear at every social event.
3. Clients were beginning to understand that they could personalise the event and venue to represent their company better, so the ability to physically brand the event was high on a client’s wish list.
4. Laptops were becoming more and more portable, and so access to power was a frequent guest request.
5. #EventProfs were unsure as to the future of their industry. At this point, events had still not completely made it into the marketing mix and so there was no real focus on events in a company’s budget.
6. Apple releasing the first iPod put a lot of pressure on event DJ’s as everyone had a version of their favourite song right there in their pocket (this is probably also when DJ’s first started disliking their job).
7. Clients were reluctant to accept that the internet could assist them with tasks like event reservations and check in, and so for a while – the original and most extreme of the paper trails lived on.
8. Informal fashion was popular, with wealthy business men often seen at events in jeans and untucked shirts. So for event managers, dress code became a permanent fixture in ‘important event information’.
9. People were all after that element of ‘surprise’ within their events. However it was very difficult to pin down exactly what this was…
10. Conferences and meetings in the UK were enjoying the highest level of international guests in ten years, business travel became the second most popular reason for inbound tourism with 6.8 million visits in 2001.
11. Planners began to realise that not all events need to be held in a banquet hall, and that other unusual spaces could work too.
12. Clients catering requests branched out from vegetarian and vegan, and included ‘Atkins friendly’ dishes for their health conscious guests.
13. Everyone began to imagine how different their events would be when guests arrived on a segway, and how it would be mandatory for staff to zoom around the show floor instead of walk (though of course the segway dream lasted all of 10 minutes).
14. Themed events came back into fashion, because HELLO, how else could you possibly make your work stand out?
15. And due to pop culture at the time, the most popular requests for event themes likely included: Harry Potter, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, and/or Planet of the Apes.
Ahh the good old days.
