Over the past few weeks I have been actively trying to develop a network of hospitality professionals to engage in my project.
The main platforms I have utilised to gain these contacts have been Facebook through joining and becoming active participants in Facebook groups targeted at hospitality professionals. I have also joined hospitality groups on LinkedIn which are full of very useful and highly qualified contacts. Finally, I have utilised LinkedIn further by searching for hosiapilty professionals and contacting individuals who are involved in hospitality and asking them if they are interested in taking part in my work.
The predominate aim of reaching out to these hospitality professionals, at present was to gather participant speakers for my online panel discussion which is taking place later today (4th June) at 1pm. However, I have faced a problem in gathering hospitality professionals that work ‘ on the ground’ so to speak.
I was very keen to get some speakers involved who actively work in hospitality spaces that serve food and drink, so I could gather a real world view as to what may work in terms of natural applications in those spaces. But, I have faced the difficulty in accessing these individuals for a set timed panel discussion, due to their varying shifts for work and the majority of individuals not knowing their work rota util the week before. I know from my own experience working as a waitress that the rotas and timetabling can be put out rather last minute and be very flexible to change, and so I sympathise with them on this issue. In regard to my panel discussion however, this issue has meant that Simon Gardner in particular is no longer able to participate in the discussion, and neither is another hospitality worker I have been in contact with, Oliver Crawley who is an events manager.
Instead, I have managed to secure Williem van Bolderen, who is a founding partner of Studio Puisto architecture firm which focuses upon utilising Biophilic design in the development of hospitality spaces. Willem is highly regarded and will undoubtedly provide great insights for the discussion. Although, he is not a part of the ‘on the ground’ workers I initially considered targeting, I feel he will make a great addition to the team.
Reflection
Looking to the future and how to engage my ‘on the ground’ workers in hospitality, I will look towards methods that do not have to be conducted at a set time. But, rather the individuals can conduct the interventions at their own pace. This could even take the form of video submissions in response to prompts which could be compiled as a part of a larger instillation showcasing how ready hospitality spaces are to receive the change and what changes they would benefit from in terms of applications of nature.
Additionally, in the future I will initially place greater emphasis on engaging hospitality professionals, as I started out targeting biophilic and biomimetic experts first during this intervention. Having said that I certainly didn’t leave gathering hospitality professionally for the discussion to the last minute, as I have been trying to secure hospitality workers for several weeks. However, I do feel that it has been slightly easier to engage these experts in this kind of panel discussion, as it is something they are a lot more familiar with doing than hospitality professionals. Therefore, next time I will either change the format to one that hospitality professionals may be more comfortable engaging with, or I will simply place increased effort at the start of the project to engage hospitality professionals.