Our Speakers 2024

Roxy heads up marketing for NCASS, a trade association that supports independent hospitality businesses, including thousands of event and festival caterers across the UK. She has worked with small businesses in the events, festival and creative industries years for 14 years across business development, marketing, communications, event management and project management.

Emma Britton is a well-known former BBC local radio presenter across Somerset, Bath and Bristol. As a broadcaster, Emma interviewed thousands of people over the 10+ years she was on air, from members of the public to authority figures, to famous people.

Emma is now enjoying working as a freelance presenter, professional event host and a civil celebrant.

Very much a “people person”, Emma is outgoing, approachable, engaging and empathetic. As a guest speaker, her talks have been described as inspirational and uplifting!

When it comes to events, she has recently completed eight years as a volunteer on the organising committee of Bridgwater Carnival, considered to be the biggest illuminated carnival in Europe.

As CEO, LIVE, Jon leads an organisation representing the UK’s £6.1bn live music sector with his board comprising representatives from festivals and venues, artists and managers, agents, promoters, orchestras, production and beyond. LIVE presents a single voice to Government and the media for this creative and economically significant sector. The team works across Whitehall on issues such as sustainability, touring, safety and promoting Britain as a great place to visit, study and invest. Prior to LIVE, Jon worked around the UK hospitality industry in policy, licensing and research roles. As Patron, Institute of Licensing he remains committed to fostering mutual understanding and achieving recognised standards of professional development and competency in the field of licensing and related practice.

As Managing Director of Redwood Event Solutions, Jim Davey has built a multi award winning events company and a solid reputation within the industry. Jim’s experience is gleaned from some of the largest, most challenging, uplifting and special events in the world working with a safety, operational and or a production hat on.

His years within the industry have resulted in the delivery of creative and practical solutions whilst managing safety, production and welfare teams on site at events through highly challenging situations and timelines. Jim’s expertise is founded in taking an initial brief or idea and creating an event or solution that exceeds expectations. In short, his approach is you can do or achieve anything you want; you just have to think about it first.

Matt has been with See Tickets for over four years, and within the ticketing ticketing industry a further seven. Matt heads up See Tickets’ relationships with our festival, exhibition and attraction client portfolio, including English Heritage, ZSL, Raymond Gubbay and IMG. Over this time Matt has built a good understanding of what challenges our clients face, pre event, on site and post event. Helping clients, new and long term, navigate the world of ticketing. Matt also manages our Groups, Coach and Travel Trade team who are an integral part of the outdoor events industry.

Jules is a dynamic communications specialist with a proven track record of over 25 years in the art, entertainment, and media sectors. She has partnered leading brands and agencies including The Guardian, Channel 4, Tate, Wolff Olins, Amplify and Somerset House to deliver audience engagement strategies. Leveraging her expertise in audience behavior and the power of narrative, Jules helps brands to understand and connect with their target audiences on a deeper level. By identifying the key emotional drivers, decision-making processes, and triggers that influence audience interaction, she enables her clients to develop targeted campaigns that resonate and engage.

Bev Osborne specialises in developing and delivering training solutions addressing the crisis management and emergency response needs of events and venues, companies and organisations in the UK and overseas. She became involved in the Resilience Sector by leading a 5-year programme to design and deliver multi-agency, simulation based, training exercises for Strategic Commanders in the Public Sector in 2007; and in 2011 launched Training 4 Resilience with her Business Partner Adrian Seward. She has designed and delivered over 150 crisis management and emergency exercises since 2007 for a wide portfolio of clients including Premiership Football and Rugby Clubs; Music Festivals and Concerts; the NATO Summit; the Tour de France and all London 2012 Olympic Venues.

Rick co-founded Smyle Group. It owns leading creative agency Smyle, a £50m t/o agency employing 180 full time staff that was acquired by The Human Network, which also owns Identity. Smyle has won UK Event Agency of the Year award a record 13 times in the last 15 years. Rick also launched The Power of Events in 2023, to effectively deliver for the first time a map of the industry’s now defined seven core sectors. It is supported by an unprecedented level of over 700+ organisers, agencies, venues and supplier partners from across the industry. It also launched the Event Industry Insight App in October 23 as tool for the industry to use to collate advanced data. A new Careers Hub section of the platform in Feb 24 and a UK wide Schools Engagement Programme aimed at engaging with all the 4000+ secondary schools in the UK within 5 years.

Nick joined the NCASS joining the team in 2021 heading up the operations of the business. Nick’s mandate was to drive membership value by developing products and services as well as developing an infrastructure fit for the next 20 years. Nick is also a professional business coach having worked across multiple business sectors and with many business types.

Gill began her career at Capital Radio, becoming the Head of Entertainment at the station. Having produced the first ever 100,000 capacity Party in the Park at Hyde Park in 1998, she fell in love with live events and started her own events business, entertee. During the 26 years of entertee, Gill has produced many high-profile events, including working with the Royal Parks, producing events for many prestigious brands and producing a series of regional Party in the Parks. In 2004 Gill co-founded entertee Hire offering a quality fencing solution that was affordable for smaller events. In 2018 Gill co-founded Black Deer festival of Americana, using all the experience gained from her many years in the producing events and festivals for other promoters.

James has over 25 years’ experience in the event industry. His career began in the hospitality sector before making the move to leading temporary structure supplier Arena where he was a senior project manager for numerous global sporting events including London 2012, Commonwealth Games 2014 and HSBC Abu Dhabi Golf Championships. He joined Qdos Event Hire as commercial director in 2014. Multiple high profile contract wins including a five-year deal with Goodwood Estates catapulted him to the role of managing director in 2016. He has spearheaded the company’s rapid growth and it’s now established as one of the industry’s leading suppliers. Qdos has supported almost every notable sporting event, public event and state occasion held in the UK over the last 10 years.