Page 85 - Hereford Magazine 2021

Behind the scenes –

the excitement and

challenges of managing the

Boehringer Ingelheim

World Hereford Conference

Before managing NZ Herefords, Posy Moody a World Hereford Conference would make that number. With
managed Beef Expo while Phil Barnett was at the backing of TNZ we were able to put a team together to
the helm. Prior to that, she was a rural events present the bid in Uruguay. That itself met a few hitches. While
manager in Britain after a military career. Uruguay Herefords always warned us that getting printed
brochures through customs and into the country would be
Little did she know, one of her London difficult, TNZ strongly urged us to do it at their cost and said
experiences would stand her in good stead it would be possible. The result was that several of us spent
for a World Hereford Conference at the start frantic hours driving between customs offices and postal
of a global pandemic. In July 1997, she had depots offering our souls in return for our promotional
been elected by the chief of the Metropolitan pamphlets. Just as Bruce Robertson wrapped up his
presentation as the finale of the 2016 conference, boxes of our
Police, and the chief of the London Fire Brigade, pamphlets appeared in the lobby for us to calmly hand out
to be in charge of the Emergency Liaison as if it were all arranged. With substantial vocal support from
tower overlooking a crowd of 400,000 rural the Uruguay conference, I got on the plane home with the
demonstrators in Hyde Park. Fortunately, the knowledge that I had four years of planning ahead.
Phil Barnett was officially elected as chair of WHC and I
rally went well and made headlines on all the took the role as general manger. We recruited Christine Nagel
broadsheets the following morning (for all the to work in the office and she became a vital link in the event.
right reasons) and the bomb threats remained The next step was to involve members, especially to dictate
just threats. In 2020 she used that experience to the route and stopover for the tours. I knew this would be the
handle the situation during the notification of hardest part of planning the event, as we were never going to
the outbreak of Covid-19 in the final days of the please everyone, and it was an extremely hard, but necessary
call, to drop off our loyal breeders in Gisborne.
World Hereford Conference tours. In Posy’s words, Roughly at the same time (October 2018) the professional
this is how the WHC came to be in New Zealand. conference events company I had been working with went
into insolvency. Not only did I need to grapple to get our
“It all began at a very corporate Tourism New Zealand deposits back, I also had to start again with a new company.
(TNZ) office overlooking the Wellington viaduct with former We opted to go with Dinamics due to their long-standing
NZH general manager, Donna Abbiss. I had heard TNZ reputation in the business, but then it was sold, so within
offered financial assistance to organisations making a bid the space of a year we were using our third event company.
for international conferences, but we did need to meet Christine and I had our fingers crossed it was third time lucky,
some criteria, such as having 300 overseas guests and 100 and with the amazing assistance of Elizabeth, who stayed with
nationals. I’m sure Donna still has the bruises on her shins Dinamics through the change, it was.
when I kicked her under the table as I confidently told them Within the WHC committee, Robert Peacock was elected to

Year 2021 HEREFORD MAGAZINE 83
World Hereford
Conference 2020
Queenstown NZ