Jonny Venvell
On a crisp evening this November we welcomed our members to the workspace, Runway East Moorgate for our final Encore members drinks event of 2017.
Encore Drinks events are not only a great opportunity for Encore musicians to network and hear from great speakers, but are also designed to give our members a chance to give feedback face-to-face and have their say in the future development of Encore.
If you missed it, here’s a brief summary of the evening…
Live stream
We streamed the evening live on Facebook, so you can rewatch the event as it happened below. Unfortunately, the camera ran out of battery so the end of James’ talk was cut off, but a full explanation of the Booking Experience which he discussed can be found here.
- 11.30 Introduction (Jonny Venvell – Encore Community Manager)
- 15.00 Richard Robinson – Mental Health in the Music Industry
- 32.00 Post-talk discussion
- 34.00 Q&A begins
- 48.00 Drinks break
- 1.04.00 James McAulay – An Update from the Encore CEO
Pizza testing and Encore Video Stories
We began the evening by inviting a select few of our members to test our latest update, the redesigned Booking Experience (in return for a tasty slice of Pizza Buzz’s best margarita). We learned a huge amount from the musicians we spoke to, so expect to see more of these testing events in future.
Our members also took part in video interviews with our Sales and Partnerships Lead, Joel. In return for sharing their experience of using Encore, they received a chance to win a bottle of bubble (which Alexander Morris was the lucky recipient of at the end of the evening)!
If you’re interested in taking part in similar tests in future, please email [email protected].
Guest speaker: Richard Robinson on Mental Health in the Music Industry
We were lucky enough to welcome, Richard Robinson, CEO of the UK’s largest music charity, Help Musicians UK, to lead our discussion on musicians’ mental health. After detailing some shocking statistics about the prevalence of mental health issues in the music industry, he went on to describe what HMUK are doing to help. The cornerstone of their strategy is a Music Minds Matter, a new helpline service dedicated to providing musicians with mental health problems support whenever they need it. You can learn more about it here.
James McAulay: An Update from the CEO
Our CEO and Co-founder, James McAulay, gave a brief account of the history of Encore and introduced our latest and greatest update to the site: the new Bookings Experience. You can find a full introduction to the update here. 
Drinks and Mingling
We spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other over a few drinks and sharing contact details with potential musical collaborators. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along and shared their conversation and thoughts. We left with lots of great ideas for how Encore could be improved and renewed passion to build the best possible bookings platform for musicians.
Keep an eye on your inbox for details of the first Encore drinks of 2018 – hope to see you there!
George Gretton
