A New Years Gift From The GCMA

Welcome to 2023! In celebration of the New Year and our one-year anniversary, we’re making our December webinar publicly available. If you’ve been wondering what the GCMA is all about, we encourage you to tune in to this fantastic conversation.

If you’re not a member, you can sign up now here.

Words from the Chair

Well now, that was a challenging summer!

I initially wrote the following words at the beginning of September. Then the news came that we all expected at some stage but hoped not to hear, the loss of Queen Elizabeth II. For the UK events industry it was a call to action in a way we had never been called upon before. Whilst the world watched the pomp and ceremony of which we are all so proud, the events industry worked together on an unprecedented level. Those were a ‘few days in September’ that none of us will ever forget. 

In the last few days, we have become aware of the tragic stadium disaster in Indonesia. We will not speculate based on media reports but hope that the authorities will investigate thoroughly, not to apportion blame but to learn and prevent re-occurrences.  

Before all this it seemed that no matter who I spoke to, in whichever country, everybody had been flat out and facing some strange new challenges, particularly around the availability of equipment, staff shortages, inexperience, lack of practice and public behaviour. Nothing we didn’t predict of course but some tough gigs all the same.

It also occurred to me as I caught breath this week that it has been almost 10 months since we launched GCMA: that’s about the time we might take to develop a brand-new event. Not a huge event. Not an Olympics, a Glastonbury or a Coachella, but certainly a decent-sized 50-60,000 event. A couple of years ago, GCMA was just an idea. 18 months ago, we developed a framework with our core team, then 10 months ago we shared it with tens of thousands of people. Like any new event, some scoffed and said it wouldn’t take off but we now have approaching 200 members in 20 countries!

Our Alliance is still developing though. 

How many people does it take to put on a major music festival? A handful have the idea, then a few dozen develop it, but hundreds are needed to deliver on its potential.  

GCMA is growing into what we always hoped it would be; a community forum for those with an interest in and a passion for crowds. Events do not just grow on their own; they need support, work and stimulation from the wider community, to share ideas and encourage growth.

We have a small, hardcore (unpaid) family working behind the scenes. To borrow an old saying it is time to ‘think not what GCMA can do for you, but what you can do for GCMA’ (My apologies to JFK and all Americans for mashing up that line). 

We have a monthly discussion group that needs to be stimulated by your input. We have three member-exclusive webinars available online and a fourth scheduled for December 7th. We have just launched the first 3 episodes of the Global Crowds Podcast for you to dip in and out of, depending on your interests. We plan to produce dozens of those podcasts, opinion pieces and articles and we would love it if these were presented by a variety of talking heads who reflect our alliance’s diversity. Early next year, GCMA plans to release our first print publication, The Field Guide to Crowds. We need more volunteers. We want your event stories; what went well, what didn’t go so well and how you fixed any issues. 

If you are coming towards the end of a busy season, you know you are going to get bored, don’t you? Yeah, you know you will! So come and give us a few minutes or even hours from time to time and see how widely the benefit of your experience can spread, globally. Are you in between jobs or has your season not started? - Come on, come on, come on!

Here’s the link to the volunteer form from the last newsletter, in case you missed it.

Thank you to everybody who has already come forward and involved themselves in GCMA’s projects. We are breaking new ground here and it’s wonderful to see the foundations being laid so carefully by so many conscientious and diligent people.

If you are thinking ‘I don’t see what’s in it for me’, then you are probably right, it probably isn’t for you. GCMA was never intended to be a ‘pay your money and get spoon fed’ organisation. It is of us, by us, for us. We all need to contribute to our Alliance’s development to make it the best it can be, for the benefit of our global community.

Wherever you are in the world, thank you for supporting GCMA and for all you do to keep crowds safe.

Eric Stuart QPM
GCMA Chair