EventNewsDXB

Adam Parry: A Playbook For Event Tech & Turning Applause Into ROI.

• W4 Podcast Studio

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How many times have we sat in a bar and magically come up the next 'big idea', only for it to avaporate along with the last drop of vino in your glass! 

In this week's EventNewsDXB, we sit down with Adam Parry, Co-Founder of Event Industry News and Event Tech Live about ignoring all the 'nay-sayers' and turning that 'big idea' into not just one, but two profitable businesses. 

Adam unpacks some of the key moments along his journey - why awards became more than trophies but a true community hub and how a daytime conference unlocked sponsorships that ultimatelty made his P/L work! 

We also explore what innovation really means in events, why tech is only as good as the problems it solves. And he shares the thinking behind Speaker Stacks, a new tool built to bridge content and contacts without spamming audiences.

Plus, having made the move from the UK to Dubai, Adam shares his perspective on how two very different markets operate and talks candidly about the culture shift, from the UK’s mature but sometimes rigid industry to the Middle East’s speed, ambition, and appetite for scale.

If you're looking for an engaging conversation with one of the event industry's most influential voices, hit that play button! 

EventNewsDXB is supported by -45dB and Warehouse Four. 

Production Credits:

Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & W4 Podcast Studio

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SPEAKER_01:

You're listening to the Event News DXP podcast, your behind-the-scenes look at the event industry in Dubai, the UAE, and the wider media region. I'm Ian Carlos, and each week I sit down with the people shaping one of the world's most dynamic event markets. Whether you're an event planner, supplier, agency lead, or part of an in-house team, I hope that this podcast gives you some practical takeaways, fresh perspectives, and a deeper understanding of how things really get done in one of the world's most fast-moving event markets. And for season two, I'm super pleased to let you know that Event News DXP is brought to you by Warehouse 4, probably Dubai's best independent event menu. And Minus 45DB, the team transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound-reduced environments. From full-size conference theatres to compact meeting pods, Minus45DB builds modular spaces that are quiet, customizable, and completely turnkey. And they're sustainable too. Smart design with zero waste. Check them out at minus45db.com. When today's guest started his event career, it wasn't by design. He started in sales, stumbled into publishing, and from there co-founded Event Industry News and Event Tech Live. What began as an awards night dreamed up in a pub quickly turned into an event that now attracts thousands of attendees from more than 40 countries. In this week's episode of Event News DXP, Adam Parry talks candidly about building a business on pure ignorance and grit. Why being told it'll never work only pushed him harder, and how focusing on a tight niche became the foundation of his success. He shares what separates hype from the real impact when it comes to tech, why streaming and AI are reshaping how audiences retain content, and how data capture is changing the way exhibitors and sponsors measure value. We also dig into his recent move to Dubai, where he sees positivity and collaboration driving the market in ways the UK can't always match. For Adam, he thinks this region isn't just a new base, it might well be the future growth engine for events globally. So let's get into it. You're listening to the Event News DXP podcast. Adam. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on, mate. Thank you very much. I feel like we've got a lot to cover in the next half an hour because a quick rundown. I mean, you're the founder of Event Industry News in the UK. You're also the founder of Event Tech Live. Yep. And it may be equally as important, you've just made the move to Dubai. Correct, yeah. So let me think. Where shall we start? Just to be different, we'll start right at the beginning where I normally start. How on earth did you find yourself in events?

