President's Letter: Experience Us as the International Live Events Association
by Ingrid Nagy
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
It’s hard to believe that I only stepped into my role as ILEA President at ILEA Live in Calgary just a short month ago. It is such an honor to serve my community in this role, and I look forward to the year ahead! This year’s ILEA Live goes down as one of the most attended events ILEA has hosted. Nearly 500 professionals from all areas of live event production joined us in Canada, our educational program received rave reviews, and I had the opportunity to meet several new faces. Thank you to the ILEA Live Committee, the City of Calgary and the ILEA Calgary chapter for hosting such an amazing event. What a great experience to kick off my term as president!
As we recognize ILEA’s 30th anniversary this year, I wanted to share the three focus areas the board of governors has identified as part of the organization’s strategic plan to lead ILEA into the future:
- ILEA will become indispensable. We will continue to create and deliver compelling membership value by honing in on our members’ core business and professional needs. This means providing programs, products and services to respond to those needs. We will make your ILEA membership indispensable.
- ILEA will claim its voice as the expert in the live and special events segment through communications and branding. ILEA Experience, our new content hub, is an important step in achieving this goal. We share industry-specific content on Experience every week to inform, inspire and influence event planning professionals. We are also addressing and fine-tuning areas such as a formal media program, social media strategy, and sponsorship.
- ILEA will leverage technology to assist with organizational efficiencies, as well as showcase leading opportunities for the live events industry. ILEA plans to conduct a technology audit, investigate solutions for sponsorship management, and expand education programming at ILEA Live to include virtual opportunities.
In September, we encouraged our Global Partners to contribute articles to Experience around the theme of the business of brand experience. It reminded me of the “Ask the Board” session at ILEA Live last month where we discussed the need for all of us to continue to promote the much-needed name change from ISES to ILEA. At the core, ILEA is about live event experiences and creativity, and we will continue to advocate for the industry and reinforce that the International Live Events Association is the voice for live events expertise.
As we head into IMEX America in a few weeks, this is a great opportunity to remind the events industry to now experience us as ILEA. As an exhibitor, presenter or attendee, I encourage you to display your ILEA member logo proudly. Take this opportunity to promote ILEA membership to your colleagues and talk about why YOU are a member of our community. We’ll be located at booth #G1965. Throughout the year, you’ll see more from us about how we continue to claim our voice in the live events industry through communications and branding.
I hope ILEA is as much of an indispensable part of your business as it is for mine, and you will continue to inspire others to join our growing community!
Until next time…
Ingrid Nagy, CSEP
ILEA President
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