Regenerate to restart

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A concrete campaign and a concrete opportunity to move “Towards the Future”

The CIICAI Consortium, a leader for over 30 years in the field of air conditioning, plumbing, rainwater goods and allied sectors, believed very strongly in this project, which in Italian we decided to call “L’anno che verrà” (The Year to Come), inspired by the audacious and volcanic creativity of the late Bologna singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla, and in English “Towards the Future”.

The project started in December 2012 as an initial experimental experience in our “Think Social” campaign, in which Màgina offers company programmes aimed at enhancing Corporate Social Responsibility, tailor-made to suit the needs of each client to jointly develop a new, original and innovative style of communication.

Our proposal:
• We start from the production wastes of the participants’ company, applying the mechanisms of creative design to explore new channels of action and strategic communication.
• Use of the rationale of design for reuse, a practice that regenerates discarded wastes to give them new functions and status, as a stimulus to revitalize mental attitudes and rediscover the value of manual skills.
The members of the CIICAI Consortium were invited to participate in a series of workshops structured in five intensive meeting sessions, guided by a motivator/facilitator and a reuse designer, recognized at a national level and present at two editions of the Milan Furniture Fair. Every participant worked alone and in groups on the invention and production of a unique article of reuse design, using materials recovered from the CIICAI warehouses.
The results: the first CIICAI collection of reuse design products.

A heterogeneous team with no previous professional experience in creative design successfully explored a new direction, with great satisfaction and cancelling differences of age and personality in favour of a common goal. The collection comprises more than ten unique objects, each capable of promoting the real image of CIICAI far better than any conventional advertising campaign. These objects were made during a particularly popular design-for-reuse programme that cast a new light on various fundamental values of the consortium, like manual skills, craftsmanship and collaboration, but they also tangibly represent a company with the courage to reinvent itself. Pipes and fittings become a magazine rack, gaskets and packing wastes become lamps and coffee tables… creativity is the spark that triggers new ways of thinking, and design is the goal to be reached to generate valid and effective results at the level of attractiveness and purpose.
The CIICAI collection was presented to all consortium members at the annual Christmas dinner, and this year the project will be repeated with a host of new features. We’ll keep you informed!

In the meantime you can consult the “Towards the Future” project schedule by visiting our portfolio or by downloading our catalogue.
And if you’d like to have a go at reinventing yourself by exploring and developing your potential, contact us!

MeetInAction

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A new network of Italian agencies dedicated to the meetings industry, Meet In Action Italy, has been created.

It is the first of its kind to be formed and includes 10 event management agencies based in the most important meeting regions of the country. The network’s main objective is the international promotion of hosting and managing conferences in Italy.

The network will play a coordinating role among the participants and focuses on the pursuit of the common goals rather than exclusively on the sharing of profits.

Members of the network are:

  • MEETING PLANNER, based in Bari and specialising in the regions of Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria;
  • GIGLIO SERVICE, based in Cagliari and specialising in events in Sardinia;
  • DMC TUSCANY, based in Lucca – Pietrasanta and specialising in Tuscany and Cinque Terre;
  • MOTIVATION & EVENTS, based in Milan and specialisinv in Lombardy and “the Lakes District”;
  • CONCERTO, based in Naples and specialising in Campania;
  • KEY CONGRESS, based in Padua and specialising in Eastern Veneto;
  • MAGINA, based in Rimini and specialising in Emilia Romagna and Marche;
  • MOTIVATION M.I.C.E., based in Rome and Umbria specialising in Lazio and Umbria;
  • MINE, located in Taormina and specialising in Sicily;
  • RENBEL, headquartered in Verona and specialised in the Western Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige.

The proof of the agencies’ professionalism, says Rodolfo Musco, CMM, CMP emeritus, Chairman of the Operating Committee of the network is the 2,500 conferences these agencies have operated on five continents over the past five years.

