By Kevin J Waters, director, Event Resources Group
Kevin Waters has over 25 years’ experience in the events industry. Event Resources Group is a firm of CMP Preferred trainers who specialise in event-consultancy, training and event health and safety matters.
Keep pace or lose your place
I have just finished the last of piece of training for one of my remote students, an events manager who has 3 years’ experience organising all manner of events for a government department: her time is precious.
The training culminated in two final days of one-to-one training to finish the curriculum and I can honestly say I am sad it is over. Over these last three months we have built up a close professional relationship, and I am pleased to add this will continue as I am to further mentor her as she starts her own event agency, albeit in her spare time!
She is now set to attempt the Certified Meeting Planner examination later this year and make no bones about it, this is no gimme! The CMP examination sets a rigorous test of 265 questions over three and a half hours and 55% is needed to scrape a pass.
Should she pass, she will be one of only 11,000 + worldwide CMP designates, which will certainly make her CV pop!
In addition, CMP-qualified event planners earn more than non CMP-qualified planners as reported by Payscale.com
So why put yourself through all this, it’s not cheap and you’ll need to dedicate your time as you’ll need a minimum of 25 hours accredited training which must encompass nine disciplines or domains. On top of that, there are exam application fees.
As the event industry accelerates through tremendous growth and technical changes, it is reasonable to expect that the demands made upon event professionals will only broaden and deepen, meaning you’ll need to know more about a wider variety of things.
Moreover, there is going to be much upheaval in the coming years as event technology continues to disrupt the industry. I’m sorry, but those of you who organise small events or similar re-occurring events are in for a shock because these basic organisational functions will become automated and many jobs will go.
Basically, what you did last year will not be good enough in the coming years.
The mechanics of project management are no longer enough; you need to understand the bigger picture as events, marketing, PR and promotion merge into one as they do in experiential. Face-to-face is here to stay but on a far deeper emotional level.
The mixture of big data, social psychology, marketing, corporate governance, sustainability, social media, the marketing mix, audience segmentation, demographics, and omni-channel marketing are just some of the topics you may need to understand.
The simple take-away here, keep pace with this fast-paced industry or fall behind.
Author: Molly Hookings
Molly joined the editorial team in March 2019. She has several years’ experience working in broadcast and journalism, as well as marketing and PR. Past experience includes working for the BBC and independent publishing houses. If you have a story you think Molly might be interested in, please email: molly@eventindustrynews.com
