InsideEvents Programming
InsideEvents is an international podcast hosted by Dr Mike Duignan, featuring 50+ scholars and practitioners talking about ideas, concepts, “Difficult Conversations” and “Wicked Problems” in events. Below, you can find all podcasts currently published and scheduled, and to the right you can cluck to find out more about the aim of each series.
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Apart from “difficult conversations” and “wicked problems” most of the InsideEvents podcasts are dedicated to explore ideas and concepts related to events, from “event portfolios” to “legacies” and all the ideas in between.
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There are a lot of difficult conversations that event owners, organisers, governments and critical commentators are having, and that are needed to have, to tackle some of the most pressing - often existential - challenges facing the events industry. "Difficult Conversations” is a special track of InsideEvents podcasts designed to bring key stakeholders together to openly discuss these issues. These podcasts will be launched in 2024, covering a range of issues. Examples include:
Does Saudia Arabia’s quest for global sport event domination represent an attempt at “Sportswashing”?
Do major events, like the Super Bowl, increase risks of human trafficking and modern-day slavery?
Events often manifest as “cities within cities” and often fail to engage meaningfully with the host destination: Why is this and to what extent is this true?
Is development associated with mega-events incompatible with sustainable social and economic development principles?
What are the benefits of failed bids?
Can FIFA ever clean up its image of corruption and human rights scandals?
Race and sporting events in the USA": What progress has been made in the last century 1920’s to 2020s?
Is Paris 2024 just a project to extend a gentrified “Grand Paris”?
Do we do enough to promote a strategic “event portfolio” approach to scheduling events in the calendar for destinations? What are the barriers?
Why is it that major- and mega-events consistently overestimate benefits and underestimate costs? Is this part of the game? Can we do anything about it?
Is it fair to judge cities and countries like Qatar on human rights with the same standard as developed nations (who also historically had dubious rights records)?
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Hosting events, particularly large-scale major- or -mega-events have become more complex both in terms of the business environment they find themselves in, and the operational and strategic demands around sustainable development and the legacies they leave behind.
This special track of InsideEvents applies some of the principles of wicked problem solving to interrogate and seek solutions to some of these pressing issues in the bidding, planning, delivery and legacies of large-scale events. The thing that makes events interesting is that they not only produce wicked problems (e.g. planning issues), they can also tackle non-event related problems too (e.g. tackle everyday socio-economic challenges in the destination).
The principles of wicked problems is ideal to frame these discussions as they are all inherently complex with no “stopping rule” and not always a clear “right or wrong” solution. This is because events are always situated in social contexts that have their own norms and values, therefore, each problem is always inherently different with various local economic, political, social and cultural factors influencing processes and outcomes. And finally, solutions to wicked problems are always “one shot” operations, which is often the case for one-off events, like the FIFA World Cup, Super Bowl, to the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Examples of topics include:
How do we produce lasting legacies out of events that are fundamentally temporary?
Are events and festivals doing enough to be environmentally friendly and encourage pro-environmental behaviours?
How do we balance hedonic experiences with the need for social responsibility (e.g. pro-environmental behavior at festivals)?
How do we design and deliver major events that result in minimal human rights violations?
