Christmas Day for me consisted of the wild excitement of an 8 year old, the furious peeling of vegetables and the consumption of an abnormally large quantity of Proseco – a rather ordinary Christmas day in the UK.
But what I consistently find fascinating about the holiday is the instinctive desire we have to boast that we acquired the latest, trendiest, most up-to-date gift possible. With a child who will undoubtedly be entangled in a debate on the first school day in January over ‘who got the best gift’, it’s difficult to not feel a little pressure to ensure that she can walk away from this encounter with a sense of pride. But, are the latest, trendiest and most up-to-date gifts ever going to ultimately reign over the classics?
The gift in question this year was a drone. A ‘must-have’ remote-controlled quadricopter, that with the right amount of patience and practice can zoom around your living room, terrifying the dog and endangering the light fittings. It was the gift that caused the most excitement in the morning, but after an hour of charging it was able to offer a maximum of seven minutes of fun… five of which were spent retrieving said drone from a crash zone behind the sofa. Only once those precious seven minutes were spent was attention turned to the ‘less cool’ gifts that had been thrown to one side that morning. This year for us, it was a Rubix cube.
Four sides of rotating plastic squares, covered in red, yellow, blue and green sitckers. No motor, chipboard, hard drive or instructions required. But this mighty cube kept a total of 8 adults and one small child entertained for the entire wait until lunch was served – an impressive feat.
Now, I’m definitely not saying that we shouldn’t embrace technological advances, or that I don’t welcome change, but there’s something to be said for keeping things simple and sticking to classic methods.
It’s a an idea that I keep in mind when it comes to my job. In an attempt to keep up to date with event management trends and key developments within the industry I’ve found it useful to allocate a little time each week to reading up on what’s happening in the events world. Much of the time it results in nothing more than a little reassurance that I’m doing things right and that my event management ‘style’ isn’t completely out of touch. However sometimes it just seems that the wheel is being re-invented unnecessarily. With events such as Venue Technology Meeting 2016 and Ticketing Technology Forum 2016 coming up I am, of course, in awe of the incredible advancements that are made every day, and our events will always support, celebrate and share the knowledge of those doing great things with technology.
But sometimes, just sometimes, be the Rubix cube at the party. You might just have more fun.
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