Convene On Site: London, Part 4

The Visit London press trip wrapped up this past Saturday, and after a short English holiday with my wife, I'm back at work, sifting through piles of business cards from the many contacts I made, not to mention stacks and stacks of brand-new memories. Two final postcards from the other side of the pond:

1. A world-class tennis event is a meeting with strawberries and cream. Visit London pulled out all the stops on this trip, which on Saturday culminated in a visit to Wimbledon, where we learned about ticket packages (easily reconfigured as incentive trips), toured the handsome new Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum (available for events), and watched some dazzling tennis (Sweden's Robin Soderling beat Brazil's Thomaz Bellucci 6-4, 6-2, 7-5, while Russia's Maria Sharapova beat the Czech Republic's Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 7-5, 6-3). It was particularly interesting to watch what happened around the court while a match was going on, which was both everything and nothing -- armies of ball boys and ball girls (pictured above), line judges, umpires, and other officials, all positioned exactly where they're supposed to be, moving and speaking only when they're required to and only in prescribed ways, all in service to the players. Just like meeting planning, with logistics, ground rules, regimentation, and even pageantry -- the science of an event -- setting the stage, then receding into the background while the art of an event plays out.

2. Destination marketing is older than Jane Austen. On Monday, my wife and I spent the day in Bath, the historic spa town about a hundred miles west of London where Jane Austen lived for part of her life and which featured in several of her novels. During a walking tour, we learned about Richard "Beau" Nash, who became the city's Master of Ceremonies circa 1705, when its popularity as a resort destination was just beginning to rise, and who eventually appointed himself "King of Bath." Something of a dandy, Nash introduced elegant new rules for social conduct and dress, and in 1708, he commissioned the building of the Bath Assembly House, which soon became a primary gathering place. According to a BBC profile of Nash, "Within three years, Bath was turned into the most desirable location in the country, even drawing socialites from the continent." It's not overstatement to say, as the BBC does, that "it was Bath that made the man, and the man made Bath." Could a destination marketing  executive ask for a better epitaph?

Convene On Site: London, Part 3

The theme of the day here in London seems to be adaptability. The press trip in which I'm participating stuck to London Eastside today, and as we made our way from Borough Market, to the East End, to Olympic Park, to Canary Wharf, we heard one story after another of something old that has become new, or something tired that has been refreshed. We began to get a sense of that yesterday, when we learned that ExCeL London was built on the site of the Royal Victoria and the Royal Albert Docks -- the busiest docks in the world at one time, reduced to an industrial wasteland when they were selected as the side of the ExCeL project. And we saw plentiful evidence today as we toured the formerly downtrodden heart of working-class London, whose revival is most visibly symbolized in the huge Olympic Park project.

But maybe the best story reflecting Eastside's spirit of evolution came from Lance Forman, managing director (and fourth-generation owner) of H. Forman & Son, the oldest salmon smoker in the United Kingdom, whose combination factory, restaurant, and event venue is pictured above. As Mr. Forman offered a tour of his facility -- the closest venue to the new Olympic Stadium, which sits about 150 yards away -- he pointed out a squiggle of purple paint that a local graffiti artist had blasted onto his warehouse. Recently, he said, organizers of the Hackney Wicked Art Festival 2010 asked him if they could use Forman & Son as a venue, and he told them that they could -- provided that they identified the best local graffiti artists and had them decorate Forman's restrooms. Two artists ended up spending a week painting striking graffiti-style murals in the facility's men's and women's rooms. To me, this is a terrific form of CSR -- Mr. Forman made a decision to ignore the graffiti marring his warehouse and to invite local artists to contribute to a business that is helping revitalize their community.

Perhaps equally important, we had lunch this afternoon at Mr. Forman's eatery, Formans Restaurant and Bar, and it was rather amazing. But then, I would say that.

Convene On Site: London, Part 2

It's an interesting time to be in London, meeting people from the events industry, because in just two years, the city will host the biggest event in the world: the Summer Olympic Games. At the ICC London ExCeL Launch Event today, everybody was talking about that within the context of the ICC project, which doubles ExCeL's meeting space, and adds a 4,000-seat auditorium and a 3,000-person banquet hall. The consensus seems to be that, taken together, the ICC and the Olympics are a game-changer for London.

"People always want to come to London," Amanda Jobbins, vice president of European marketing for Cisco, said during a "London Future Forum" panel discussion at today's event. "Here with the ICC, they've got another reason." In January, Cisco will bring its annual Cisco Live conference to ExCeL -- the first time that the Europe-based event has been held in London.

In 2012, ExCeL will host seven Olympic sports and five Paralympic events. "The brilliance of 2012," said Daniel Ritterband, London's director of marketing, and another London Future Forum panelist, "is it's a catalyst." Added Bill Morris, director of culture, ceremonies, and education for the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games: "London is a wonderfully porous city that can welcome people from wherever. ... [The 2012] London [Olympics] will be truly spectacular, but in its own way."

Convene On Site: London

This is the view from the Executive Lounge of the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, which is the host hotel for a press trip that Visit London has organized around the opening ceremony for London ExCeL's new International Convention Centre (ICC). (Apologies for the photo quality, but it's not too bad considering I snapped it using the Photo Booth app on my MacBook Pro laptop.) If you've got to get some work done on a beautiful summer day in a gorgeous European capital, this isn't a bad place to do it.

The ICC event is tomorrow, and the neat thing about it is that ExCeL has organized something that's much more than a photo opportunity. In fact, it's a day-long meeting, with a forum on how cities can attract business opportunities, a media briefing by London Mayor Boris Johnson, a keynote presentation, networking, and more. Makes sense, because what better way to show off a new conference center than by hosting an actual conference?