BAC Bit of a joke

[latrobet]

Bit of a joke that there are 500 affiliates stuck in a foyer at the Berlin Affiliate Conference.

Maybe a little less drinking and a little more organising!

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[MrBinaryAff]

How was it overall?

[latrobet]

Overall it was good. It was just crazy that hundreds of us were stuck in a foyer for an hour....

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[agsgroup]

May I ask why you are/ were stuck?
Hope the conference was good otherwise!

[Triple7]

The welcome drink was held in a bar with a maximum capacity of not more than 30 persons and 1 (!!) beer draft. Waiting times for a beer where worse than waiting times in Disneyland and the employees of the hotelbar were completely incapable of handling this properly. I really wonder who decided it was a good idea to organize it here.

Anyway, poor hotel is chosen to be the official hotel. Berlin was great, must admit that. For sure I will go back there to see more of the city. I met a lot of nice people and did some good business.

The conference itself: so-so. Almost half of the hall was binary/forex-things and including big booths of brands like WillHill, 888, 10bet... you've got more than half of the hall.

Next year I will not be in Berlin. Otherwise I would have spend the last day in the city instead of the conference hall.... and not book Crowne Plaza.

[RacingJim]

The welcome drink was held in a bar with a maximum capacity of not more than 30 persons and 1 (!!) beer draft. Waiting times for a beer where worse than waiting times in Disneyland and the employees of the hotelbar were completely incapable of handling this properly. I really wonder who decided it was a good idea to organize it here.

Sounds crap! Berlin is such a great city as well so you'd think they could have done a lot better.

[Triple7]

True that. I was sceptical about Berlin, but it is a great city. There are enough hotels that can manage this type of events, like for example Hilton.

[latrobet]

In the first day of the conference the carpet was still being laid. That meant that all of the affiliates that arrived at 9.30 were asked to wait in the foyer for nearly an hour while the carpet was finished......

As for the conference it was good. Its always a pleasure to touch base with our contacts at all of the bookies and casinos. I do agree that the binary option stuff is getting huge and I worry what thats going to do legally to the event. When a scandal breaks around the binary trading the conference is going to get hit hard.

All in all a good event.

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[UTG]

In the first day of the conference the carpet was still being laid. That meant that all of the affiliates that arrived at 9.30 were asked to wait in the foyer for nearly an hour while the carpet was finished......

As for the conference it was good. Its always a pleasure to touch base with our contacts at all of the bookies and casinos. I do agree that the binary option stuff is getting huge and I worry what thats going to do legally to the event. When a scandal breaks around the binary trading the conference is going to get hit hard.

All in all a good event.

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I was told that the conference was late due to a car accident. The truck that delivered most of the material was late several hours due to the accident so they couldn't build everything in time. **** happens somethimes.

Regarding Crown Plaza Hotel: it was bad last year and it was worse now. They should have chosen a hotel with at least a decent bar.

[latrobet]

I was told that the conference was late due to a car accident. The truck that delivered most of the material was late several hours due to the accident so they couldn't build everything in time. **** happens somethimes.

Regarding Crown Plaza Hotel: it was bad last year and it was worse now. They should have chosen a hotel with at least a decent bar.

If thats the case I retract the statement you cant help accidents. But they should have given us some sort of explanation! Rather than leaving us like sardines in a can.

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[BBCasinos]

they gave all the attendees a explanation by email.
According to the car accident involving materials for the conference

[latrobet]

Didnt see any email...... anyway its not the end of the world.

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[MMM]

Well. Actually when you host a conference where people come from all over the world you can take few hours spare for emergencies.

[TheGooner]

Yeah - the excuse sounds a bit like "my dog at my homework".


To be fair - I thought that the organisation at Amsterdam (AAC) was very good (apart from a mix-up with access to the VIP conference area), so I'm surprised that they were leaving it to the last minute in Berlin.

I guess rental expenses of the venue make it more cost-effective to do it over-night, and the accident was unexpected - I expect next time they will send the truck a day in advance.

[MMM]

Actually over the years I heard many aff companies complain that the set up time is very limited - I assume each day costs a lot of money so they try to minimize it as much as possible.

[AE-Martyn]

This was sent to all delegates on the Friday at 12:51...

"Dear IGaming Colleague,

I wanted to sincerely apologise for the delays that we experienced at the Berlin Affiliate Conference and Financial Partners Expo this morning.
One of the trucks belonging to a contractor building a large number of stands was involved in a major traffic accident in Poland on the way to the show, ultimately preventing us from laying the carpet in the hall as planned.

