EVENT MANAGEMENT

Global eyes on RD Events Management

THE CHALLENGE

RD Consulting’s Event Management team was tasked to support the delivery of a unique summit hosting international guests from across Australia’s Defence network.

The summit goal was to showcase new working arrangements and projects and bring together leaders in their field to grow collaboration and skills in a highly critical sector of Defence.

The 2022 Five Eyes Cyber Summit brought together more than 60 international representatives to attend a series of workshops, demonstrations and networking functions across five days focusing on two key activities aimed at demonstrating a key program of work, as well as a major networking dinner with the dual goal of highlighting Australian Defence culture and building relationships between Australian Defence personnel and their international counterparts.

THE SOLUTION

In meeting the client’s requirements the Events team managed the challenges of working with a changing project scope within a tight deadline. During this ‘discovery’ process, it became clear that a suite of collateral was needed to create a lasting impact with attendees. RD’s event and design teams worked with the client to develop collateral that would leave a lasting impression, including talking points for guests when they returned to their teams. Throughout the planning phase RD sat side-by-side with the client to work through the requirements and style of these events, including co-designing a thorough risk assessment.

The team created key documents such as run sheets, lighting design, theming plans and video story-boards to take our client on the events journey and really capture their vision for the event. Due to the event being held at different locations our team needed to ensure that all stakeholders’ needs were met, which meant attending meetings and being able to coordinate multiple activities in unison.

RD understands the complexity of delivering an event and to support our client we stood-up a group of highly skilled professionals from across our integrated service offering, such as video production, strategic communications, and IT support. Our goal was to make sure that any challenges that could arise were able to be supported by our SMEs.

THE RESULTS

The 2022 Five Eyes Cyber Summit was the inaugural version of the event and was delivered over five days in Canberra.

The Friday prior we completed the ‘bump in’, setting up lighting and testing that everything was working seamlessly in line with our client’s expectation. The team also held some ‘dry runs’ and rehearsals with key presenters to ensure the launch on Monday ran like clockwork.

The team’s development of close working relationships with people at each location allowed each group to work well in tandem and meant that challenges were resolved before they affected the event or impacted attendees. The feedback our teams received at the end of this event was highly complimentary and indicated we helped give Australia’s cyber program an immense reputational boost in the eyes of its international partners.