Overcoming Obstacles for an Outstanding Gala Event

by Jo Henderson

On Friday 31^stMarch, the European Business Awards Events team had a meeting to run through the upcoming Gala Dinner in Istanbul, where all 100 Ruban d’Honneur recipients would celebrate their success in reaching the final and the ten overall category winners would be announced.

The stage was ready, the food was ordered, flights and accommodation was booked and even visas were approved. This last point had come as a bit of a shock as we had only found out earlier that day that everyone visiting Turkey now needed an e-Visa prior to travel. It was a small hurdle, easily dealt with – an email was sent and all guests were informed that they had five days to go online and apply for their visa.

Phew – that was lucky – we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done – and went home for the weekend.

On Saturday morning, the news broke about the unrest in Istanbul on Friday night. We watched, we waited, we talked, we debated … what should we do? We decided to wait and see…

On Sunday, things seemed to be worse and by Monday, all of our plans appeared to be in disarray and it looked like the event would have to be called off. Safety was our number one priority and there was no way we could risk everyone flying in for the event and into the escalating demonstrations.

Our chairman of the judges, Phil Forrest, flew out to Istanbul on Monday to see the situation for himself and we were also in regular contact with the Consulate-General. Their feedback was that as long as you avoided Taksim Square, things were ok. We also got many messages of support from our finalists, saying that they were happy to travel.

So we decided that we would continue with the event but give everyone the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wanted to come or not. It was completely understandable that people pulled out and although we saw numbers begin to decline it certainly wasn’t by the amount we had thought – we still had an event. However, we were aware that those who decided not to come were going to miss out, and that wasn’t really fair. They had done so much to make it to the finals; we wanted them to be able to share in the evening, especially if they were winners.

On Tuesday, we thought it might be a nice idea to see if we could arrange a video link-up.

By Wednesday, we decided we definitely wanted the video link-up but we were all flying to or already in Istanbul. We were going to have to arrange it on the ground. A plan was put in place, which was made possible thanks to our most recent sponsor, BP Target Neutral who agreed to fund the link-up.  It was becoming a reality.

Then, on Thursday morning, the day of the event, we met with Haydar Furgac from Arkadin in Turkey and were blown away by his professionalism, enthusiasm and determination to make this happen. There were hurdles at every turn – the hotel’s service provider needed 24 hours’ notice to arrange the bandwidth needed for the broadcast – we had 11 hours at the most - but somehow the hotel (The Conrad, Istanbul) and Haydar managed to overcome this. Then there numerous other issues that were sorted out and amazingly the video-link up happened, it worked, and we know that those people watching from home were very pleased to be included.  

It was certainly an event to remember, but it was also a great success. It was different to the events we’ve held before but it didn’t feel in any way less prestigious – it was another first for the EBA – and we’ll certainly look at a video link-up again, although next time we’ll give ourselves slightly longer to arrange it!