This article has been taken from the IABM Journal Issue 108. To see the full Journal click here.
Darren Whitehead
Director of Business Development, IABM
The election held in Q4 of 2018 for the EMEA Members’ Council proved how popular Regional Members’ Councils have become with over 15 candidates putting themselves forward to help shape the future direction and benefits of IABM.
In fact, the number of candidates wishing to serve on this Member Council was so great that IABM has been able to launch another ‘region specific’ Council from the surge of positive engagement. This new Members’ Council will cover the DACH region and its first meeting will be held this month.
It’s tremendously exciting that Regional Members’ Councils are being so warmly embraced by the membership. IABM has established a truly positive platform for engagement, not only with members and non-members but also with end-user customers as well. I know that the newly elected members of EMEA Members’ Council are as excited as I am to begin raising the profile of IABM in Europe and to create a greater level of end-customer engagement.
2019 has seen the implementation of a new series of events by IABM labelled The Executive Summit Series. These events are designed to be intimate, less formal and more engaging than the traditional thought-leadership events IABM runs at major industry shows. In addition, they allow IABM to support members at a wider range of events and to offer a higher level of support to members attending traditional broadcast shows. This has become more important as some members have been reducing their financial and resource commitment to some of the regional broadcast shows.
The first Executive Summit event of the year took place in February in Amsterdam, the day before ISE opened. The membership response to this event was very positive with presentations from AWS, Digibox, Guntermann & Drunck and TSL Products. The theme for this particular event was diversification and new markets. The presentations were around how members worked with broadcast products and services to provide solutions for customers from the Education, Aviation and Live Production industries. The networking after the content sessions proved that this theme was warmly received!
The next Executive Summit event in EMEA will be on 11th March, the day before CABSAT in Dubai. Full information on all the events across all the regions can be found on our website at
www.theiabm.org/iabm-executive-summit-series-2019/
UK
Q4 saw the UK Members’ Council run its event in Cardiff with our colleagues from BBC Cymru Wales ‘lifting the lid’ on their very pioneering and ambitious IP project. The venue was the ‘relaxed’ studio for BBC Wales’ Scrum V programme.
83 delegates attended in total with a third being end-user customers from different UK broadcasters. The UK Members’ Council events prove how important these engagement platforms are, both in terms of the topic and the quality of discussion as the industry moves through transformation and change.
This interaction with customers was also manifested at IABM’s Annual Conference through the ‘meet the buyer’ session that was actively supported by the UK Industry Advisory Board. My thanks go to those Board Members that not only joined this session but also stayed throughout the whole conference adding to the business-critical experience!
The UK Member Council is working on its event plans for 2019 now and the first event of the year, focusing on cyber security, will be announced shortly.
In general terms the market is still challenging with business coming in spurts that are totally unpredictable as budgets get released or put on hold. Forecasting and planning is obviously extremely difficult in these conditions but across UK and Europe I detect a level of optimism for the future despite the uncertainty of the current trading conditions. Many member companies have gone through the pain of transition and are now able to focus on building business in tangential industries as well as the broadcast industry. Myself and my Regional Director colleagues remain committed to supporting members as much as possible through this period, so please reach out to us with anything that is important to you.
