The Ying and the Yang of the Meetings Industry – Part 1

Interview with Gorazd Čad The SoolNua team has known Gorazd Čad for many years. He’s a true believer and meetings industry legend who has been leading the conversation in the Central and South East Europe region  around the business value of meetings and events. He’s also the owner and publisher of Kongres Magazine, a MICE periodical with… Read more »

Why you shouldn’t use Social Media

Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua A new service from SoolNua In addition to our core advisory business, SoolNua has recently started to offer Social Media as an actual product / service offering. This has come about because we discovered that many of our customers, irrespective of the size of their organisation, didn’t have an internal… Read more »

Choose a job you love. You’ll never work a day in your life

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua I love my job This morning on Twitter someone tweeted a statement that happily has applied to me ever since Gerry Duffy gave me my first job as a 14 year old in Deveney’s Off Licence in Terenure in 1974: Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a… Read more »

Destination Marketing – what are your symbolic actions?

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Marketing Ltd Symbolic Actions? You’re well up Coomakista on the Ring of Kerry Charity Cycle when the vista suddenly opens up and you see the slow, slinking shapes high above you, pushing manfully against a nasty headwind on the final metres of the 3% climb. You’ve done about 4km… Read more »

Why you should enter for industry awards

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Reflections in the light of Ireland’s Events Industry Awards 2015 During our time at Ovation | MCI, entering for MICE industry awards was a key pillar in our business strategy because it ticked multiple boxes – extending the life of the event beyond its execution, helping us measure the… Read more »

The Meetings Industry: 5 questions we need to answer

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua IMEX is both Google and Amazon for the Meetings Industry. It’s a search engine and a showroom for network building, knowledge transfer and business exchange. It has a robust digital life but IMEX principally pivots around real people in real places in real time. It is by now the… Read more »

How I could have been Bono

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua Once a year, at Christmas, I indulge another of my passions and write about music on this blog. This year I’m allowing myself a second such diversion to tell you how I could have been Bono. It’s a timely post as Bono and the U2 boys are all over… Read more »

So what does SoolNua do?

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua All’s changed… Regular readers of this blog will have noticed how its byline and biography have changed. They used to say that I was Vice President of Industry Relations at MCI and Managing Director at Ovation Global DMC. About 15 months ago this changed to Managing Partner at SoolNua. When… Read more »

How can Ireland remain competitive for conferences?

by Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner, SoolNua I pulled back the curtains in anticipation of waking in a room with a view and when I awoke there it was,  in all its glittering morning glory, the Sugar Loaf, beautifully framed in the floor-to-ceiling window, a modest mountain by world standards, but massive to us who live in… Read more »