Among the experts who collaborate in the Meet In Action Italy network are presidents or past presidents of the Italian chapters of the most important industry associations MPI e SITE, and professionals accredited with the most important categories of international certifications.

In addition to MPI and SITE, network members adhere to associations such as Confindustria, Confcommercio, Fiavet, Ferpi, CDO, IAPCO, GIMC, Federcongressi & Events.

Four agencies are also national providers of CME, Continuing Medical Education.

Each agency member of Meet In Action Italy will promote the network as a whole in a different market. The main markets are English-speaking European countries, German-speaking countries, the Russian Federation, the Nordic countries, Benelux, USA, Brazil, China, Eastern European countries, France.

Click to the website.

Talking about Bureausaurs

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It’s difficult to say exactly who the public servants are who never clock out of the office even a minute after their appointed time, but what’s certain is that there are lots of them. And event organizers are always at risk of coming across one or more of them. Here’s a story as just one example.

In April this year, one of my long-time clients (an international group working in several sectors, and in this case in ceramics) decided to organize an event for its foreign customers. The location we chose was a small but magnificent medieval town, one of Italy’s fifty most beautiful, and above all its castle, publicly owned and therefore under the responsibility of the local archaeological heritage directorate.

Part one: requests

The event was scheduled for Monday 24 September, with about 200 guests for an aperitif and dinner. In April we asked the directorate offices (with repeated phone calls and e-mails) the possibility of using the castle, and a month later they gave us their written approval. But in June our troubles began in earnest, with slumbering switchboard operators, contact persons nowhere to be found, a mysterious superintendent who handles requests as if he a relatively modest sum and just three hours of use became a colossal task, because none of our usual banks would even consider our request. And so another month passed, but in the end we found our guarantee.

Part two: money

Given our commitment to social sustainability, we rightly try to use a majority of local staff and artists wherever possible, and we outsource our catering services to local restaurants. A Monday evening in late summer certainly seemed to be an interesting opportunity for the town in economic terms, as well as being an excellent international showcase. In this we had the strong support of the local council and the tourist committee, both of which complained of the “tyranny” of the castle custodians and the directorate over the town.

We did everything asked of us, but the signed contract was delivered to us only at the start of September. And from then on, the requests of the directorate increased with almost every day that passed, and they all had the common denominator of… money! For just two hours of event in the castle, plus two hours for setting up and one for clearing up afterwards, we were asked not only for a hire fee (and not too low), but also for a sum equivalent to the entry tickets for every one of the 200 participants and for every member of our staff, a quota for the value of a guide for every person, and the cost of five custodians for eight hours.

Leaving aside all this money and the “tyranny” and even rudeness of our dealings with the directorate, what most offends me is the absolutely despotic handling of the whole affair by bureaucrats. Or in other words, if you want to make me pay for even the air we’ll be breathing, then what I’d like is to be given an accurate and exhaustive reply when I first ask for the availability of certain spaces; to be sent a contract if not immediately then at least in sufficient time to allow me to do my job without worrying unnecessarily, also considering that I’m paying quite a high price for the service; and for you to be polite to me and to understand that this castle belongs to the public and that all the wages involved are paid by the public, to which I also happen to belong. Is this asking too much? Or given how things stand nowadays, should bureaucrats perhaps try to use a bit more common courtesy in their work?

Sadly there are far too many cases like mine, and I imagine that like me, many other colleagues will have spent incredibly exasperating months struggling with invisible bureaucrats who give you information – one precious drop at a time – only in the morning from 11 am to 1 pm (they never answer earlier), and that every time they do, they raise the stakes yet again, with the threat, only slightly veiled, of denying you the use of your chosen location unless you always accept their demands. And what can you do? Who do you take your complaint to?

Site Italy intends to start a collection of negative experiences like this one, with the commitment to publish them and to take phonecalls from readers willing to blow whistles and name names. We think it’s important to work together as a team on this and to help each other, whether members or not.

Article published on Meeting & Congressi – October 2012