The CEO and Founder of SBC Gaming, Ramus Sojmark has made a name for himself bringing the news to the industry masses. Sojmark is the man responsible for putting together the name events in the industry. The events master sat down with Becky Liggero Fontana in this week’s episode of the Long Con to share his insights.
Sojmark points out that the success of a good event will ultimately come down to the value it brings to the industry. Sojmark found that especially challenging in the first half of 2020. “It’s a lot of quick-shifting and learning on the go and trying to create something everyone appreciates and find useful.”
The pandemic conditions meant that Sojmark and his team were quickly forced to adapt event formats to suit the digital space. Sojmark points out that the basic guidelines for evaluating the value of the event space remain the same online:
“Understand what was your strategy. Were you going to have a virtual exhibition and how would that be possible? Were you having conferences? How are you going to facilitate the networking, right? Some tools offer all of it, other tools offer more focus on conferencing, like a webcast.”
With this in mind, Sojmark and his team are taking the lessons learned from the first half of the year to apply for the SBC Awards. “So, we’re looking then at creating maybe even a local hub. Let’s have a hub in Ukraine where we have a lot of partners and a lot of suppliers and a lot of operators wanting to be part and we’re part of the awards,” Sojmark said. “So that made sense and in Malta as well and in London, so maybe smaller hubs that could be interconnected like a Eurovision type setup,” he added.
With events in the pipeline shifting into the digital sphere for the foreseeable future, Sojmark believes that success will come down to the value of industry relationships. “I think when you look at what works well for digital, you know, it kind of starts with your relationships. Because you need to know that you get the backing from companies and putting up speakers,” he added. “I don’t think any event organizer wants to invest in a lot of setups events and organization unless they have the support.”
The current pandemic has levelled the playing field, allowing for smaller operators to compete with the larger market players. “If you look at the good things, I mean, what will companies have done if there were no virtual events around?” Sojmark asked. “No way for them to promote their products? Everyone would have gone on social media, LinkedIn, or finding ways to get through to the right context. And everyone would be spamming everyone, everyone would be posting and screaming for attention on how to cut through the noise. It would be a mess.”
Sojmark showed optimism when noting that there’s something in 2020 that many have missed. “People haven’t understood that there is a lot of opportunity in a time of crisis here.”
In the full interview, Sojmark goes into detail on how his team overcame the technical challenges of hosting a mass industry event online and he predicts some changes for the event space in 2021. Don’t forget to subscribe to the CalvinAyre.com YouTube channel to see The Long Con every Monday. If you prefer podcast formats, you can always subscribe to the Long Con on Google, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
