Trina Butler is Senior Director, Global Accounts at HelmsBriscoe

Trina works with clients in Legal, Medical, Corporate, High Tech, Government and Association Markets in the US, South East Asia and Australia.

At an industry function last week Trina shared her thoughts on where we were in 2020 and what we should be doing in 2021

February 2020 the bottom fell out.  My self-worth is not solely but largely wrapped in being heralded for what I do and I lost my audience.  I lost the applause, many of us did.  We were isolated, I often felt redundant and superfluous.

However the work did not stop, we kept working for diminishing returns, countless cancellations and reschedules.

The work often felt soul destroying.

As we see meetings come back, we have the opportunity to drive our clients’ business to hotels that practice and indeed champion sustainability, offer safe and fair work places. 

We need to bring purpose to our events.

Our audience is at the box office.  Hybrid and virtual meetings are our reality, but we have to get ourselves and our attendees out of our pajamas and into meeting rooms, to make it worth wearing shoes again. 

As we forge forward I see content that is compelling and the narrative relevant, as being of utmost importance. We must be in the moment, and be mindful of the where, what and especially the why. 

In person meetings will be all the more valuable.  The ROI in time, effort and spend is crucial, to justify getting us out from behind our screens.

We have an amazing opportunity now to make change, to reset.

We lament that nothing is the same, but we can reframe that message, retake ownership of it, and Make Nothing the Same!