JILLIAN WILSONHead of Events at the Convention Centre Dublin
The convention centre has been open for about 18 months now. What happens here? We host corporate conferences mostly for software, medical and pharmaceutical companies. We also host concerts occasionally. Today we're hosting three separate conferences. Two have about 1000 delegates in attendance each. The other has 500.
If you're the head of events at an event centre, doesn't that make you the head of everything?I wish. No, I'm in charge of delivering events in the front of house, where the clients are. Back of house is hospitality, maintenance and so on.
What sorts of issues might arise that potentially blindside a head of events?None, ideally. I would hope we are never blindsided, that we prepare for every eventuality. But issues do crop up from time to time.
Recently, we had a request for a large number of flowers that was difficult to handle without a florist on site. Fortunately, we have good relations with our suppliers, so we were able to turn it around quickly.
On a less boring note, you had a racehorse in the foyer today. How did that come about?Because Lloyds of London are having an event here. Their logo is a horse, so we organised it as a service for them.
How does a request like that go from "They want what?" to actually happening? What's the process?There were lots of factors to consider: insurance, the safety of staff and clients. In the end, we staged a dry run with the horse trainer last month.
We brought in the horse on a quiet day to see if it would get spooked and had the staff come down to simulate the effect of having a crowd around.
Are there any odd requests you've had to turn down?The building's drum structure is quite distinctive, so we've had people wanting to bungee jump off of it. There was a Christmas event where the clients wanted Santa to abseil down the side of it too.
Santa doesn't abseil!I know and it was September, which made it even stranger. Initially, we said yes. But on the day it was too windy. We had to cancel for health and safety reasons.
You referred to the design of the building. I've always thought it resembled an upturned beer can at the end of a party. Which is kind fitting considering its history...The correct term for the structure is an atrium, although we all refer to it as the glass drum. The architect Kevin Roche felt it was important to see the Dublin landscape as you're travelling through the building. If you look below, you'll see we've installed a new pontoon on the side. The idea is to open up the waterway and encourage boats to come up along side there.
Next year's barge-owners conference is surely in the bag!Absolutely. But joking aside, some clients have asked about branding barges on the Liffey. The way the international association cycle works is on a four or five-year cycle. We started taking bookings in 2007, so this year is a bumper year for us.
So the effects of the 2008 crash may not be felt here until next year. Do you predict a slump?No, we have lots of bookings coming through.
The delegates are away from home and away from their families. Do they ever misbehave?Once we had two delegates sleep on the sofas outside for the duration of a conference. They mixed with people during the coffee break, but went back to sleep once the conference was back in session.
This wasn't the Fine Gael ard fheis, was it? No, the Fine Gael delegates behaved themselves very well.
Other high profile visitors have included Simon Cowell and the Queen of England. Who was the bigger diva? Probably Simon Cowell. No, I'm joking. Cowell was here with Katy Perry and Cheryl Cole for the X Factor auditions. He was really lovely. He told us our hospitality was the best he'd had as long as they'd been doing X Factor. He was down to earth, really chatty and really nice to the staff. I think his grumpy persona is an act.
How was the queen's visit?That was a big deal. There was obviously a lot of protocol around her. We had to be very careful that we followed the directions we were sent from the British embassy.
What? In terms of bowing scraping and genuflecting? Not at all, no. I mean in terms of security. We had to make sure the area was secured, rooms had to be swept, security staff had to be cleared and so on.
