April is the season for spring showers, Easter bunnies . . . and the global gathering of counter-terror gurus and experts at Kensington Olympia!
So last week, we legged it down to London again for this year’s Counter Terror Expo, the highly acclaimed event for those tasked with the demanding and complex role of delivering a robust defence against the threat posed by international terrorism.
I’m not sure whether it was the London Tube strike, the absence of the excellence awards for us to win again (!!!) or the fact that for the first time in several years, London isn’t hosting anything of real counter-terror significance. That accolade belongs to Brazil, with the Football World Cup, and Scotland, with the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, the Gleneagles 2014 Ryder Cup on either side of the Scottish Independence Referendum. So it felt a little bit like ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’.
The ‘buzz’ may have been muted, but the quality of the visitors and the customer relationships we built were as good as ever.
Zaun exhibited once again alongside our long term partners on temporary high-security perimeter protection solutions, Hardstaff Barriers and Highway Care.
It’s a collaboration that has seen us secure the London 2012 Olympics, last year’s G8 Summit in Northern Ireland and this spring’s Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, to name but a few.
And there was no shortage of specifiers and buyers lining up to discuss how we could help them, from police to governments, energy companies to events organisers, the world over from the UK to Libya and Norway to the US.
Counter Terror Expo continues to pull together the foremost experts from across the world to share real-life experience, debate strategies, brainstorm issues, shape policy and define effective counter-measures in an age in which the threat from terrorism is both dynamic and continually evolving.
So, it’s May already, a third of the year has gone, and the globe-trotting is over until the autumn, bar a fleeting visit next month to the Public Sector Exhibition in The Hague. This means now is when the real work begins of following up all those people we met with quotes and further discussions on their security schemes.
