Mike Champion’s Post

Name: I was invited to speak on a panel at the International MICE Summit by His… | Mike Champion | 14 comments
Uploaded: 2024-12-16T19:43:40.668Z
Duration: 6 min 28 s
Channel: Mike Champion

Mike Champion

CEO of Tahaluf // Co-creator of LEAP

3mo

I was invited to speak on a panel at the International MICE Summit by His Excellency Fahd bin Abdulmohsen Al-Rasheed, the Chairman of Saudi Conventions & Exhibitions General Authority. I felt honoured to be sharing the panel with several distinguished leaders in the exhibitions sector, and to be interviewed by Richard Attias who has had a remarkable career, including co-creating and producing brands like World Economic Forum and FII. To summarise my points: ✅ The market gives you the conditions to launch well. Growth as we've seen with Tahaluf can only happen in Saudi Arabia. ✅ Continuity and retention of talent are key to delivering excellent events. ✅ Put your faith in content and end user experience. ✅ Invest in young Saudi talent if you want to scale your business in the Kingdom. My takeaway from the Summit is that all eyes are on Saudi. Four years ago when we launched @Hack I said in my opening speech that Saudi is now a global hub for events. The attendance of so many global leaders in the events trade looking to expand their business in the Kingdom is continued proof that that's the case.

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Transcript

Please, I will call my colleagues to come on stage very quickly, Brian Britton from Eric's Global Mike Champion from Tahoe, Jeff Dickinson from DMG Events, Lisa Hannan from Clarion, Trixie Loh Mimran from DWTC. Un Laurent No��l from comme explosion, Mike. We heard from Lord Carter about the Harouf and I don't think now after his brilliant presentation, we need to hear more about the Informa. But anyway, I would like to ask you, as a CEO of the Halfin in Saudi Arabia, how do you approach your source scaling your portfolio? We saw on the PowerPoint the ambition and the volume. So how do you approach concretely this scanning strategy? Thanks, Richard. There's a couple of ways we approach it. I mean, there's a couple of factors as well. The first factor, of course, is, is the economic conditions that are, you know, made here by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Vision 2030. That has created the environment for which extraordinary growth can happen. If you were to transplant to Harloff to any other country, I shows would not be anywhere near the size that they are, and that is the. That is the economy booming in action here. We try to align our events with things that are strategically important for the government. That the government can get behind and wants to be able to support it. And the reason for that is I know that. Everybody here wants to see events that are world class within two or three years maximum of them being launched. And really, in order for you to grow an event in 1-2 or three years for it to be world class. You don't just need money. Or resource. You need partnerships, you need the government behind you, and you need to be working completely in tandem with the government. And so we're very fortunate to. You know, to collaborate and to partner Co create with many government entities on some of our larger shows. So that's a strategic position that we have regarding that. And there's a third aspect as well. It's very easy. After you've launched that event to, you know, to wonder how you're going to scale it even further. But it's not, it's not just that we're, you know, looking at launching new brands. We also are quite good at scaling it year and year. For example, leap doubled in size this year. And. The single most important factor in that, particularly in the Saudi exhibitions market. Is the continuity and retention of talent within your organization. Because trust me, if you've done an exhibition anywhere else in the world and you come to Saudi Arabia, it's a very different story. Yeah. Talking about talents, you know personally have the conviction that money cannot buy everything and at least cannot buy experience, which is absolutely crucial in our industry. How do you manage that? Be very frank, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is still a young country in the event industry. How do you manage this? I would say lack of experiences in an industry, knowing quite well what you are doing, what you need, people who are very well experimented. So how do you manage that currently, Richard? We got everything wrong in the first editions of running exhibitions. You know, we, we thought we needed five days build and we needed eight days built. You know, there, there was all kinds of things that we got completely wrong because of the supply chain was irregular, asymmetrical to what we were used to working with elsewhere. And I know that some of our, you know, colleagues have also suffered the same sort of, you know, issues now. With quite good at building events and getting them done on time and we're quite good at understanding how this market works. But you're right. You know that there's a young talent pool, some of the most senior people in the business now at to Harloff, they are Saudis. But we need to ensure that most of the senior people in the business become our Saudis. So we've established the Tehaleh Academy. Every year we have 9 young graduates who who join us. We had 1300 applications, such was the interest in the in the MICE, you know, industry in some of our brands. We had to, we had 200 that we went through a more of an intense interview process with. And the nine that we have now are super talented. Every year we'll bring on 9 more. And so and so we're committed not just to hitting a Saudi isation topic, we're also committed to actually instilling sort of a Tarlov way of, of managing exhibitions among young talent. Mark, I think you and I share the same convictions that content is so important indeed. And of course, you you say that rich content is key. So how do you manage this content development and to be sure that all your events have the right content for the right audience? I'm really glad you asked that question because it's something that we're dogmatic about from the very beginning. And that's probably because I was a conference producer, OK? And I was trained at. At at A at a competitor company, but very well into the rigours behind content production so. Next year 25 we'll finish on. We should finish on about 340 members of staff, colleagues working it to half, of which 25% are completely dedicated to the creation of content, research and the writing of content. We deliver dozens of stages across all of the events that we do and we want. All of our events because we firmly believe that. Particularly in Saudi, it's almost a post trade show approach. And I don't mean that in terms of, you know, exhibitions. I mean that in terms of just the traditional trade show. And actually things have to be content led and it has to be LED for the benefit of the primary market, which is the the end user, particularly what they want. So we do a lot of research with them, hours and hours of research in terms of who the best speakers, who we need to bring hundreds of hours of research. And then of course we also align it if it's a strategic conference. With the government, so there'll be an Advisory Board with the government, the government entity that's responsible, and we'll take their direction and their approval based on what's important for them to.

