Sentenced to Email Servitude - by Richard Handscombe

“Thou shalt reply to every email” isn’t really the commandment most of us think it is.  How many times have you sent an email to someone only to receive a reply saying “thanks”.   If you’re a polite and well-brought-up Yorkshire lad like me, the temptation is to write “You’re welcome”.  So far, I have resisted this fearing that I’ll receive a reply saying “the pleasure was all mine”, but the temptation remains….

The email inbox is up there with action points from meetings, completing tax returns, and inviting the in-laws to dinner as one of life’s more oppressive monkeys on our back; something to nag away at us, give us indigestion and feed our guilt complex.  If you read about strategies for handling email, you’ll find these two rules expounded:

a)    If you’re working efficiently, you can read, file and/or respond to every email you read
b)    Non-response is unacceptable where an email implicitly or explicitly asks for a response.

Considering the first of the above decrees:  I first saw email in 1995, and I think it would have been around 1997 when my email inbox reached a volume at which it became largely unmanageable! My inbox is now TB41P (too big for one person), and anyway, work gets in the way.

As for the second of the above statutes, I think it’s a hangover from the pre-email era (PEE), as an acknowledgement that the person who had sent the letter (this is a piece of paper with squiggles written by a pen.  A pen is an instrument …. Oh never mind) had actually gone to some trouble and expense writing the letter and envelope, stamping it, and trudging to the post-box!  That’s almost heroic and clearly deserves a response.  But in order to accomplish this level of courtesy today, we have to give up personal time swatting emails with our smart phones on the train and at home because there’s just not enough time in the working day.  And don’t we all love the après-holiday backlog?


I don’t know the answer, so I’ll leave the question out there and you can email me if you do.  I promise to respond. But here’s an out-of-office message suggestion I read recently which, although not recommended as it’s probably professionally suicidal, made me smile.

Due to the volume of email I receive, I no longer personally review every message. If you are interested in learning more about why I have decided to set limits on my email time, you can read this [link to their blog post]. If you do not receive a further reply within 72 hours, please assume that I have had to focus on other professional or personal priorities at this time. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Rant over.  I won’t even start on why we actually type in our names at the bottom of an email reply when it already has an automatic signature and anyway should be obvious from whom it came…….

Making an Exhibition of Myself - by Richard Handscombe

As 2014 dawns, I have been thinking of how the conference business has changed in the last 20 years….

Back in 1993 when I came into the academic conference sector, computers were few and far between (we had just one in our department), and very basic, with dark screens and green writing, and Windows were things to watch rain drip down.  We wrote letters…real letters, with typewriters (typewriters were things with keyboards connected to sort of hammers with letters on…never mind, Google it!).  Oh yes, and we had to go to the library to research anything because the World Wide Web was a year or two away!

Back in those days, when we’d only just heard of Bill Clinton,  the final episode of Cheers was in the can, and Whitney Houston was topping the charts screeching  “I Will Always Love You” (I know these things because I Googled them), I used to exhibit at seven or eight venue shows.  These included Venuemasters, EIBTM, Confex, Chase, HRD, and the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD).

How times have changed.  Although face-to-face discussions are still said to be important to buyers, the years are littered with failed attempts to launch new shows and attendances at exhibitions went into a steep decline.  The truth is that the speed, content and usability of the Web means that we can exchange vast amounts of information in a microsecond, and increasingly savvy buyers can comprehensively research venues without leaving their offices.  And conversely, venues are able to seek out and target potential buyers without breaking sweat.

These days at MEETinLEEDS we routinely attend only one, very focused exhibition (Venuemasters, 14th May 2014, at the Earl’s Court Ibis) and the rest, like Bill and Whitney, are history.

I actually did tot up the number of exhibitions I’ve done over these twenty years and I reckon it’s an astounding 60 at a cost probably well in excess of £150k!  Although this seems a high cost, we did see a lot of business coming from exhibitions when they were at their zenith, and in fact I can remember one single enquiry returning £150k of revenue.

What will the picture be in another 20 years?  It’s anybody’s guess, but thinking very positively, One Direction will be no more…..