Exhibiting the ability to find stories at UAE business conventions

The purpose might not always be clear of some of the conventions and exhibitions staged here, but there are some riveting stories to be told.

Exhibitions can be great sources of stories, ideas and information. If you’re looking for news, something like the Abu Dhabi Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition is an obvious choice – you can’t go wrong with a massive exhibition centre brimming with falcons, Saluki beauty competitions, camels and guns.

Business conventions, however, can be a gamble. They’re not as overt. You can go to a technology exhibition and end up empty-handed, or you can go to an unveiling of a new online banking service and end up with a hugely significant news story.

It’s not always as clear what the purpose is: is it to gather industry experts together and share ideas or is it just to promote a product?

You do usually expect to meet experts at sector meetings, which is always useful. If I'm working on a feature about skyscrapers, as I was last month, it's useful to have such a range of experts brought together in one complex. That way you can run back and forth, letting one interview lead to the next.

But if you’re expecting a news story, that’s where chance comes into it. I was at a waste management conference recently, which, to many, might sound extremely dull, or perhaps even quite grotesque. However, it really was rather riveting and, I assure you, sufficiently sanitary.

However, at the same time, I also attended a human resources summit last month, expecting to either walk away with little or with a huge, informative and engrossing feature. It was so hard to tell. In the end, the talks were all held in Arabic. One of the translators was really good, and the other was … not so good. On average, I was able to write about every other sentence down. Half a speech. Not great. Half a story.

I did manage to interview a few people, but I was an outsider at a conference not necessarily geared at press coverage. The common area outside the lecture hall was empty during seminars and everybody was extremely engrossed in snacking, networking and drinking coffee during the breaks. I didn’t have time for carbs. And I’ve always had an aversion to standing and eating alone at tall coffee tables in smart-casual attire. Upsetting.

There is an art to choosing exhibitions; you have to carefully scrutinise the agenda and speakers beforehand to see if you are actually able to gain access to the people and information you need for a specific story. That way, you’ll be able to figure out an action plan of what you want to find out, who you want to speak to about it and when.

Even then, though, there are variables. I’ve found it usually isn’t possible to pre-arrange interviews at exhibitions but sometimes, people won’t speak to you unless you have pre-arranged the interview beforehand. Furthermore, you can get caught out by a misleading lecture title. Sometimes a discussion on organisational hierarchies is really about performance management systems. And then what do you do? Exactly.

Ultimately, the right approach seems to be to prepare as much as possible beforehand and show some initiative in chasing stories. But, as with all things, it is equally important to know when to walk away.

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