On the road to Prague…
May 17, 2022
The Recycler’s Stefanie Unland shares a few conference insights on the road to Prague.
Actors, they say, should never work with children or animals and that may well be the case. But I would suggest only a crazy person would organise a conference to happen in just eight weeks. Let me explain:
The last The Recycler Live conference was in Brussels, way back in 2019. The plan for 2020 was Prague, always Prague. We booked and paid the deposit and along came Covid. Like everyone else, we postponed, rescheduled, and postponed again. Even as early as January this year Covid restrictions, were, shall we say, unfavourable.
Then in mid-March restrictions were being lifted and it meant we could go ahead with the conference. Now to hold any sort of conference you need:
- A venue – Sorted
- An agenda – More challenging as you need speakers
- A Partner – Ours is ETIRA who open so many doors around Europe and lobby hard for the industry.
- Speakers – More challenging as you need an agenda
- Sponsors – To help cover the costs
- Delegates – The most important ingredient
Fortunately, the agenda came together fairly easily because a whole lot has changed in the world and there is a lot to talk about. The bigger challenge was finding speakers available at short notice that could contribute to the event. Deborah Hawkins of Keypoint Intelligence came on board right away as did Lexmark’s Maxime Furkel and GM Technologies Zoltan Matyas and the conference was born.
Biuromax came on board as our main sponsor right away. Mr Dariusz Wozniak, CEO, of Biuromax commented: “We are honoured to sponsor The Recycler Live conference in Prague. Participation in the conference is an opportunity for interesting meetings of companies and people most important in our industry, trend creators and people for whom ethical and ecological business is highest priority. You will explore the current market, latest trends and problems, the EU’s agenda and policy for greener printing and we look forward to seeing you there.”
Speed Infotech renewed their sponsorship and we are pleased they are our awards sponsor for this year, the company commented “Speed Infotech is very glad and honoured to participate in and sponsor this event. It is an excellent opportunity to meet and network with industry delegates and to share ideas and opinions about the imaging industry with each other, especially the market trend, the challenges and the future opportunity about the inkjet cartridge remanufacturing.” Sadly Covid issues in China mean that the CEO, Benjamin Young won’t be able to attend, but members of his European team are at the conference.
And of course, we all love a conversation over a beer, or glass of wine and GM technology came as our drink’s reception sponsor. GM Technology’s Director of Int’l Business Development, Zoltan Matyas, commented: “We are delighted to finally have a real life, LIVE, personal face to face event where we can network, converse, and spend some quality time with our fellow industry leaders and customers. We are happy to help and sponsor the event and the drinks and looking forward to quality content, good presentations, and meaningful conversations of our changing industry. We have plenty of things we can discuss. See you in Prague!”
For this year we also introduced a table sponsorship to enable friends and colleagues to get together over a drink and dinner and celebrate our awards presentations. Our table sponsors are Abfallbringtgeld, (Denner GmbH) the Austrian cartridge collectors. Gottfried Denner, CEO of the company said: “We are looking forward to meeting up again, face-to-face, with everyone to catch up with all the market news and make new friends. It is a pleasure to be a part of the event.” Also from Austria, (Tech) Eco (Tech Intertrading) the specialist own brands distributor of compatible and refurbished products and our last table sponsor is Static Control Components, the leading supplier to the imaging market.
But no event is complete without delegates, and I have to be honest and say that initially delegate numbers were slow to book and then it went crazy over the last two weeks, and we had to increase the numbers three times with the venue. So we have all the ingredients for a successful conference.
It just remains for me to say thank you to our speakers, the Holiday Inn, our partner, Etira and our sponsors, Biuromax, Speed Infotech and GM Technology, who jumped on board and pulled out all the stops to make the event happen. And let’s not forget our table sponsors, Abfallbringtgeld, (Tech) Eco and Static Control. But mainly the big thanks go to you, the delegates.
Categories : World Focus
