Rabobank organises festival for 10,000 employees at Royal Jaarbeurs

Contact was sought with Royal Jaarbeurs and, amazingly, the planned date was still available. From that moment on, the core team of Hester, Paul, Jan van den Elshout and various volunteers from Rabobank on the one hand and parties such as Dutch Matters, Boozed, The Food line-up, AVEX and, of course, Royal Jaarbeurs on the other, worked up to 13 hours a day. Even with such long hours it was a tall order but despite pressures of such a tight deadline, no-one involved had any doubts the would make it. 

“There was mutual trust between us all and no time to discuss everything in detail,” says Hester. “While there were of course occasional moments when we asked each other whether we could make it, everyone remained calm and forged ahead with confidence.” Paul smiles and agrees: “The drive within the team to create something special was so strong. And our contacts at Royal Jaarbeurs, Jasper and Hidde, were super-productive. We couldn’t have done it without them: they organised so much behind the scenes to allow us to realise our goal and we probably don’t even know the half of it.”  

As an example of the latter, Hester references the only moment of stress during the night itself, caused by a breakdown in the supplier’s IT system. “People couldn’t open the lockers at a time when 10,000 people were entering the venue,” explains Paul. “The Royal Jaarbeurs team quickly identified the problem and sought a solution. They have a very clear communication structure, where the right people were interlinked and in constant contact. It transpired that several cloakrooms were not being used so we were given access to them. Royal Jaarbeurs found staff to man these cloakrooms after just a few brief exchanges via walkie-talkies. Yes, it was a moment of stress, but it was superbly resolved.” 

Paul and Hester now look back at the festival with enthusiasm. Hester: “It was amazing to be involved. Although I’ve been organising events for 20 years this was by far the largest. And except for the lockers, everything went perfectly. This was really down to the mutual trust we had. It made me wonder why – if you’re confident something is going to be fine – it can take two years to develop a product when we can organise something on this scale in just three weeks?”