SPEAKER_02:

Right, okay. Totally, totally by accident. My first experience of events was working for kind of a marketing and promotions company back in Sheffield in the UK, and they dealt with the football club. So we helped them with match day activities and sponsorships and raising money and all that kind of selling shirts and stuff like that. I quickly transitioned into a print and media company. Then I went and sold labels for a living, sticky labels on hot metal steel and all that kind of stuff. Got promoted there. And then at a very young age, I thought I knew it all and I could do it for myself. And did for a little bit, but I had a mortgage, so I needed to pay the bills. So I walked into my local Adeco, and the lovely lady that helped me was like, Oh, I've got something here, but this media company up the road, they need somebody. I was like, Yeah, whatever. And my co-founder, Paul, actually was the person that interviewed me at that publication. Okay. And the publication was for the festival and outdoor industry. So anything that didn't appear in a traditional venue. Yeah. And Paul needed some help taking that publication from well, he'd launched it and he'd done well. He took it to a bi-monthly, and then the company wanted to take it to a monthly. So I was thrown in at the deep end. And in all honesty, it was a sales job. It was, you know, bring revenue in. But what it quickly transpired is that we were ad hoc editorial at weekends, going to these festivals, going backstage, interviewing the organizers, interviewing the production team, interviewing the suppliers on a look back pain, trying to take down all these notes and stuff like that. So it became this little like hybrid, hybrid model. And then fast forward a couple of years, we had to come up with an idea to improve the products, media, spends, and editorial and stuff. And I pitched the idea that we should use this amazing thing called social media to reach new audiences and publicize some of the content that we didn't run in the magazine on the website that we had, which ultimately was a glorified subscription form. If you were lucky to get a magazine, because we had a cap circulation of 10,000. And the owner of the business, or the son of the owner of the business who ran the B2B side, came around to me and said, The internet's just a phase. So I think I had actually had that printed on a T show.

SPEAKER_01:

I was just gonna say, have you sent that back to him as a signed printed copy? Well enough to hang on his wall.

SPEAKER_02:

I say unfortunately, because there were some amazing people that worked there, and actually I still work with a couple of them. They went from 25 print publications, some very successful ones, to now one. So in that, in the 15 years of industry news uh being a publication, we've grown. I think we've got 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, 35,000 subscribers to a newsletter there, got multiple other newsletters, podcast ourselves, and that kind of stuff. And yeah, so that's that's how we how we fell into it. And I think that is the definition of the events industry, to be honest with you. I don't think there is there are there are actually lots of people that want to get into events, but most of us didn't really plan on doing it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a common story actually. I've heard lots of people on the podcast that say, Oh yeah, I fell into it later on by accident, you know. So then what made you decide to actually want to organise an event of your own?

SPEAKER_02:

Because you get carried away, don't you? I can do this. What led me to we we started writing about technology on the publication, in all honesty, because it was a selfish passion of mine. I'd I just love tech. I'm early adopter, the wife hates me, I'm a proper geek at heart. And I was writing about this tech that I could find in the in the sector. I mean, even event apps were a new thing back then, but I was struggling to find companies and what they were actually doing with it and what organizers were doing with it. And I was sat with a very good friend of mine, James Morgan, and he sat me down at a trade show for the events industry and said, you know what you should do? We should launch an awards program. Give companies the recognition they deserve for the technology that they're developing. And the interesting thing is they'll tell you everything about them, they'll tell you everything they're doing because they have to, because they're entering an awards, and they have to tell you everything they're doing for a company and how they're doing it. That's how they win. I was like, oh, that's a good idea. So we, me and Paul, got suckered into launching the event technology awards. I'd never organized a birthday party before that.

SPEAKER_01:

That sounds like a baptism of fire.

SPEAKER_02:

