From the August 2006 issue of Successful Meetings
Take 4,000 filthy-rich financiers, dress them in tie dye and granny glasses, surround them with vintage Volkswagen buses, throw in a concert by The Who, and what do you get? Hedgestock: a conference and networking event recasting Swinging Sixties counterculture for 21st-century hedge fund managers.
"We thought people would like a different format from a conventional conference," says Simon Ruddick, who organized the two-day event as managing director of Albourne Partners Ltd., a London-based hedge fund consultancy. Hedge fund managers "aren't necessarily the most loved people in the world," he noteswhich made the theme especially appealing: "They've often left big, established institutions to do their own thing, so there's a feeling of antiestablishment."
Not that he planned it quite like that. Rather, Ruddick was just looking for a way to raise money for a charity for teens with cancer, and to hold a networking event at the same time. The charity, which has rock-world connections, said it could get Roger Daltrey to host a music festival, and since Daltrey and the rest of The Who had played the original Woodstock, it was a short leap from there to the Hedgestock concept.
All You Need is Dough
Hedgestock was held at Knebworth House, a gargoyle-studded Gothic mansion a half-hour outside London. For ambiance, the historic-yet-hip venue was idealKnebworth has hosted so many music concerts (everyone from the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin to the Chemical Brothers and Oasis) it's known as "the stately home of rock."
Yet in other ways, Knebworth proved a challenge. "The technology side was very demanding," says Ruddick. "We had to get electricity and Internet service to the countryside." Since Albourne Partners had never organized an event before, Ruddick worked in tandem with The Parallax, an event production firm, to set up 70,000 square feet of tents for sponsors (Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs) and exhibitors (Bentley, Moët & Chandon). That, plus coordinating 20 conference panels and 16 presentations and arranging catering for 4,000not to mention obtaining the proper licenses for attendees who arrived by parachute or balloonadded up to something a little more complex than three days of rock in the pouring rain.
Putting the "Fun" in Funds
Logistically, Hedgestock needed to be big enough to raise lots of money for the charity, yet still intimate enough that attendees could "meet the people they wanted to meet," says Ruddick. He achieved that balance by prearranging high-quality one-on-one meetings. While on site, attendees carried Spotmes, electronic tracking devices that let them exchange virtual business cards, alerted them to their next appointments, and enabled instant voting on hedge fund award categories such as "best compliance consultants" and "best risk management service."
Given that Hedgestock was such a success, would Ruddick do it again? Not annually: "We might do it every two years, to keep it fresh." But he would probably stray from the Hedgestock theme. "If an antiestablishment event became established, it'd be a bit ironic, wouldn't it?" About as ironic as, oh, a corporate logo on a VW bus.