Growing Pains and Supply Chains: What I’ve Learned in 2023

As I reflect on the year that was 2023, I can’t help but focus on how far we have come. When I turn my mind back to January, supply chains were only just starting to recover from almost two years of restricted supply. We couldn’t buy microphones because more urgent electronics took priority on microchips. We couldn’t buy lighting fixtures because the automobile industry took priority on LEDs for their headlamps. The labour force in our industry was rebuilding, retraining, and trying to keep up with the unrelenting pent-up demand for live events that had accumulated over the life of the pandemic. The entire event industry was grappling with the idea of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events and how they were going to use the power of these tools to connect and engage with their audiences. The shutdown that resulted from the COVID pandemic was hard but the re-opening transition out of the pandemic was harder and in January 2023, we were in the height of that transition back to in-person events.

Fast forward 12 months and we can see how much has happened in a year. Most of the supply chain issues are resolved, equipment is flowing almost entirely without restraint, prices have stabilized, and we can once again predict our future purchasing. Our labour force is once again at full capacity. There is still a knowledge gap because so much of the labour force is new, but we have made significant strides toward educating, training, and exciting our team. We have seized this opportunity to push back against some of the practices that have become commonplace in our industry over the last 15 years such as overnight setups, rates of pay, hours of work, and employment contracting. The creation of the first-ever industry association, Canadian Audio Visual Providers Association (CAVPA), specifically targeted at the audiovisual industry was spearheaded, in part, by Bespoke. Our industry is now represented better and is championing its workers more than it ever has in the past.

We also seem to have settled the debate about in-person versus virtual/hybrid events, once and for all. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming feedback from event attendees is that they want to be together in person. We are social creatures, we crave interaction with one another, and gather enormous amounts of information from non-verbal communication and without it, our engagements are flat, without substance, and can leave us feeling unsatisfied. As an advocate for the in-person event industry, I’m happy to see where this debate has landed, however, I also believe that event organizers are missing an opportunity to extend their reach and reinforce their brand if they close their minds to extended audiences. We have perfected the technology of remote participation and if we continue to deploy the tactics of great event execution, consider guest experience, emotion, entertainment, participation, and engagement, I believe we can continue to drive meaningful experiences for attendees who cannot join us in person.

The industry has largely recovered from the awesome damage inflicted by the pandemic, but the scars are deep, and they will be visible for a long time. Our businesses look very different than they did, the workforce is rebuilding and retraining and the collective hunger for resources seems almost insatiable. The struggle, however, has driven us to be creative, to solve problems like never before, and to collaborate in ways that were almost unimaginable before the pandemic. We are doing more, we are innovating faster, we are connecting with people in new and creative ways and we continue to challenge the expected with new ideas. I am full of hope and excitement for 2024 and am looking forward to bringing new ideas to everything we do.