Held at the NEC, Birmingham, the event started with a 3 day conference for close to 800 store managers from GAME and Gamestation - the agenda included main stage presentations, keynote speeches from international guests, breakout presentations from game publishers including Microsoft, Activision and EA Games.

The two evenings were quite different with Guilty Pleasures on night one followed by a fancy dress awards dinner on night two, hosted by Ian Lee with entertainment from Comedy Dave and Dom from Radio 1 and closing with Jaguar Skills.

The final conference day included a trade show with stands and presentations of pre-release Christmas games for all the store managers.

With the managers gone, the scene was set for the trade show to open to the public. 15,000m2 of showspace and 30,000 tickets sold for the 3 days of the first public event meant a huge success - long queues - but overwhelmingly happy customers...

In January Malcolm and Richard climbed Kilimanjaro as an altitude training exercise!

Iceland have pledged to raise at least £1 million to enable one of the World's leading experts on dementia, Professor Nick Fox of University College, London, to expedite his research into the causes of early onset Alzheimer's disease and to advance the quest for a cure.

Having edited the footage from Kilimanjaro, the Cascade team are now prepared the video kit for the Everest Expedition.

We wish them every success with the climb and the fundraising.

Donate to the cause on JustGiving.com/icelandeverest

Find out more about the Expedition on IcelandEverest.org.uk

The current generation pause live TV, fast forward ads, enjoy endless reruns of their favourite tv shows on satellite, cable and using iPlayer. On demand TV and movie services increasingly mean they can watch what you want when you want to watch it, with no effort or patience needed. They can listen to and watch their favourite music artists anytime on YouTube. They can skip through every clip because the timeline is there for them to see. 

They consume media in a totally different way. Most teens will watch TV while doing something else as well as having their laptop or smartphone to communicate with friends and stay connected using BBM on the Blackberry or text, MSN or Facebook. Even older people are enjoying live shows like X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing more because they are sharing the experience online with hundreds or thousands of other people through Twitter or Facebook groups. The experts warn about this Divided Attention Disorder or "DAD", others forecast that it is the beginning of the next phase of our evolution.

Whatever the future holds, this on demand age means people get what they want when they want it.

Whst does this mean for event producers?

There are some very specific challenges or solutions we are enjoying:

1. Shorter attention span. So presentations have to be shorter and tighter with more engagement. If the format is about "telling" a message with an onstage presenter, then use supporting media (PowerPoint) in an entertaining way. People are used to knowing where they are navigating to on the web or how much longer their YouTube clip is, so use graphics, lighting effects, the stage set or clever scripting to keep them informed, they will be more engaged.

2. Multimedia. Video is everywhere. Short clips are on thre web are in today's latest digital magazines, are on your phone, in TV ad breaks and everywhere online. Video in presentations no longer means expensive, time consuming, lengthy productions. It can be used generated content, endorsements, adecdotes, humourous or informative clips or specially commissioned pieces. The key is to include a variety of media in a presentation to vary the style and make it more engaging ad memorable.

3. Hybrid Events. Creating a live event for a live audience while simultaneously broadcasting across the web to a wider audience. The of the technology is completely natural to more and more people. If you can find a clip on YouTube, you can sign into a Hybrid event online.

4. Backchannel. Enabling the audience to communicate with the presenters, organisers and other audience members. Already unofficially widespread on Twitter and Facebook and easily embraced for live events.

5. New dinner formats. Fewer and fewer people are prepared to sit at a function making polite conversation with the people they have been chosen to sit next to until they end of dinner. They want to get up and move, to network. This is not restricted to the younger generation, this trend is widespread and we have to adapt the format of our seating and evening running orders to take it into account.

6. Photographs. We photograph events and sometime later will upload the photos to a website for everyone to enjoy. The need for this to be faster is fuelled by facebook photo tagging. While embracing this, we can also celebrate the fact that almost everyone now has a good quality camera on their phone or in their pocket and are capturing your event through their own eyes. By tapping into that bigger pool of photos there is a much wider view of the event to be shared.

7. Crowdsourcing. Perhaps the most important thing to embrace and yet the most difficult, is to let the audience decide, let them create, let them get involved in making the event their own. Let them conttribute content, choose menus and everything else.

We're excited about this demanding age and the opportunities it presents, what do you think?

Faced with the challenge to do things differently, this is a conference with no venue.

500 delegates in 5 locations around their head office building - in meeting rooms, the canteen and reception. Each location with one or two huge Plasma screens, a simple backdrop and a camera, all connected to a control room.

The delegates arrived to discover a flatpacked, branded cardboard box for them to construct. The box had a coloured sticker with their name on it. At 10.00am precisely, cheerleaders passed through the offices collecting anyone with their coloured sticker - "...follow me the red team, this way, bring your box with you!!...". And so, by 10.10am all 500 people were snaking their way through the building, collecting a longer chain of people as they passed each new department, all carrying their boxes in front of them. Each of the 5 colours took a different route, passing each other on stairways and corridors. Each ended at a different one of the 5 locations.

So by 10.30 we were ready to start and Nick, the Marketing Director and host welcomed everyone from the first location - everyone could see him live on the Plasmas in the other locations. He introduced all the locations to each other, with a cheer, in true outside broadcast style.

He then proceeded to run a Q&A, questioning the other Directors live in other locations. He would ask the question and as they started to answer he would run to meet up with them in their location. Once we was by their side he would ask a follow up question.

All of the questions came from audience research in the week prior to the event - some were serious, about business performance and strategy, others were about more trivial matters.

In between the questions a series of videos were shown, each one created by a department in the audience in the weeks before the event - each of the 11 departments were give a professional camera crew for 3 hours and a professional editor for the day - they had to make their own video, featuring the company, with duration not more than 3 minutes.

And so there were lots of laughs with bits of Keystone Kops, Britain's Got Talent, Glee and more to entertain everyone.

After a couple of hours of questions, answers and fun videos it was all over and everyone went home - with a sandwich lunch and half a day off.

The feedback was excellent - it was something very different, the videos worked perfectly (and the buzz during the build up to the event was fantastic because no one was allowed to see any of the finished videos in advance), the host was the key role and we were lucky enough to have someone really talented to manage the live presenting - no easy task.

It was definitely something we would do again.

The entry submitted by Cascade included evidence of the financial performance of Iceland post event, measured and anecdotal feedback from the delegates as well as testimonials from Iceland's CEO, Malcolm Walker. The submission also included this short video highlights reel of the event.

The Iceland conference featured as a case study in Conference and Incentive Travel.