I think just pure ignorance was the success of it. Because I think if we'd have known what we were in for before we said yes, we would never have done it. Because publishing immediate is very slow, there's no impending deadlines, you know, especially digital. It can be like, oh well, that news story didn't make it today, we'll push that to next week or whatever. Events are immovable deadlines, and they have to things have to happen, and the people have got high expectations. Our initial idea was to run this awards digitally. We were we we were actually going to go around to the winners in the pub, the local pub, hand them award and take a picture and run that on the on the on the website. Yeah. We started getting entries in, which was fantastic. Then the invoice for the venue landed, which would, you know, I've not even done 10% in revenue on entries at that point. So that was a moment. Spoon moment. Yeah, very much so. I don't think, and I think my my business partner uh coined this. He just I'd never seen an invoice so big in my entire life. So that's that's where it because the expectation was there's a gallery, didn't it? This is the there's a black tie thing. We need to be, you know, it needs to be a celebration. And actually that phone call came from Barclays. Barclays had entered their event team, and the expectation was that, and then actually two or three more inbound phone calls and emails came from the likes of George P. Johnson, and I think it was another one was Verizon at the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Big players, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Big players. So that's what forced us into doing the the venue and changing our plans and tact. Speed that up. We realized that we got this venue for the entire day, and the awards ceremony was for a few hours in the evening. Being typical Yorkshiremen, we were like, This is a massive wasted opportunity to have an empty venue for the entire day. As a fellow Yorkshireman, I know what's coming. So we're like, well, we'll put on a conference and sell some tickets and fill it up in the and you know what? That was that was probably one of the best decisions we did because once we announced this conference was happening, a very well-known company that's no longer a mound anymore called Double Dutch picked the phone up and said, What can we do? We'd like to get involved. And we were like, don't know, what do you want to do? It's like, oh well, are there sponsorships available? Is there have you got a headline sponsor? We were like, No. So we're like, Oh, well, what does that look like? And me and Paul were just like, don't know. Threw a number out, they immediately said yes. We realized we'd not gone high enough, although it was a substantial amount of money, and that's it. We rolled that conference in. But the feedback that came from the attendees, and again, this was a broad spectrum of the the audio of the industry, which we had Gavin Sharm at the time for the CTO of UBM, we had GPJ in the room, we had the Barclay Card team in the room, we had Adidas in the room. I'd never seen a broad spectrum of organizer types all in the same space at the same time. So, what that taught us was that this technology theme resonated across the entire industry. But the feedback came that they wanted more content and they actually wanted to see more demonstrations of the technology. So we rebranded that Event Technology Awards conference into Event Tech Live, and again the idea was to do a little bit more content and sell some people a couple of spots for pop-up banners, and that was it. And then the first year that rolled into a thousand attendees and 60 exhibiting companies.

SPEAKER_01:

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02:

So it rocketed from there. We ran it as a one-day event for a number of years, then evolved it into a two-day event. Then COVID hit. We did a bunch of virtual editions and things like that. And now we are at Excel. Um, we run in November, so the show's coming up now. Registration's just opened, and we get around about 3,000 attendees from 40 plus different countries, and the stats tell us they spend about a billion on software and technology clever events. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Look, I think your results have obviously validated what might have been a bit of an interesting decision at the time. Because I imagine that, you know, people must have said, what, a whole event dedicated to event tech? Are you mad?

SPEAKER_02:

That is more than one person said that's me. And again, I guess maybe the thing that motivates me is people telling me I'm an idiot. And I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm like, I'm gonna prove you wrong. But yeah, three or four people, and and not in not in a vindictive or a nasty way, more as a Adam, are you sure? That is are you sure that's gonna work? I mean, even doing an event for the festival market or the trade show market or the event production market is tough, like, and there's tons of companies to go for, and you're going after this tiny, tiny niche. But yeah, I think what everybody actually likes about it is that one we have four stages of content across two days. That's more content than probably all of the other UK at least industry shows combined put on together. So we go really deep on the content. And then from the exhibitor's perspective, they're not looking going, well, who in the room is interested potentially in us? Everybody in the room is interested in the subject matter that they're most relevant to. I mean, if you're there looking for chocolate fountains, you're in the wrong place, kind of thing. So that's generally the feedback we get. It's it's a tier one event for people because they know everybody's really focused in exactly what they're there to do.

