Thursday 25 July 2013

It never rains ...

I met these little fellas enjoying the monsoon on my way into work today.





Wasn’t everyone supposed to go on holiday this week? What happened?

The CC team were in Amsterdam with ICCA (International Congress and Convention Association) for three brilliant, enlightening days of destination marketing tips and networking with our international counterparts.The Dutch work hard and play hard but their marketing strategy is mind blowing. #inspired;

We learnt that Cambridge ranks 5th as an inbound destination city and 56th internationally – 11 places up on the previous year; the power of Ambassadors and the power of video. We have some work to do;

Two intense days of St John’s Ambulance refresher training (but please - don’t even cut yourself on my watch);  

16 site visits with our agent gurus from Trident Hospitality and working hard to deliver on our Agents' Promise with a flurry of excellent new proposal opportunities for us to host events here in Cambridge;

Super exciting ‘getting to know you’ sessions with our fantastic new Associate Venues – second photo shoot in a week and we all look like we’ve melted! Massive thanks to Murray Edwards College for hosting us over the two days.

Half a dozen show rounds for multisite events as far into the future as 2018 covering all manner of weird and wonderful subjects from animals to archaeology, rare medical disorders to mobile technology!

Motivating presentation by the team from Yorkshire @letouryorkshire and the start of planning for Le Tour de France 2014….. get your yellow flags at the ready for Monday 7 July 2014 and follow @letourcambridge on twitter to keep up to speed and find them on Facebook too.


So my friends in meteorology, who wasn’t paying attention? The sun was out on St Swithin’s Day! In East Anglia, apparently, we have the lowest precipitation rate in the UK!

'St. Swithin's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain nae mair.’


Tuesday 2 July 2013

Squaring the Circle*



So, I’m back at my desk after a long break and have paddled my way through two weeks’ worth of correspondence; my productivity may have been low, but everything is now in neat, coded piles of importance and priority.

I have the most comprehensive, annotated, doodled-on ‘to do list’ ever and on the first day of our new financial year, with my extensive wish list of projects, I've already spent the budget.  At least twice.

Now, I just have to get on with it!

To attempt anything requiring any degree of creativity or logic would have felt like attempting to square the circle. But the day wasn't completely fruitless.

We launched our Associate Venue Membership – welcoming a dozen or so new non-academic venues into the portfolio – very exciting times. To find out more about our new venues take a look at www.conferencecambridge.com.

Martin Dempster and Kevan Holland of Trident Hospitality introduced our new Agents’ Promise and Code of Conduct at Midlands Consortium of Conference Organisers (MCOCO) Agents’ Showcase at Ramada in Sutton Coldfield. 

We found out that we’ll be hosting the next Great Ambassador Networking Group over Easter next year and we have a meeting on Wednesday with a fantastic potential Cambridge Ambassador as a result of our efforts on the ICCA database.

We have a meeting with the helpful people from UKTI to discuss our international efforts and potentially some joint promotions with Cambridge Airport, now that they have daily scheduled flights to Milan, Paris, Amsterdam and Geneva with Darwin Airlines.

And on Thursday,  we are very much looking forward to entertaining some clients at the Cambridge Belfry’s Banqueting Showcase – with an American theme, it being Independence Day, I think we’ll have a good night.

I love my job. (Most of the time)

Kelly Vickers
Manager, Conference Cambridge

Conference Cambridge is the official, free venue-finding service of the University of Cambridge, its Colleges, hotels and other  unique venues in the City.


*Squaring the Circle: On this day in 1769, a witty poem was published in the Cambridge Chronicle, in which, students were expressing their desire to wear square caps instead of round black caps.


Reference: the Cambridge Book of Days, Rosemary Zanders