boosts the region’s appeal with inwink
“We were looking for a tool that could professionalize our events approach: we wanted to have a website dedicated to our events with a system for making appointments between our partners and participants.”
Richard Lacourarie, Business Centre and Hosted Projects Project Manager at the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Located in the heart of the capital, the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine is the economic and cultural embassy of the New Aquitaine region in Paris. The MNA’s main objective is to increase the appeal of the region.
Bringing together more than 80 public and private partners in connection with the Conseil Régional (regional council), the MNA provides a dozen meeting rooms for private companies, local authorities, universities, and associations from the New Aquitaine region that wish to meet in Paris.
There are also several events organized each year which aim to strengthen the network of friends of the region and promote the development of key regional players in the capital, as well as internationally.
Events, mostly organized in-person, aim to highlight the attractiveness of the region, and promote the recruitment of talent or the takeover and creation of companies in New Aquitaine.
What we were looking for was a tool that could make all the events we organize more professional: a website, an appointment booking system that we could upgrade, a platform that partners could use to autonomously manage their accounts and participation, tracking and data analysis of all these interactions.
The Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine chose the inwink event management platform to highlight these event activities and meet 2 main objectives:
To promote jobs in the region, the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine teams regularly organize job dating events for high-demand sectors.
One great example in May 2022 was the event “Your new job in cybersecurity – is in New Aquitaine!” which had nearly 400 registrations.
The aim of the event was to highlight around ten companies in the cybersecurity sector that were recruiting.
To facilitate contact between recruiters and candidates, a dedicated website was created with inwink to promote the programme and collect registrations.
Each candidate had access to a personal space where they could post their information, CV, a link to their LinkedIn profile… and from which they could make appointments with recruiting companies, most of whom came to Paris for the occasion.
Similarly, each partner company had access to an online space where it could update its profile, post job advertisements, and offer appointments to candidates.
The partners received support helping get up to speed with inwink and exploit the platform’s full potential:
I ran a short training session for the partners, and then they had to manage their spaces themselves: create their job offers, change their information, and manage their appointment diaries.
Another type of event organized by the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine is the “rencontres dédiées à la reprise d’entreprise” (meetings dedicated to business takeovers), the aim of which is to bring together future entrepreneurs with various organizations involved in the process that have knowledge of businesses for sale in the region.
Using inwink, potential buyers can register for the event, providing as much information as possible:
For our events dedicated to business takeover projects, we have created detailed inwink forms, so that partners can have as much information as possible about participants and organize their appointments in advance.
Une fois inscrits, tous les participants peuvent réserver un créneau pour une rencontre avec des partenaires à l’événement, et inversement.
Once registered, all participants can reserve a meeting slot with partners at the event, and vice versa.
2 events of this type were organized in 2022:
Co-organized with the Conseil Régional de Nouvelle-Aquitaine (regional council of New Aquitaine) and in partnership with the SAFER (an administrative body dedicated to the agricultural industry), these 2 days of meetings aimed to bring together those supplying and those seeking information about takeovers of agricultural operations.
Over 150 people gathered at the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and more than 115 meetings were organized.
Alongside these meetings, a programme of round-table sessions was also provided to promote the New Aquitaine agricultural sector and showcase the opportunities of this lifestyle.
Organized in partnership with the Chambres Consulaires (chambers of commerce), Pôle Emploi (unemployment office), and other professional organizations, the aim of this event was to highlight business takeover offers in the region’s service sector.
Special pages for the 5,000 businesses looking to be taken over were created, from which potential buyers could request an appointment to find out more about the takeover offer.
More than 220 potential buyers took part in the event.
In 2022, the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine managed 7 events with inwink. These in-person events brought together between 100 and 400 participants.
The event partners are more than satisfied with their participation and find inwink to be a real help in preparing their upcoming events:
All the partners are keen to come back for future editions. We’ve carried out some surveys, and they seem to like the solution: the fact that they can find all the information needed for each event is very much appreciated.
In 2023, 6 webinars are planned with inwink, as well as 3 operations coordinated with the New Aquitaine region in the form of job dating in the leather and porcelain sectors, tourism, and a new day dedicated to company takeovers, as well as other events with MNA members.
Pleased with their use of inwink to manage their events, the Maison de la Nouvelle-Aquitaine teams are also planning to develop their own online community space in the near future.
In-person events are working well, but efforts shouldn’t stop once they’re over, especially with networking. We’re going to start working with the inwink Community tool for this, creating a community for the friends of New Aquitaine in different groups.
This community will enable members to exchange with each other in a dedicated space throughout the year and no longer only at one-off events.
It will include several sub-communities, dedicated to alumni of certain New Aquitaine universities, for example, or to members of the Maison de la Nouvelle Aquitaine which has not finished exploring the full potential of the inwink tool.
