by Padraic Gilligan, Vice President, Ovation Global DMC “LAs fine and the sun shines most of the time …” The approach by air into Los Angeles takes you over miles and miles of urban sprawl leaving you wondering whether there’s a heart in this city at all. And when you process in your mind decades… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations and VP, Ovation Global DMC Redemption on the Streets of Las Vegas 4am is around the time the big clean up starts. In Las Vegas it’s also the time I rise. The Strip goes into twilight mode as night time revelers gradually de-materialise leaving space for jet-lagged Irish and the cleaners…. Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, Vice President, Industry Relations, MCI and Vice President, Ovation Global DMC I start getting into the mood for Las Vegas when I see archive footage on BBC4 of The Steve Gibbons Band performing their one-hit-wonder “Tulane”. Neither the band nor the title of the song has any connection with Las Vegas so… Read more »
By Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations MCI It started with Rhonda Marko. Pretty quickly Joan Eisenstodt joined in and, more recently, Andrea Michaels. All strong and powerful women. All true icons of the meetings industry. I’m unsure whether they know each other personally but I’m certain they know of each other as all have carved… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, Vice President, Industry Relations, MCI “It’s not who attends your event, it’s who participates” Sebastien Tondeur, CEO, MCI Samuel Johnson, or Dr Johnson as he was more commonly known, had a wonderful ability to summarise a universal truth in a single, simple sentence. His aphorisms are both sublime and ridiculous: “Integrity without… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations, MCI and VP, Destination Services, Ovation Global DMC The Importance of Giving Back Weather around DFW and a runway incident at ORD prevented my attendance at the pre-event reception and dinner at the Hyatt Regency. I was in time, however, to have a night cap with my buddy Jonathan… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations, MCI I’m sitting at Gate B4 at San Antonio International Airport, waiting for my flight with American Airlines back to Chicago and onwards home to Dublin. I’m surrounded by the anodyne, bland and deeply annoying ubiquity of Kenny G, an entirely inappropriate and unfair symbolic conclusion to a stimulating,… Read more »
Walking in Killarney For 10 years now the Gilligans have spent Easter at the Killarney Park Hotel. This year was no exception but for two things: one, no Gilligan child had an excuse to absent herself from the dreaded mandated family activities due to pending exams and two, Master Shea Gilligan, aged 8 months, became… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations, MCI In early 2012 Vok Dams Consulting, the consulting arm of the eponymous German based marketing and live communications agency, produced an intriguing white paper on “Hybrid Events, a new trend in live marketing”. The authors, Altenstrasser and Korte, define hybrid events as the “integrative interplay of social media… Read more »
by Padraic Gilligan, VP, Industry Relations, MCI and VP, Ovation Global DMC A perfect job Many of us would like to be Kevin Kirby. Kevin has had a series of very fun jobs – Universal Studios, Disney and, for the past 6 years, Director of Global Sales for Hard Rock Café. He obviously understands the… Read more »