How do you decide how to structure your event? First, you really ought to decide what you are trying to achieve.

I spent a few days in Amsterdam the other week, attending a meeting of the Cross Innovation project that is being led by Birmingham City University. The project has 11 cities taking part and they are looking into policies that can help the creative industries influence other types of business, especially in more traditional areas of the economy.

One of the ways the project is going to attempt this is by looking at brokerage, which they define as being “services offered by agencies that facilitate connections between sectors and individual firms where none previously existed”. The brokerage services that the project has looked into are often events.

It made me think how different events I have hosted and attended are constructed. Also, I thought about how much or little they focus on outcomes.Continue reading