Meanwhile those organisers who want, or need to know more about protests, and how they fit or not into the events industry can buy a fascinating book on the subject.

Published this year Protests As Events is a collection of writings on the subject edited by Ian R. Lamond, Lecturer of Events Management, and Karl Spracken, Professor of Leisure Studies, both at Leeds Beckett University and themselves participators in protests, pickets and marches, so some practical experience to draw on. The 269-page book is published by Rowman and Littlefield and covers the motivation for, the management of and the effectiveness of protests. Continue reading →

A former purchase ledger clerk at Pembroke College, Cambridge stole £286,000 from her employer to help finance a gambling addiction, placing bets on online bingo site Jackpotjoy totalling more than £6 million and gambling any winnings.

Jaqueline Balaam, a 41 year-old married mother of two from Cambridge, was jailed for 30 months after admitting duplicating invoices from college suppliers, false accounting and defrauding a local social club of £3,000. She was caught by the college after an internal audit.

A new venue review site for London venues, Eventopedia, has been launched.

Unlike Tripadvisor those event organisers posting reviews have to identify themselves, so the site should not degenerate into venues posting positive reviews of themselves or fake negative reviews of competitors properties.

Not to be confused with Event-o-Pedia, the free encyclopaedia of events.

Note.
In the SEO’s ongoing survey of venue criteria important to organisers none of those from the charity sector rated the opinions of other organisers as “vitally important” or “important” as a consideration when choosing a venue, though a few rated them “a possible consideration” and the same number as “no consideration”. A lot more association organisers felt that the opinions of others were “possibly a consideration” with the same number scoring this criteria as “important”. Those from the corporate sector were less enthusiastic about the opinions of others with 40% of responders judging them “an important consideration”, 20% as “a possible consideration” and 40% as “no consideration”.

No organisers from any sector felt the opinions of other organisers about venues were vital to their own choosing of them.

Those interested in the First World War and what it was really like in the trenches will want to see the searing depiction of Wooden Crosses, a recently restored 1932 film that uses real war veterans as actors and advisors and achieves a documentary feel for the battlefield hell faced by the French 39th Infantry Division.

Directed by French director Raymond Bernard and based on a 1919 novel by a former corporal of the 39th Roland Dorgeles, the film was the first French talkie about WW1 and doesn’t spare the viewer the gore and horror of war, nor the assaults on the eardrums made by the different types of guns and cannons, an aspect Bernard took pains to get right. Continue reading →