Well another week has bustled past here at Metro and we find ourselves facing the prospect of a sunny weekend… Happy days!

As always there have been events taking place all over the city. We had one of our biggest clients in the banking sector holding seminars over at the Mayfair Hotel and at the same time we supplied the AV for a large event at Merchant Taylor’s Hall. We have been providing AV kit and production support for events taking place all over Europe, from Torquay to Istanbul!

And it’s not looking any quieter for next week either! We’re going to be running two simultaneous conferences in Monaco and Nice. These events will involve shipping out a delegation of Metro staff, complete with kit, to the sunny south of France. Long faces all around as you can imagine, but hey, somebody’s got to do it (sadly not me)!!! While all this is taking place, we’ll also be running an event for one of the biggest auction houses in the world over at BAFTA and running events over in Somerset House, Bishopsgate & East Winter Gardens.

On a personal note I am continuing on my quest to get out and meet with as many events people as I can in the city, to discuss how we can work together in the future. I will be attending the world forum on Social Media on Tuesday and the New Business Forum being held for WPP group members over at London Bridge on Thursday night. These are a series of evening talks and lectures from respected senior level staff within WPP. The talks give insight as to how these industry veterans have achieved all their big wins and successes to date. They are always very interesting and a great chance for a spot of pressure-free networking.

In the meantime, however, it’s Metro’s belated Christmas party tonight (I know it’s a little bit late, but that’s just the way we roll). We’ll be heading out in Southwark, so if you see a group of immaculately well-presented people talking about highbrow intellectual subjects whilst elegantly sipping on classy cocktails come over and say hi to us.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend, enjoy the Sunshine!

Terence Corness - Business Development Manager
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7202 2955
MOB: +44 (0) 777032 2955

terence.corness@metrobroadcast.com

As I’m new to working full time in the city, I’m really just starting to get my head around how many of the best bits of the Big Smoke aren’t immediately visible at first glance.  Some of the most interesting places in London are out of sight in cavernous subterranean rooms or hidden in courtyards and surrounded by anonymous corporate buildings.  There’s many that are far less well known than the two I’m about to use as examples but these are a couple that I’ve seen recently.

The first example is The Artillery Garden, belonging to the Honorary Artillery Company and situated just round the corner from Moorgate.  Metro was asked to put in place the audio visual equipment for a client’s event there.  Being unfamiliar with this venue, it was quite a surprise to walk along City Road, turn in at the grand façade, with its turrets and stone walls, and suddenly find myself in a six acre space with green gardens and a rugby pitch.   Surrounded on all sides by high rise glass and metal towers, from the street you are given no clue as to the existence of this fantastic outdoor venue.  They put out a huge marquee in the summer and it’s advertised as the largest garden in the city of London.  You can hire the gardens out for corporate days, sports events or even a company barbecue on a sunny afternoon, what a perfect location for a refreshing G&T while you watch the cricket.

The other venue that I recently saw for the first time in person, is the “Great Room” at the world famous Grosvenor House on Park Lane.  A magnificent space two stories underground, the great room was first revealed to the public on the event of the opening of the Grosvenor in 1929.  At that point it was a huge underground ice rink used by wealthy intercontinental travellers and where Queen Elizabeth later learned to ice skate.  Since refurbishment as an events space, the venue has seen the Beatles play a live gig in 1963 and has been used for many of the largest and most prestigious awards shows, ceremonies and gala dinners in the UK, as such it appears regularly on the Television.  It features a huge sweeping staircase as well as fairy-tale style chandeliers, and can hold up to 2000 people.  Countless tourists have probably walked right over this fascinating event space with no idea what is deep in the ground beneath their feet.  Metro put in all the audio visual for a large charity fundraiser here, which was a resounding success.  It really is a huge and fascinating place.

We’d be interested to hear any other stories of venues with interesting histories.  Particularly those that are not immediately apparent to the naked eye as you walk the main beaten tracks of the city, so please let us know of your favourites and any interesting stories or histories associated with them.

To leave a comment, just click on the “send feedback” link at the bottom of the post.

Thanks for reading and have a fantastic weekend!

Terence

It’s been busy over here at Metro and a lot has taken place over the last couple of weeks.  We’ve been running events all over Europe and many more back here in the UK.

As well as the actual production of the events, we have a large creative design input with our clients too, regularly taking a substantial role in helping to come up with designs and themes for the events we produce.  Often we will help a client with the initial concept and produce visuals to give them ideas of how their event might look before they have decided.

The CAD work here at Metro is headed up by Ben Tenison-Smith, resident graphics guru, who produces the CG visuals you can see in other areas of the website.  Metro have just invested in a monster new PC tower (reminiscent of a Borg cube - go on google it) and state of the art software to make this process faster and slicker but ultimately it’s the person at the controls that makes the magic happen.  The importance of this work to us cannot be over stressed, as producing first class visual representations of proposed events, not only helps Metro to win business but also allows our clients to really understand how the finished set up will look once the lighting, screens & staging are all in place.

I too have been flexing my creative muscles recently having designed and pitched for my first events to clients last week, following the last blog.  This process was helped along by directors Jamie Tilleray and Liz Rice who have many years of collective experience designing events to a client brief.  The first was for a large publisher who will be running their annual awards ceremony in the Nine King’s Suite over at The Lancaster, Hyde Park and the other was for a client just down the road, again looking for ideas for their annual industry awards ceremony.  Metro handle many of these type of events and often the challenge is to try and create a glamorous Oscars night feel on a restricted budget.  This is one of the key challenges of corporate events and one that Metro is now expert in handling.

