Panchayat – Your quarterly dose of unofficial learning and networking
An average person in the advertising, media and marketing industry typically goes to about 8-10 gatherings per year which includes both, networking/knowledge or hybrid format events. The first category of events are your everyday award ceremonies, informal meet ups or exclusive/invite only post work parties. Hybrid format is a better version of the former and is more popular among the fraternity as both learning and fun go hand in hand. Who doesn’t like to work & party together?
I have been to quite a few events myself. Some were good but mostly they were all meant to pass on the sponsor’s product or service. Some of them stretch on to 2-3 days to sing the tune of multiple sponsors. While I do understand, how important a sponsor is, as publishers on their own cannot spend huge monies, but I also do understand the importance of not letting sponsors takeover the event. Ultimately the attendees are taken for a ride and they feel robbed of their time.
Keeping in our cautious minds, especially the flaws of these events, Agency Reporter is launching a series of short format hybrid event which will aim at giving attendees value of their hours that we borrow along with a jolly good time and sponsors get nothing more than direct and uninterrupted access to these attendees. The series will be called Panchayat. Like an actual Panchayat, we will spend some time discussing actual issues like When will content marketing start giving real value to advertisers? or Is Social Media the real problem child for marketers? We will have some hard hitting and value deriving questions from attendees and the event will end with lots of food and booze. All in all, there will be enough take away for everyone, and no I don’t just mean food.
There are many more issue-based topics in pipeline and therefore we plan to conduct a Panchayat every quarter in Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore. Once the date, agenda and venue is frozen, we will make an announcement on www.agencyreporter.com. The first Panchayat is planned to take place on 2nd November.
Till then, keep the charcha going…
Edit – Date added.