What Eventex Awards Judges Are Really Looking For: Talking to Sjoerd Weikamp

Sjoerd is not only editor-in-chief of Event Branche Magazine: part of the leading event platform in the Netherlands but a professional living and breathing the event industry.If you’ve ever wondered what it means to be a real event professional and influencer, read below…How does your job relate to the event industry?I am owner and chief editor of EventBranche.nl. As the event platform for the Dutch event industry we produce 4 trade magazines per year and 2 additional trend magazines as well. Next to that we have our website EventBranche.nl, a newsletter twice a week and big social media groups to interact with event professionals. We organise 6 networking events per year, Dag van het Evenement (a congress and exhibition day for event professionals and marketers), etc etc.What are your most important duties?I am responsible for all the content of EventBranche.nl as well as keynote speakers, dossiers, etc.How do you describe your work style?My life is an event on it’s own: my job as a chief-editor within the event business means I eat, drink, sleep, talk, breathe and think events 24/7. We try every day to give it all in order to help the event industry professionalize day in day out.What motivates you to judge Eventex Awards?We support all initiatives that want to take our industry to the next level.How do you recognize a winner? A winner for me is the one that uses all our industry fundamentals (planning, creativity, logistics, etc) to create the biggest impact/ROI with their event…or even better: bit a live solution.What do you find unforgivable in an application?If someone replies on the question Results/Impact with an answer like: ‘Our CEO said: it was a wonderful day’ or ‘Our guests were smiling all day’Your advice to contestants?Give us an inside in the objectives, the purpose, how you measured your objectives, what the budget was in order to give the result/impact or ROI the real wearth. Also a contestant that shows us how he or she made crucial decision to create the biggest impact by using his or hers creativity…I would love to see that in an application.What aspect of event planning inspires you the most?Creativity with a ROI. And next to that all the hardworking and inspiring people in our industry, who strongly believe marketing isn’t dead, marketing is an event.