Earlier this week I attended a publishing software course to learn the basics of using Adobe InDesign CS5.  This is a fantastically logical and quick to learn piece of desktop publishing design software that does what it says on the tin.  The course was held by Don Kallenbach, over at Symbiosis and was really useful.  The value of a professionally produced document cannot be overstated when it comes to sending literature to clients, be that tender documents or case studies.

Finally, I headed over to Confex exhibition on Wednesday to meet with some clients and do some networking.  It was great to have so many industry players in one place and to get a reminder of the colourful, interesting and vibrant nature of this particular industry sector.  I spoke to a lot of the venues and many of Metro’s partners, and also came away with a few good new business leads.  I was entertained by a drumming band as I munched on my lunchtime noodles in the food hall and was given an ice-cold beer by the good folks over at Mash Media at the end of the exhibition, and anything that ends with a free beer is alright in my book!

Join us next time for another exciting instalment of the blog but in the meantime I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Terence

Terence Corness - Business Development Manager

DDI: +44 (0) 20 7202 2955
MOB: +44 (0) 777032 2955

terence.corness@metrobroadcast.com

Hi, my name’s Terence Corness and I’m the new guy here at Metro.  I started on 9^th Jan and my role here is to identify new business opportunities and secure new clients wherever possible.  My previous experience in this area of business is extensive but my previous experience of the events world is limited having only really come into contact with the industry from a client perspective.  Prior to this I worked for a large organisation selling data and contracts into the property and environment sector.  We ran events, of course, but I was only ever the man on the stand before now.

So what prompted the move?  Well I run my own music and art events outside of work with a friend and have been keen to become more involved with the industry on a professional level too.  I love the way that you start with an empty room and an idea, and then bring it all to life, threading the various components together, until you have a full blown event taking place in front of your eyes.

My first impressions of the company culture at Metro are that it is a very dynamic organisation where things happen fast.  The energy in the office is very positive with a busy, competent and productive team, who clearly know and respect each other a great deal.  It is always difficult to start at a new office where you don’t know anyone, but people here have gone out of their way to bring me up to speed as fast as possible, and to make me feel at home.  My Director Liz Rice, has shown me every sandwich shop within a square mile of the office on various lunchtime sorties.  So I now have a very in-depth, albeit highly localised, knowledge of this specific part of South London.  I particularly love being right next to Borough Market which is proving to be A) Tempting & B) Expensive!

The first thing for me to do on walking into this role was to understand as much as I can about this world, in a short space of time, so I am now enrolled on 2 courses, one at City of London University in Major Event Management & the second on using Adobe’s Indesign creative publishing software to put together attractive client proposals.  I have purchased and am reading two great books: Special Event Production by Doug Matthews and The Freelancer’s Guide to Corporate Event Design by Troy Halsey.  These books cover everything from the very basics of set up, venues, staging, scenic and environmental design right through to the more technical aspects of the audio-visual and lighting equipment available for project managers and event producers in the industry.

As well as the marketplace and the product/service that one offers it is also critical to quickly get a feel for how things operate in a live context and to meet some of your clients, so I have been attending a number of events that Metro are running as well as industry briefings.  The first event I attended was at Vinopolis, where we operate as the in-house audio-visual and events team, this was being overseen by Dave Ashman and was a 50 year anniversary do for a big re-insurance company.  The theme was eighties and the whole place looked magnificent when it was all finished.

I also attended the Meetings Industry Meeting Needs Charity Partners networking evening at Twickenham on January 24^th, which was a great way to be introduced to some industry gurus and allowed for a tour of the hallowed grounds.  I have attended the Event production show over in Olympia, The ICE Gaming Exhibition over at Earl’s Court and a number of client meetings too, so it’s been a busy start, but so far absolutely loving it and looking forward to learning more and meeting many of you reading this in the weeks and months to come.

Terence Corness - Business Development Manager
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7202 2955
MOB: +44 (0) 777032 2955

terence.corness@metrobroadcast.com

Metro are currently providing technical support to a revolutionary art exhibition at the Shoreditch Townhall titled Mind over Matter.

The exhibition features portraits of 12 elderly people - all of who have chosen to give their brains to neuroscience upon their deaths. The participants - five of whom have already died - want to increase understanding about dementia, and had already agreed to allow their brains to be studied for physical signs of the disease, even though they might not, while alive, have outward symptoms. 

 Supported by the Wellcome Trust, Mind Over Matter draws back the veil of secrecy surrounding the practice of organ donation in celebration of those who elect to donate their brains after death for the purposes of neuroscientific research.

Artist Ania Dabrowska met with some of Britain’s oldest prospective brain donors who agreed to be photographed and interviewed about their lives and involvement in brain research. For the exhibition, Dabrowska interweaves photographic portraits, appropriated archival photographs, projections and sound narratives from the twelve donors, alongside scientific artifacts and medical imagery, to present a layered contemplation about the nature of memory loss and to trace the new lives that the brains take on after the donor’s death.

Metro have been delighted to be involved in this project which offers a fascinating insight into the lives of dementia sufferers. Mind over Matter is open until 23rd October 2011.