Stoyan Yankov

Professional Speaker | Bestselling Author | Corporate Trainer | Productivity, Performance & Workplace Culture

3mo

Thanks for sharing Mike Champion. Impressive to hear all the work and attention to detail going on behind the scenes of Tahaluf. And also how much Saudi is committed to investing in innovation and supporting Vision 2030. My friend Fahad Aljumayd recently told me about some of the amazing projects happening in the region. Keep up the great work!

2 Reactions

Tahir Ngada

Maritime Affairs/Crime Science

3mo

Excellent!

1 Reaction

Mohd Salman Khan

Assistant Professor Political Science I Delhi University

3mo

Saudi’s rise as a hub isn’t just talk—invest in talent, content, and experience, and watch it thrive

1 Reaction

Muhammad Arif Rabbany

Driving Digital Transformation and Delivering Innovative Solutions for Businesses | Empowering Teams to Excel

3mo

Amazing

1 Reaction

Rafal Mrzyglocki

Entertainment, creative design, technical production, AV installations, location-based entertainment, immersive | EU/MEA

3mo

@congrats Richard Attias

Julian Pistone

Co-Founder | Speaker | 10y Google | Cor:age - The Docu Series | Board Member

3mo

Mike Champion "We got everything wrong at the beginning." This makes it even more impressive how you leveraged the exponential growth of Saudi Arabia and the continuity and strength of your team to deliver truly world-class events and content.

2 Reactions

Neil Redding

Near Futurist since 2019 | AI & Spatial Computing Speaker | Founder & CEO, Redding Futures

3mo

Excellent to see what you're building Mike Champion — congratulations and looking to the near future with you! 👏👏👏

1 Reaction

Ahmed Alaaser

Exhibition Stand builder & shell scheme in Saudi Arabia & Egypt

3mo

👏👏

1 Reaction

Carsten B.

Helping Businesses Scale with Customer-Centric Sales Strategies | Global Account Management Expert | Product Launch & Revenue Growth Specialist | Founder & Principal at Bohlmann and Partners W.L.L Qatar

3mo

It's not about being perfect from the start It's about perseverance and teamwork Your journey is a testament to the power of resilience and strategic growth Mike Champion

1 Reaction

Vietnam Oud - REALOUD

3mo

😍

1 Reaction

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