21581 - SCTE Broadband August2022 COMPLETE v1

52 Vol. 44 No. 3 - September 2022 Issue from the industry For more information, see https://show.ibc.org/ systems, the CRMs and things you use to run a show and your accounting and booking system, they’re not designed to cancel things. That must have extremely challenging at a time when the world seemed to be coming to an end. We can all remember how impossible it was to predict even a month ahead. “Exactly,” Mike answered. “IBC is owned by six trade bodies; most of them have charitable status. One of the advantages of having all the different partners is that they can help us facilitate and to sense check our responses to the industry and then adjust them, which is the way we got through it.” I wonder what Mike’s fondest memories were, given that he has been with IBC for a long time. How has the show developed over the years? “Prior to my joining IBC was already looking to move out of Brighton, where it hosted a show every other year. They had a competitor in Montreux in Switzerland doing much the same on alternate years. IBC at the time was quite visionary. They recognised that Brighton didn’t have the scale it needed for the show to develop at the same rate as the industry it served; it didn’t have the venue, the hotels or the transport links. The same issue was facing the organisers of the Montreux show. “They bravely moved the show to Amsterdam for all sorts of logistical and business reasons, but they also tackled their competition head on and increased the frequency to an annual show. Out of that I learned that you have to be bold in business for the good of the industry. I watched them go through that challenge and make those decisions. Mike concluded, “In 1993, Montreux happened again and people made a direct comparison. It took a few years but eventually IBC won out as the show had grown so big it made no sense to continue.” It’s always the people that create the memories. “I’ve made lots of friends and so many memories. So I’d imagine everybody else who goes there is the same, it’s a great place. I have to say the only the overriding memory for me was 9/11 and that happened on the setup day of IBC. I was walking around the show and watching the planes fly into the buildings. A lot of us just didn’t take notice because we thought it was people testing the screens for some Hollywood movie effects type and we just didn’t get it.” Presumably there were a lot fewer people that year because flights were grounded? Mike said that was the case, but people still made a gigantic effort to get to Amsterdam in spite of the pervading shock and fear. “Even from the US, people still managed to find their way there and come and support the show. Especially Americans. I think there was a speech from President Bush, which said about carrying on with life, and that resonated at the time. So my memories aren’t just about the fun part. Out of that adversity, it was quite something seeing the industry pull together like that.” In terms of future proofing, do you have any sort of sense of how you might handle any further disruptors? It is anyone’s guess at this point what shape they might take. Mike laughed. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? We have operational plans for a whole number of scenarios. We’re very professional about that. When you cancel something because of a crisis event like COVID-19, all those contracts stayed in the drawer gathering dust, because they become irrelevant at the point something transformational happens. It’s about listening, partnership.” Which brings us back to Mike’s first point about risk. Mike replied, “Yes. When something’s absolutely blown out of the water, the first response is to ensure that we’re all in this together. Because then we come out the other side of it all together. And that makes us stronger.”