While we have a number of contingency plans in place, this situation was beyond our control and resulted in delegates being delayed getting into the conference hall.

We are truly sorry and thank you for your patience and support.

If you would like to come and speak to me personally about this morning's situation please ask a member of staff at the registration desks who will let me know and I will come and meet you there. Alternatively you can email me on shona [at] igamingbusiness.com.

I hope you have a fantastic show.

Kind regards,

Shona ODonnell
Head of Operations, iGaming Business"

I don't believe that they would say this if it wasn't true, I also spoke with the MD of iGB on Friday night who told me what had happened and also praised Shona for meeting the issue head on with the email. I believe she also spoke with those who had booths to address any complaints relating to the delay. Maybe the queue wasn't informed as well as they could have been but I can imagine that all the iGB staffs attention was aimed at getting the work completed ASAP to get the gathering crowd in.

[ARZ]

Honestly I did not even noticed any problems with a truck. Maybe it´s because I came later. And since I was not staying at Crowne Plaza, Berlin was a great conference for me.

[alexpratt]

Hi All,

Thanks for the feedback especially on the Crowne Plaza, this didn't come up in the survey feedback last year so wasn't aware of the issue.... We did also have drinks being served from a number of locations in the hotel lobby but appreciate these could have been clearer.... There was also a crazy amount of people at the pre-drinks, more than I have seen at any of these before.

In terms of future hotels, when we select them its based on a number of factors including price, location, quality, wifi, and the bar... But more often than not its availability as we don't use their internal event space so often they are hesitant to give us a lot of rooms as that puts off any potential conferences and we need at least 200 rooms for it to be the official one. Once they know how much our delegates drink they are usually much more accommodating!

With regards to the late opening - We hold our hands up to that, it was super stressful but we can not open until the venue deem it safe for delegates to come in but as the message said a lorry was super late coming in because of a crash, they didn't even start building their stands (I think 3 or 4 big ones) till 5am that morning so it was amazing we only opened 40 mins late. Other organizers would normally just condemn the stands and not let them build but we felt this wasn't the right thing to do and just worked our butts off all morning clearing the floor to get the show open. We did try to explain to people in the queues both on a tannoy and going outside with coffee but with so many in attendance it was tough to get the message out.

As for build times - It is of course tight like any event in the market as it is very expensive to add an extra day but this wasn't what impacted the late opening..... but you will be pleased to know that as of LAC 2017 we will be adding an extra day... Yay for health and safety

Oh and last thing on the binary booths - Its actually just a clever floor plan that makes you think the area is massive - Stats are below. As you can see the financial zone is actually about 27% of the total floor space in terms of sqm and 33% of the total exhibitor stands and as you mention the gaming stands tend to be a lot bigger

2015
Financial zone area - 1899 sqm
Financial zone stands - 32
iGaming zone area - 5,083 sqm
iGaming zone stands - 84

2016
Financial zone area - 2044 sqm
Financial zone stands - 38
iGaming zone area - 5,418 sqm
iGaming zone stands - 78

Thanks for the feedback - We do appreciate it and will try and always act on whatever comes back to us as this is what helps drive the event forward

[Triple7]

It's good to get a detailed reply from the organisation. Thumbs up for that.

The problems with the truck, I didn't notice. At the time there was a problem, I was still sleeping. I think it's an emergency and of all alternatives (people entering when still building up or without a few booths), this was the best option at that moment.

About Crowne Plaza... that's a point I do not get. It's in fact, a far over-priced 3-star-hotel. The official venue was the bar at Crowne's. That bar is fine at a monday evening, when 6 people are drinking a beer / hour, but not for this kind of events. Not even if 25% of the people wouldn't have come to the opening drink. I saw one more beer draft, but there was also a lot of waiting time. The problem was not just that space was limited, but also that the staff was really slow in drafting a beer. Some of them needed really minutes to draft a beer. In general, I didn't like the service offered at Crowne. For sure I will come back to Berlin, but not in Crowne.

[RacingJim]

The problem was not just that space was limited, but also that the staff was really slow in drafting a beer. Some of them needed really minutes to draft a beer.

I remember when I worked in a bar, I could do 2 pints at once plus we had automated soft drinks dispensers so you could viably be pouring 2 soft drinks and 2 pints at the same time. I get REALLY annoyed when I see slow service behind bars, but as in most things, you just can't get the staff these days!