SPEAKER_01:

And who would have thought that tech would become so prominent as well? Just fast-forwarding a little bit, I mean, the big topic at the moment obviously is AI. Yeah. How do you see AI reshaping the event experience, both for attendees and for organizers? I know this is one of your pet topics, isn't it? You're really big into the AI.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for attendees, I think one of the immediate tangible values that we've seen at Event Tech Live is giving people the ability to retain the information that was delivered at the event. And what I mean by that is there is a thing that you can look up called the forgetting curve, which means that any information that we absorb, within about five days, we only retain about 20% of it. Which, if you think about every attendee that goes to an event, they're generally traveling, maybe there's a few beers involved, late nights and distractions of work and things like that. How are we expecting attendees to effectively transition that information that whatever they even the 20% they have collected back into a business so that business can act upon that and see value in that within the business? Ultimately, people are sending and spending money sending their attendees, sending their sorry, their staff as attendees to these events to learn and bring value back to the business, not just sales. And I think AI has changed that now. So we work with a company who take live audio feeds of every piece of content in every session at the event. That goes to their AI summary machine, and then immediately as the event, as the session is finished, the attendees can scan a QR code and they can get two documents, a top five key takeaways from that session, and then a deep dive PDF as well, which we've seen a huge adoption in that from our attendees, not only at the event, but I think we've in excess of five or six thousand downloads post-event as well. Which shows to me that attendees want to get hold of that information, even though they've maybe attended the session and get that back into the business.

SPEAKER_01:

They do, I but I think that's a really useful piece of tech, isn't it? Because I mean, you know, we've all been to conferences and exhibitions, and as much as we're there for the content or whoever's on stage, we're also there to network. So you're constantly being, you know, your attention's being pulled in. Oh, squirrel, you know, pulled in different directions. So to know that you've got that information available at your fingertips when you walk away, I mean it I mean it's almost yeah, I don't know whether this is a good thing for the speaker, but it's almost like you can afford to not pay as much attention during the sessions because you know it's going to be there available later, which is great for you as the attendee, perhaps a bit more challenging for the speaker.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we don't want speakers speaking to empty auditoriums, but you know, I would like to think that the content that we put on, you know, and and we have had this feedback in the past is like you're making me choose between four sessions. I want to go and see every single one. Yes. Now they get the choice of prioritizing, but they don't have to have the fear of missing out on the other content and not being able to retain that. What we've also seen is it's allowed an uplift in the on-demand content that we record because people can look at the key takeaways and go, all right, actually, it is worth me looking at that video for 30 to 40 minutes because I understand the context of the content. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Now you've just moved out to Dubai, and I want to come onto that in a little bit more detail uh shortly. But I think I'm always curious, uh, and I always love to get the insights of somebody who's been across both markets, both uh, you know, a European one or a UK-centric one for yourself, and now having spent you know a bit of time here with your feet on the ground. And I know obviously you've just moved here, but you've travelled here many times before, so you're not exactly you know new to the market. But what are the some of the uh differences that you've noticed in the event industry here and back in back home in the UK? I can wear my shorts a lot more here.

SPEAKER_02:

Um do you know what? There's there's there's there's actually so much that is the same. The passion of the people for an industry shines through. I think you know the differences maybe come down to more nuances and culture that that are there. You know, the UK on the face of it you would say is a multicultural company, uh country, sorry, but the bite is literally the essence of that.

SPEAKER_00:

