The week that was 23-27 November

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The week that was 23-27 November

Singapore – Dubai – Abu Dhabi – Dubai – Singapore, Weekend 28-29 November 2015

Guest speaking
Another week, another trip, this time to Abu Dhabi via Dubai, where I am attending the Smart Lighting and Energy Summit as one of the guest speakers. I get quite a lot of requests to speak at this type of events and generally, depending on the intended audience and location I do accept these, provided I am not out of pocket. Most of these events run on tight budgets (for those participating) as we should never forget that these events are organised by companies that are in it to make money, it is not a charity to provide you with free information. And because these event organisers are in it for the profit their focus is generally different from yours. They want their speakers at the cheapest possible rates, offering economy class flight tickets (if you are lucky) and accommodation. I have had an invitation for one just recently (about 6 hours flight away from Singapore!) where they were offering only $200 in expense compensation and free access to the event…hello! The general consensus is that as a speaker with long distance flights you get a business class return ticket with full accommodation and expenses paid. Speaker fees are a common norm at professional events such as PLDC or Light Fair for instance but even that is generally not a fat pot.

I guess it is also to do with your notoriety. I am generally prepared to wave my speaker fees, provided all the rest is taken care for. Sometimes you have to help the event organisers in finding sponsors, which I do regularly as that helps facilitate getting me there. This trip was no different with lengthy negotiations where they tried all tricks from the book to minimise their costs. I finally accepted after my minimal terms and conditions were accepted and signed off.

It’s all in the preparation
Speaking at such event, like this Summit in Abu Dhabi, does expect a certain level of expertise and professionalism from the speakers, certainly also considering that the event was patronised by the Abu Dhabi municipality and attended by some of the government ministers, in this case the ones responsible for infra- structure, development and transport if I understood that correctly. So knowing your stuff is of course important but knowing what and how to share that with the attending audience is a totally different ball game. You generally have either great subjects but poor speakers or vice versa, great speakers with poor subjects. Having both in one is a rarity! I pride myself of being one of those who can combine a slightly provocative subject into an entertaining presentation, at least if I can believe the feedback I receive from those attending my presentations. And it is all in the preparations. You need to understand who the attendees are going to be, what the cultural context is against which this event is held and make sure that your subject fits within the overall theme of the event. After all people come to the event with certain expectations based on the pre-event advertisements.

You get what you pay for
So this event was called the smart lighting and energy summit (Middle East) and was lavishly sponsored by many well-known lighting manufacturers, most of them with already significant fingers in the UAE and or Middle East market pie. The downside to me was the fact that they had obviously negotiated very significant amount of speaking time from the overall program, resulting in more than fifty percent of the speakers being “commercially motivated” rather than sharing professional expertise, promoting their products and services in the process, which to me is the unfortunate flipside of these events. I want to learn something or get introduced to new concepts, get some new food for thoughts, not sitting in on an ego tripping journey. In all fairness to the event it was not that bad, there were some good stories, some interesting project study cases and I definitely went away with some new ideas. But overall I thought the program was a bit weak with not enough high quality expert speakers, no doubt some of them having kindly declined for lack of proper financial reimbursement. You get what you pay for I guess…

Smart lighting design
So my subject was (not surprisingly) “smart lighting design”, originally with the subtitle “The challenges and opportunities of today’s LED technologies”, but as I was preparing the presentation it soon became apparent that these issues would be covered by many of the other speakers so I changed my tack and modified the subtitle to read: “The challenges of the future ahead” allowing me to look at today’s LED situation as well as looking ahead to a new attitude in lighting and lighting design; a concept that I have recently come to treasure and appreciate as a “must consider” approach to lighting and lighting design. The LED Cowboys still figure in my presentations but they have now made way for the future…”Light as a Service (LaaS) or also know under the name of Pay-per-Lux schemes. It is a major shift from today’s waste economy, where products are designed to fail (and be disposed after useful life) to a circular economy where products are designed to last, be reconfigured, re-used or re-cycled, with practically no waste over years. It requires a dramatic change of attitude towards designing lighting products from the side of the manufacturers. I mentioned this in one of my previous blogs and I gratefully took the opportunity to present the concept to a summit audience eager to understand more about how that could work. There is no doubt that the LED technology will play a big role in making this work.

I enjoyed my time in Abu Dhabi as well as in Dubai on my way back. Below some impressions from the event as well as some Abu Dhabi night time city sights, which we took in on an organised tour of the city.

Have a great weekend