02/09/2018

KTV and the Lorien Onezeero annual conference and awards

Posted in: General Blog,

ALL too often we’re far too busy to shout about the excellent work that we do (a sort of cobbler’s shoes effect) but we’ve finally got around to it; so here’s us boasting about how we managed the annual business conference and awards gala for outsourced and IT recruitment specialists Lorien Onezeero.

This year the event  was held at central Manchester’s Principal Hotel, which is one of the city’s most stunning buildings and opened in 1890 as the headquarters of the Refuge Assurance Company. It’s a terracotta Grade II listed complex and if you’ve ever travelled through the city on a train there’s a good chance you will have seen it, or at least its 66-metre high tower.

We’ve worked with Lorien Onezeero for several years on their annual event, but this time around was the first where we’ve managed everything, and we mean everything; not only every bit of the audio visual (AV) and lighting element in the main function room but also the associated breakout areas used throughout the day.

Quite a crucial element of our work was respecting the building; after all it was constructed way before AV came on the scene so it wasn’t tailor-made as a hotel-cum-conference centre, although the change of use was carried out in a very intelligent way but that didn't mean we could just charge around like a bull in a china shop with our flight cases full of equipment.

In addition to our AV and lighting work we built two stage sets; one to reflect the daytime’s corporate business – sales conference and awards – and the other for the evening’s entertainment, as well as ensuring that everyone involved was well rehearsed so that everything went to plan on the day.

We also worked closely with the company’s CEO, Claire Marsh and the management team to ensure the day’s objectives where met and the event ran smoothly. This meant on-site rehearsals and briefings, tweaking presentations and in some case creating new ones! It’s the seven P’s of planning!

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But what actually looks like a day’s work was really three – installing the AV and sets, rehearsals, the event itself and then dismantling everything post event, before returning to base on day three to prepare a debrief for the client. There are always things we can do better, but it does often need input from the client.

Our actual efforts, however, started a few weeks ahead of the event with two camera operators spending a couple of days in London shooting conference related videos for the event, in addition to the nomination films used to introduce the 15 award categories.

Then, back at our headquarters in Harrogate we spent a further five days in post-production, editing the footage that we’d shot into the required segments along with preparing (and fine tuning again and again) the running order for the BIG day, where we had eight technicians running the lighting, sound and visual elements of the show along with two cameras recording the event and offering live shots for the screens.

Lorien Onezeero has offices across the UK as well as in Dublin, and Manchester (and in particular the Principal Hotel) was chosen for the event because of its location in terms of getting people there and being able to accommodate around 250 members of staff.

As already mentioned, the annual event is really three in one; a sales conference during the day time, with a gala awards dinner in the evening rounded of with a glitzy late- night party of live entertainment, including Oasis tribute band, Noasis; it was Manchester after all!

We installed a three screen set in front of the venue’s stage for during the day, which was later removed leaving two screens on a star cloth background which was re-lit so that the stage area could be used for the presentations of the awards followed by the bands and acts.

You can watch a videos of the evening here and one of the Lifetime Achievement award here.

Another job well done and time for us all to relax - until the next project!