United colours are venetting.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. The one thing I would say here is, and I think it's because 90 plus percent of people move here to invest in themselves or their businesses or their future or whatever it is, positivity is is much higher here. Everybody wants to see you win. That's what that's what the impression that I get already, and very much so, how can I help? Who can I introduce you to? How does that work? And and actually genuinely interested in who you are and what you're doing and things like that. Um, whereas in the UK, maybe it can sometimes feel a little bit more transactional and things like that. So, you know, and that's not to do any disservice to the UK. The UK has been an amazing country both for me and my family and my business growing up. But what I wanted was also to experience a different events industry, and there is elements of that here already, and I'm really excited for this region and not just Dubai but KSA and Qatar and Oman and all those other locations because there's huge plans to bring more people here, more population. When the population grows, events follow. And my experience now, and I'm already kind of feeding this back, is you know, if you're looking at markets to grow into and move, then have a look here. You know, I know some of the other big trade show organizers that have not been in this market are now making concerted investments to look at the market and as a growth opportunity and a growth channel for them, which again can only benefit the region, I think. So are my opinions and sentiments echoed in the UK? Maybe not so much on the whole now, but I think that will change over the next five years or so.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you think some of the big organizers see that as a bit of a challenge for them? I mean, we've had I had a uh the one of the guests on the podcast recently was uh Ben McDonald from Purple Glow. And he was saying, I mean he was saying on a similar vein that, you know, when you've got companies like GPJ setting up, you know, that tells you about the where the market's at and where they're at in relation to you know their plans for this region. You know, and to back that up, I read something recently that said that the Middle East events live events industry is expected to hit 76.6 billion by 2028, driven by immersive experiences, sustainability, and AI-powered personalization.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I can believe it as well. And you know, I think that even my opinion of it and the impression that I get is it's not just the desire from the events industry, whether that be locally or from further afield to grow here, it really seemed rooted at governmental level here that they see events and hospitality as a huge part of the growth of this region and are really, really behind it. And and that's that tends to be rare. It felt like to me back in COVID in the UK, the UK government didn't know what the events industry was. Well, clearly they didn't, they didn't even know they were throwing an event when they were throwing an event in a party when everybody else couldn't. But you know, that's really refreshing and really encouraging to see that there is that backing right at governmental level.

SPEAKER_01:

In some respects, we probably shouldn't be surprised at that, given that the you know there's such an emphasis obviously on the tourism industry here in here in the Middle East and and certainly in the UA and Dubai. So I mean events are just an extension of that, really.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think to see, you know, the announcement that Sephere is coming to the second sphere is coming to Abu Dhabi and stuff like that shows again people the the country and and the region are willing to invest in infrastructure to make those events happen.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, as we said earlier, you've just moved to Dubai full time, and I think I read somewhere it said, I have one simple goal in life to wear shorts 365 days a year. Currently wearing shorts. That's gonna follow you around forever, you know. I wanted to ask this because I mean across just about every industry, uh, we're seeing a massive influx of people into Dubai. And I think if you look at your LinkedIn feeds these days, you know, you see a lot of commentary from HR professionals, you know, not warning people, but certainly telling people to come with their, you know, eyes open. I mean, I've been here 22 years, and you know, those old expat salaries, you know, that their and packages, they're long gone. I think they were on their way out even when I got off the plane. And now, you know, Dubai can be a tough place. What's been your experience so far?

SPEAKER_02:

I think unfortunately, social media does a really bad job of painting the pavements are lined with gold. Yeah. Now there is absolutely a lot of wealthy people here and a lot of money and an up and lots of opportunity and stuff like that. But yeah, I think if you think you're gonna come across and immediately pick up, you know, double six-figure salaries and get your, you know, your transfers paid for and put up in accommodation and things like that, that that is gone unless you're in very specific roles or very highly sought after. But I wouldn't let I wouldn't let that put people off. I think you just have to be, you know, prepared for things such as, you know, our mobile phone contract was expected to be paid a year in advance. Our rent a year in advance. You know, it's not easy to come into the market and walk into a car showroom and get a car on finance, like it is maybe if you're a UK resident and you've got credit history, you know, you have to start fresh and build all of those things up. And I think what I see is a lot of people come here on savings, looking for work, and burn through that extremely quickly because of the elevated cost of certain things, but also very much enjoying the region, maybe a little bit too much. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Look, I think it there's no doubt it's it's changed, and I think I think that's wise advice, as is some of the commentary that I've seen on LinkedIn. I mean, you know, I remember when my sister moved out here probably about 15 or maybe more years ago, you know, she had three job offers within the first six weeks and then you know sat around for a little while deciding which one to take. I mean, those days are long gone now. I mean, I think, you know, from what I'm reading at the moment from a lot of the HR professionals is that um the recruitment professionals m more specifically, but is that you know the market is really saturated and you re if you are thinking about coming here, by all means do, but like you say, come with your bank account full and be prepared to be sitting, you know, doing a lot of networking for at least six months. Yeah. You know, I think gone are the days where you could get three job offers within the first six weeks. Yeah. I really have to be in it for the long term. And know why you're coming here as well. Don't get fooled, like you say, by social media. I mean, I read a lot about people saying, Oh, you know, it's all tax-free. And yeah, it's tax-free, but and that's fine if you're a single person, okay? But if you're a family of four with two kids, anything you save on tax you'll spend on school fees and then some. So I think it's very much about coming with your with your eyes wide open. The streets are not paved with gold, far from it. No. So come, you know, come with a plan. Do you see a a lot of appetite from event professionals in the UK wanting to make the change like yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

