Pic: Eventpix

Some months ago I was honored to win the first Miles Clarke Business Events Communication Award - seen being presented above by the adorable Elizabeth Rich.

I’ve been waiting for it to appear in print before I posted it. It’s now published in Brad Foster’s fine Mice.net magazine.

Read it here, it’s a PDF so you’ll need to click on the orange “Time To Embrace The Unvirtual” link at the bottom of the page.

It’s interesting to re-read it - modern trend articles always run the risk of being a bit out of date by the time they get printed. It was written about 6 months ago, during which time meeting Twitter has gone feral - at least in the US -  with sweeping implications for meeting etiquette.

The core message is that people need to get away from all their screens occasionally and actually do something real and memorable, surrounded by actual humans.

Jarvis Cocker, ex-frontman of Britpopsters Pulp, put it nicely in a recent Sydney Morning Herald interview:

The idea of a performance being a one-off appeals to Cocker.

“It gets on my nerves when people seem so intent on filming everything on their mobile phones. I just wish people would experience it and be in that moment,” he says.

“It used to be when you went on holiday you’d see families where the father couldn’t interact with anyone, so hed’s stand there with the video camera filming the whole holiday and you’d think ‘what a sad character’. Now young people are doing it - it’s bad. They’re becoming middle-aged before their time.”

Cocker says having something that lingers only as a memory is better, as it changes over time.

“It gets altered by your brain, by your perception, whereas if you’ve just got a crappy, handheld phone footage version of it, it brings it all crashing down to earth, you know what I mean?”

Miles Clarke

Vivid travel writing is scarcer these days, when it’s easier to just point a video camera at the subject and let viewers see for themselves.

Miles Clarke had the power to bring scenes alive on the page. A specialist in business travel and conference industry journalism, his style could shine new light on even the most been-there destination.

He passed away last year after a long battle with depression, an insidious illness that’s claimed a few of my mates over the years.

There was a large Miles-shaped hole in the fabric of this week’s Meetings and Events Australia conference in Adelaide, an event where you’d always find him telling stories and sharing insights with his army of friends and admirers. It didn’t quite seem like he was really gone.

Some of those admirers - specifically Elizabeth Rich from the Business Events Council of Australia, industry icon Ian Stuart and MICE.net Managing Editor Brad Foster - decided to honour his memory by setting up the Miles Clarke Business Events Communication Award.