When the G20
comes to town
Excel London takes us behind the scenes of the London Summit 2009
On 2 April 2009, one of the largest
and most prestigious occasions of
the global events calendar - The
London Summit, arrived at Excel London.
With 1,200 of the world’s highest profile
delegates and 2,500 of the most prestigious
media bodies in attendance, Excel became
the scene of one of the most stringent
logistical operations it had ever experienced,
meticulously organised down to every detail,
controlled under specially coded ‘zones’ and
overseen by more than 300 staff, 600 police
and personal protection officers.
Services and 2012 Games director at
Excel, James Mark, says: “Although Excel is
very experienced in holding many diverse
and high profile conferences and events,
The London Summit had its own unique
complexities which made for an extremely
challenging event for all parties involved.
“The fact that it was such a globally
publicised event made us certainly feel that
we were not just representing ourselves, but
the whole of the UK.”
During the event’s development, Excel
worked alongside creative production
agency WRG to adapt its space to fit the
constantly changing logistics, building and
adapting additional rooms as required,
including the addition of an onsite breakfast
meeting area, installed only two weeks
before the date of the summit.
Assistant director for the foreign and
commonwealth office, Tony Humphries,
played a key role in the selection of the host
venue and complemented the Excel team
for its “outstanding support during the initial
planning process, right through to the
effective delivery of this event. The venue’s
flexible nature was exactly what we needed,
allowing us to adapt the format at short
notice, as the precise requirements unfolded
during the planning stages”.
On the day itself event caterers Leith’s
served up over 4,500 cups of tea and
coffee, 20,000 glasses of water and over
500 litres of home made soup. For them,
the summit was a case of being seen but
not heard as they had to work in complete
silence, kitted out in specialist shoes and
gloves to avoid any disruptions to the
proceedings.
Over in the media zone, there was
round-the-clock specialised technical
support alongside the most advanced
communication and media facilities
possible, stemming from the provision of
over 8 km of temporary cabling, 1,600
telephone lines and the use of a peak of
190 Mbps internet bandwidth.
“All of our teams,” says Mark, “from event
management and catering through to
operations and security, co-operated
together and we were able to fully
demonstrate the flexibility of Excel London
and the real skills of our teams in providing
FEATURE
the ideal environment for staging not just
meetings, but global meetings where people
can effectively conduct high level business.”
Even after it had finished on the Thursday
evening, Mark says his staff continued to
work together throughout the night to make
sure the venue resumed to ‘normal
business’ status in time for Friday’s events.”
“The global feedback from this event has
been phenomenal and the icing on the cake
definitely came at the end of Obama’s
speech, when he thanked Gordon Brown for
arranging such fantastic conference
facilities. I don’t think we could have asked
for a better acknowledgement than that!”
June 2009 Conference+Meetings World 33
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