The Tech Talent Charter (TTC) – an award-winning campaign to drive diversity and address gender imbalance in technology roles – asked us to produce and organise their second national event, a breakfast event on the top level of London’s Gherkin, which sold out in 24 hours.
The invitation-only event, keynoted by Margot James, Minister of State for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, was designed to celebrate the success of the campaign so far, launching both the Annual Benchmarking Report and Toolkit for best practice and the B2C campaign.
We organised an early-morning breakfast for over 150 signatories at The Gherkin, with representatives from UK government, major plcs and recruiters.
The Business Narrative team produced the event, managing the event budget, working with a range of stakeholders, handling the design and branding process and sourcing, negotiating and managing the venue. We undertook a full range of event management tasks; event logistics, attendee management, badging, venue branding, catering, staging and technical production, AV, videography, speaker management, event staffing, briefing and managing the stakeholder volunteer team on the day, thank you letters and managing the production of the event video.
The event helped take the campaign to 300 signatories and stimulated a broad conversation on and offline, through tweets and press coverage in business, regional, technology and recruitment press, including The Evening Standard, Irish News, Computer Weekly, Informational Age, and the CIO Podcast.
Such a privilege to work with a fabulous client, convening a purposeful event with lasting impact.
It was an absolute pleasure working with Business Narrative on our national breakfast event at the Gherkin. Sasha and her team took the time to really understand what we hoped to achieve in terms of deliverables and calls to action and even the “vibe” we wanted the event to have, not just our logistical needs and budget. They ensured it all went like clockwork; the Business Narrative see events as a full experience and worked on our behalf to create the perfect gathering for the Tech Talent Charter.
I’ve worked with event planners before, and had some very mixed experiences, so I felt I needed to keep an eye on things. That’s why working with Business Narrative was such a pleasant surprise-- Sasha and her team worked with us in a flexible and proactive way, not just pointing out challenges well ahead of time, but then working creatively to present solutions and a way forward. Their vast experience of all aspects of event management were invaluable to us and it was a relief to realise this really was a team I could leave all the details to and know it would all work in the end.
Events are an essential part of how we engage with both our new and our existing members and I want them to be perfect. In the past, achieving this could be quite nerve-wracking. Not with Business Narrative—they took all the pain out and made our event a real pleasure. We’ll be working with them again—highly recommended!
—Debbie Forster MBE, CEO, Tech Talent Charter
