Simon Blows Email & Phone Number

Stevenage, Gb

Stevenage, Gb

Stevenage, United Kingdom

After 18 years of Event Management experience including 6 years as a Group Manager to part of the team I was promoted to the new position of Event Logistics and Development Manager (Head of Operations). My role changed from Event Management to people management and portfolio delivery. The team deliver circa 50 events a year and work in close collaboration with the Event Production team, marketing, sales and customer services as well as working time and again with many other areas of the IET business.My role switched to creating and fine-tuning processes to enable us to best deliver a portfolio of events within the realms of a larger association. I have fine tuned my financial analysis and reporting skills and now support the Head of Global events. With the team delivering Conferences, Awards, Dinners, Courses, Exhibitions and Lectures it is a busy and demanding time.During the pandemic the events industry went through a major upheaval and we were no exception. One minute it looked as though the bottom had fallen out of the events industry and then we successfully made the change to virtual events. I and the team re-trained to learn the skills to be able to deliver events and it is to our credit that we did so well. As I explained to my Director at the time, usually an Event manager has to just run an event, but when it's virtual not only do we have to run the event but we also have to build the venue run all the AV to make the event happen. Well done to every event professional for getting through this period!We are now focusing on delivering top class ROI to our delegates and giving a high level of customer experience - our NPS scores are through the roof! By carefully managing costs and mitigating any risks we are ensuring that we return to the IET a good gross margin to enable the organisation to do the great things it does such as work with schools, EDI and free community events. Interesting times...

Stevenage, England, United Kingdom

As a Group Manager this was my first experience of leading a team. I managed team of four event organisers to deliver the logistics of half the IET Events team - approximately 50 events per year. As well as that I also had events of my own to run.The event I ran were similar to before and I added the International Telecommunication Synchronization Forum in Prague under by belt to add some international experience as well as continuing with Conferences like the IET's conference on AC and DC Power Transmission (ACDC). I ran a number of our courses such as Safety Critical Systems and delivered quite a few of the Institutions premier public engagement events - the Prestige Lectures where I also sat on the Committee responsible for the direction and the speaker selection.The people management skills of leadership, trust, motivation, problem solving etc were developed in this time. It was a very busy time with a lot of events to run as well as my own events so time management was of a priority. It is a credit to me and the team that we delivered so many great events through this period.

Stevenage, England, United Kingdom

As an Event Executive (re-named to Event Manager) I organised a portfolio of conferences, lectures, seminars, exhibitions and dinners before being promoted to Group Manager above and the IEE changing name to IET.Some of the larger conferences I organised where the European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC 2005) in the SEC in Glasgow, the European Time and Frequency Forum (EFTF 2004) in Guildford, the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2007) in Edinburgh as well its forerunner ICAP in 2003 in Exeter.The conferences I organised ranged from a small 20 people meeting to 1,700 delegates and comprised all the usual aspects of a call for papers conference including varying sizes of exhibition and curated streams of invited speakers. Most of the events had gala dinners so my all-round knowledge and experience was formed in this earlier stage of my career.

Godmanchester, England, United Kingdom

I ran a number of Charity events raning from an Open Day for 10,000 people or a Christmas Carol Concert for 1,000 including lifesize nativity with real animals and children to a Country Night or a Pet Blessing at Ely Cathedral for 1,000 people and animals!It was a brilliant learning experience going from no event experience to delivering a 10,000 person fundraising day within my first three months. On top of that there were so many firsts - building a life-size nativity scene at a Christmas Carol concert complete with real children and real animals... and they say never work with kids and animals!On top of the event organising experience I was also in charge of identifying, booking and running the exhibition booths at high profile events such as Crufts, Supreme Cat Show, Northampton Balloon Festival, Burleigh Horse Trials and so on.Being a medium sized charity I also looked after the volunteer groups and occasionally took animals out to local schools for show and tell, or, oddly, a donkey to the national premiere of 1002 Dalmations at a Cinema! There certainly was never a dull moment!

Bsc Honors Sport (Science & Administration), Sports Administration/Science

Activities and Societies: Rugby and Cricket

Maths, Economics A Levels