I can honestly say not at the moment. I think what's pushing people at the moment to to look at relocation in the market is the increase in cost of living in the UK rising rapidly. I think I looked at some stats the other day, and actually, when you take into unemployed and people on, you know, disability benefits and other things, it's like 26% of the population. And I think that's an indication of like how tough it is out there in the market at the moment in the UK, both from a business owner's perspective, you know, rising costs of national insurance and those kinds of things, and then corporation tax and things like that going in, it does make you question as a business owner and a small business owner why you would want to push on and grow and employ more people because it it's it's a lot more painful. So I think that's the thing. I think the the danger to the UK is not so much all of a sudden everybody escaping the UK and coming up, like the headlines say, like, you know, all these millionaires moving to Dubai, they're escaping the tax, blah blah blah. There's probably an element of truth in that. I think the real danger is in 10 years when all of the talent that was going to be coming to the UK have done university in the UK and then bounced.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And they've gone to other countries. And that's not just Dubai, that's European countries, maybe the US and things like that, where there's more opportunity and and uh uh more opportunity to grow and possibly earn a bigger income for themselves or keep hold of more of their income and things like that. I think that's the real danger. I think the the the UK could potentially be heading for a real big downturn because they don't have the the homegrown talent to to grow the country.

SPEAKER_01:

No, as you say, you're you you're you've just getting your feet on the ground here in Dubai. I know you're you're having a little look around at opportunities, but obviously you've got your your you know your main revenue source, which is your your events uh back in the UK. But I know you're also working on something a little bit, you know, something for yourself as well. Speaker stacks? Do you want to tell us a bit about that?

SPEAKER_02:

Where do I start? I I've been fortunate enough to be invited to and see the value in speaking at events. It's a way that I feel is a nice way to interact, give back to an audience, help an industry grow and learn and develop and stuff like that. And you know, it's it's part of the cornerstone of events at live. We have so many speakers that come and do it at our event as well. And often that is done under my own effort and under my own dollar or my own pound to get there and make that happen and things like that. And I see value in that as part of marketing the event and the business and all that kind of stuff. But I've stood and spoken in front of an audience of 10, 15, 20, 100, 500. And at the end of the session, had a great round of applause, but not had any way to connect with that audience or really understood anything more about them. And I think the other crying shame that I identified was that I had all of this additional valuable content from reports and my decks and previous sessions and whatever it is that I knew this audience would be really interested in, but had no way to get it into their hands. And then also, as an organizer of events, I've had in the past exhibitors and sponsors who've spoken on stage and felt disappointed that they couldn't get hold of the attendee data for their session. And I understand the frustration of that. They again have spent time and money investing in front of that audience. So at the back end of last year, after Event Tech Live, had some downtime, and actually, selfishly, I wanted to build something to solve this for myself because I could I felt it was a good way to additionally grow audience and potential attendees for the events. Quickly realized that a lot of my friends around me that were speakers and industry fellows also had the same challenge and thought, why keep something just for myself? Is there some way that I could package this up, make it really, really accessible, not cost a lot of money at all so people could see value and use it themselves at events? That's now out there in the market. You can actually sign up to Speaker Stacks for free. You can actually curate all the content that you want to give to an audience, launch it, use it at an event with zero dollars and zero credit card. What we do is we allow the product to prove itself first. You can see exactly how many people have collected your content. Um, you can see the first three or four. And then if you want to get access to the rest of them, if you see value in that, it's 35 quid.

