As I'm sure you all know, by either listening to me on the phone, or getting e-mails from me, we held a fund raiser on the 6th September. Our aim was to raise money for the development phase of the Events Industry Skillnet. The night was a huge success, there was tears (mine mostly!), laughter and even more tears as we split people up into teams and prepared them to crack the code.

As soon as John Fitzgerald (Fun Ireland) had given his introductory speech, we sent them on their way. It was hilarious, watching the teams standing there with confused expressions on their faces as they opened the packs. Not two minutes later though and half of them were rushing outside to crack that code! One team facilitator commentated:

"My team were deceptive in appearance, but actually very smart"

Anna Fitgerald (Debra Ireland) and Abigail Carroll get right down to business solving the clues

While the teams were out gallivanting around Dublin City Centre; Sarah and myself got to wait in The Vaults and have a relaxing drink! No sooner then we sat down for that drink, I was getting calls from people asking for clues. Now I'm not one to mention names... but Clyde, for shame!

Each team was given a facilitator to follow and steer them in the right direction, and also to take pictures. Paul and Cathal (Eventznet) got a team each, while John, Rebecca and Barry of Fun Ireland took on the others. I found out after that Paul and Cathal's team were in such a rush - that they took a luas 500m up the road! Then again, there was not much time with just under two hours being given to the team to get back to The Vaults.

Little did Paul's team know that Cathal was spying on them

But I think they knew Paul was trying to do the same...

The competitive spirit was well and truly alive, which was fantastic. It was great to see that everyone got into the essence of the event and did some good old fashioned Sherlock Holmes style clue solving.

We had some of the best team names also:

Winners-Chillie's (Paul's team)

All in all this was a brilliant night and the event was exactly what we needed. For any team building, staff night or your corporate clients, this is the perfect event.. Everyone had a great time - even me and I didn't get to play!

The fund raiser was a huge success for NEO - hopefully the money that we managed to raise will help offset the cost of the development phase for an Events Industry Skillnet somewhat.

This is one of the last milestones for the development phase of the Events Industry Skillnet and I for one, hope that we (as an industry) are successful in our application. It is sometimes easy to forget that NEO Ireland is not the Events Industry Skillnet - but that we agreed to host some events for them and let our members know what it was all about. The Events Industry Skillnet, if we are successful, will be made up of every company who wants to get involved and benefit from some discounted training. We are not going to get a better offer then Skillnets - which is in a nutshell, train 5 people for the price of 1.

I'd like to thank my fellow Steering Committee members, our consultant Geraldine Lavin of 3rdi, and our project manager Paul whom have led this development phase and also to all of the companies that have signed the letter of support which will make our application all the better. I have to single out Eventznet here, as the promoter company they have been the driving force behind this application and we couldn't have done it without them.

It is a great feeling to be so close to this achievement. If we are successful, there will be a brand new company out there with the sole purpose of providing this industry with cost effective and relevant training. From finding the consultants and the trainers, to even administering all of the events. Training is something that is vital to any industry and from talking with various NEO members throughout the year - I think it is fantastic that we have this opportunity to benefit from some, and get a little bit of our tax money back in kind. So watch this space by mid-november, let us all hope it's good news!