One of the biggest edtech show of the year, Bett, was held at the ExCeL in London and CEO Danny Yeow was one of thousands of people there to work for GEST clients and meet with potential new customers and partners.
This is the 15th time I have been here to Bett, which makes me feel very old!
It was great to be there and it's certainly getting busier and busier after the edtech industry got the green light to re-start live events, following on from the Covid pandemic.
We had loads of people coming from overseas to meet us at Bett, which was great to see. We had a Chief Financial Officer from Jordan, schools from Spain, schools from Poland and across Europe - and other visitors from Latin America too. Travel is definitely back 'on' and everyone is back into the swing of events, just like they used to be before Covid.
Bett event
Bett is a meeting place that everyone comes to every year, especially being at the ExCel in London, very close to City Airport.
Even people who aren't exhibiting here are meeting clients and networking with potential new clients and partners. Bett is a great set-up for people to make the most of the event.
We are really privileged that GEST is growing and that enables us to be selective about the people we want to work with. We want to work with best of breed solutions and that doesn't mean they have to be the biggest name in the market.
The GEST team at Bett: (left to right) Martin Creevy, Danny Yeow and Greg Martin
We also want to work with start-ups if we think they have big potential. We are not too worried about the size of the business if we think the quality is great and we can see a market for it.
Online solutions
Post Covid, everyone needed to be online and the systems and solutions they had at that time were potentially basic, or makeshift, but they did what people needed them to do. We are well past that now and schools have had time to reassess and say: "This is what we have and used to get through, if we need to move to hybrid again, how are we going to do it better?"
People are really taking stock of how we improve that moving forward and that means it's an exciting time for the edtech industry.
We have got some work for clients coming up in the UAE so we will be heading back out there in May. The summer then represents a slowdown in terms of international travel but that is a really busy time for us in terms of planning and helping people prepare for the new academic year.
It's like the time between two sporting seasons. looking back and learning before planning and going forward.
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