SPEAKER_01:

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_02:

Organizers are now interested in it because they see value in wanting to support their speakers or their big sponsors. They also want to make sure they know who and what is talking to who and things like that. And what's really humbling is we're seeing about a natural organic level of about 50% of any audience converting into a piece of contact information or lead, if you want to call it that, for a speaker. And one of my friends put it really well. He was like, for 35 quid, I'll spend that more on breakfast at an event. You do indeed. So The only thing I would say to it, and this is a learning curve for me, very, very obvious thing for me as a speaker that speaks a lot. But I think one of our biggest challenges is changing behaviour to get people to think about any solution like speaker stacks, whether they use ours or or build their own or do something different as part of the value of speaking. It's not just about generating leads and audience and stuff for your business, it's actually about giving more value to the attendee than you would have just by speaking at them for 30 to 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, before we wrap up, I've got a just a couple of final questions for you. Okay. I'm a music fan, I'm sure you are too. You're from Manchester, Sheffield, sorry, Sheffield originally, but lived in Manchester. Lots of good music from Sheffield. Pulp. I mean, like most people, like you know, I sit down and use music as a form of relaxation often, and you know, sometimes beat my head against the wall as well.

SPEAKER_02:

What's on your playlist at the moment? Oh wow, I've got such an eclectic taste in music. I was speaking to somebody recently about this. I've just recently seen, I don't know if you've seen this, Underworld playing in London. And like I did, and I was shocked at how old they were. I thought, am I really? But that that showed to me that music transcend transcends time and age, right? You know, look at as now I'm still listening to things in the from the 70s and 60s and things like that, but I can also appreciate modern music and new music and things like that. So for me. So what you're trying to tell me is that on your playlist is frozen. Do you know what? I've got my I've got all of No, not frozen. I've got all my playlists to private because I'm ashamed of what some has under. I was listening to Madonna in the gym the other day, you know, just because that's something that it was something I was watching and it was a tune, and it came on. I was like, oh, I need to listen to that. My wife's a bit of a budding DJ, so we tend to like um a lot of house and electronic music, but I love disco as well. Oh yeah, it's it's really hard to nail down.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe I should also ask, like, first record you ever bought.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it was a Lenny Kravitz album, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Maybe I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Mine was Adam and the Ants.

SPEAKER_02:

Really?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh no, sorry, it wasn't. It was Gary Newman, Our Friends Electric. Yeah. And finally, Adam, what is it you're looking forward to over the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_02:

I think for me, genuinely, when I say this, just seeing my son gain new friends, learn new things. I mean, he's already learning Arabic, which is amazing to me. You know, that's the kind of stuff that I want him exposed to. And I think Dubai and this region will just help him blossom into a little human being, and you know, that's what I'm genuinely most excited to. That's that's a big driving reason to come here is to look at his future and see what he can do.

SPEAKER_00:

What a wonderful note to end on. Adam, thank you for joining me on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks, Ian.

SPEAKER_01:

Event News DXP is brought to you by Warehouse 4, probably Dubai's best independent event venue. And minus 45DB, the team transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound-reduced environments. The podcast was presented by myself, Ian Carlos. The studio engineer and editor was Roy Damonte. The executive producer was myself and Joe Morrison, and this podcast was produced by W4 Podcast Studio, Dubai. And if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. We'll see you next time.