5 minutes with Annabel West – Head of Production and Content Development
Introducing our wonderful Annabel West.
As Head of Production and Content Development, Annabel looks after the logistics and the overall Project Management of any event in key detail as well as working with clients to develop content. She brings with her experience in communications and video and is our go to with any production heavy requests.
Let us see what she’s been up to and how she thinks the pandemic has changed the scope of events.
What projects have you most enjoyed within your time at Smart Live?
Since joining in the Summer of 2019, I’ve worked on an array of projects but personally for me my first event I produced, a corporate internal business update, was my most enjoyable. This is mainly because I love taking business messaging and transforming it into content delivery that motivates and excites the attendees to take away with them back to their day-to-day work. For this event in particular, we had 6 weeks to create an immersive and interactive space which communicated the new business messaging, whilst looking at how we could make those attending virtually just as engaged with the content.
Why did you choose events?
Originally my dream was to become a professional classical singer, and it was through various jobs during university that I started to work within the Events Industry. For me the same feeling of adrenaline whilst performing on stage is felt whilst putting together an event, it’s a performance for your attendees to enjoy. When I left university, I worked in Brand Marketing, supporting on various internal and customer facing events, and after a long day on south bank creating a charity fashion show I remember turning to our Event Manager at the agency we used to help pull everything together, I want to work in Events full time and I’ve never looked back.
What do you think the COVID-19 pandemic has done to change the future of events?
Over the course of the pandemic everyone has gone through a wave of emotions, but something we’ve all felt no matter how the pandemic effected you personally is the importance of interaction and the need to get together to communicate and socialise. We all got involved with a virtual pub quiz or two (or should I say more like 100!), we all celebrated birthdays by creating videos and TikToks, and everyone got behind their local communities helping wherever they could. I believe this all proves how important getting together in a room, whether that’s virtually or physically, and communicating with your audience is. Within a business corporation, having those moments to celebrate or to update your teams on what has happened and what are the next steps are is going to be vital over the next year to ensure you have a one team mentality.
What are you most looking forward to in this role?
Starting this role in such a challenging time is certainly something I wasn’t expecting, but anyone who knows me knows I love a challenge. I’ve felt so proud to work for a company that hasn’t given up in these unsettling times when it could have been so easy to give up when the industry has been hit so hard. Instead, Smart Live and the wider Smart Group have come together to look at how we can take our skill sets and knowledge and adapt it to the Virtual World. Moving forward I’m really interested to see how the changes we’ve seen in working ways over the past 18 months will affect the world of events, and looking forward at how I can support my clients in this new world we find ourselves in.