NEW BOOK: Fifty Shades of events

BNC Show directors are pleased to announce that an event management agency owner and author will be appearing at our next exciting BNC Show on Tuesday, 16th April, at Central Hall Westminster.

Benedicta Asante, of Events 101, has written her first book called Fifty Shades of Events and will be showcasing her work and signing books at our event.

The impressive events entrepreneur started working in corporate events in 2018 and soon noticed a gap in the industry.

There was a need to provide undergraduates and industry starters with paid work experience and Events 101 was born and is now a thriving community of hard working aspirational events staff who want to boost their careers with solid events experience.

During the pandemic Benedicta kept his community going with online chats and courses and since then it has been growing, providing support to events of any scale, most recently at the GVCA Conference.

Benedicta said she started Events 101 after the experiences she faced getting started in the industry, including being made redundant from her Amex events job at the height of the pandemic, aged just 24.

“Events 101 supports young people who want to get into events but don’t really know how to,” explains Benedicta.

“I realised the struggles I had faced so I started working with event companies and bringing students as part of the package. This supports the event and also gives the students great experience. 

"From there Events 101 evolved into an events business and my mission was to give students a broad experience of working on lots of different types of events but I especially wanted to expose the young people to the world of corporate events because I felt it wasn’t touched upon enough during education.”

This approach to ‘filling in the gaps between education and real events’ lead Benedicta to write the book.

Fifty Shades of Events was developed to support her work with undergraduates in the industry and to also act as a refresher and touchpoint for those who have been working for some time.  

“I felt I needed more of a resource that people can have to hand and refer to,” she said.

“Inside the book is a lot of what I have learnt in the last eight years and it’s an expansion of what I was sharing through my blog on Events 101.

“It is a resource that I have created to support the industry in getting in new talent and it’s useful to all event managers to read through and learn new tips and tricks.”

The stylish and digestible book is a good read, full of not just ideas and initiatives to gain inspiration from but strategies to adopt when event planning.

Fifteen chapters take you through the event process from ‘the basics’ through to event evaluation finishing with lots of career building advice.

Chapter 11 Event Technology and Innovation: Unveiling the Future mentions the latest innovations, including how to handle AI.

“Writing about AI was very new,” explains Benedicta.

“I learnt about it in 2020 in my final year of studying and I have friends who work in tech and I asked them a lot of questions.

“Working with event organisers I can see how it could benefit the industry going forward but I  can see how it could be a negative as well.

“But overall I do feel like AI will support the industry to become more efficient. Hopefully we won’t be doing as many hours as we do now!”

Future plans include a second book as so far the self publishing process has been a joy.

“I hope to expand on Fifty Shades of Events and write a second book to show more of what I have learnt going forward,” said Benedicta.

“Self publishing on Amazon was quite straightforward and luckily I had someone in my community who had self published before and she knew what to do from buying an ISDN number to what cover to pick and things like that.

“When the book arrived I was screaming I was so happy when I opened the boxes. When you see it on screen it’s one thing but when it arrives in your hand and you can touch your work it’s amazing.”

Fifty Shades of Events is available to buy at The BNC Show on Tuesday, 16th April, 9am-4pm, Central Hall Westminster.