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Much the same thing occurred with Quark. They approached us to run the pan-European launch of its ‘Quark7’ software. These were one-day events to be held across a month in Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Stockholm and Utrecht. We cleared this with Adobe because they do of course overlap in some of their software offerings, but they raised no objection.
Quark wanted us to offer attendees a fun day out – offering meals, snacks and soft drinks, there was a chill-out area with bean bags, devices playing lounge music with noise-reduction headsets, and we took a masseuse with us to relieve any attendees’ or participants’ stresses. All attendees were given Quark7 T-shirts and flip-flops. Each event consisted of the launch, a set of seminars, and a small exhibition of partner companies.
We were asked to book interesting venues and commissioned customised Nimlok fixturing, staging, AV kit, cabling and support equipment. We arranged for exhibitors’ standard-format signage to be made and brought them along with us, we also offered to transport the exhibitors’ brochures and kit between venues so they need only turn up for a turnkey base.
As with all sorts of events like this, a great team-spirit evolved as we unloaded our truck and built the event to fit the venue. At London we held it at the TUC HQ. In Frankfurt we were attached to the Zoo where peacocks wandered into the room several times, fortunately none of them gave out their annoying call, but we did hear lions grumbling nearby. Stockholm had the best views, Madrid had the best tapas.
Matt and Mark rode their ludicrously over-powered motorcycles down to Milan, equipped with walky-talkies for inter-bike comms. But they lost contact passing under the Alps. Matt made a solo run to the Channel with the momentous satnav message ‘In 600 miles turn left’.
But the real fellowship derived from the fact that at every venue we quickly found a local Irish bar that became our base for food and drink. This was a great gig to have organised.
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