FINNING has doubled down on its promise that Finrock22 will be ‘bigger and better’ than its inaugural year, revealing to Project Plant that a Top Gear spin-off is set to feature at this year’s event!
Operating almost like a video game, the virtual event allows users to navigate their way around the virtual Finning Island using the click of a mouse. The resource features all the commodities of a traditional event including networking areas, interactive showrooms, and presentations. Over 15,500 people have interacted with the content from last year, spending two hours on average on the virtual island.
Despite that success, Peter Seaman, customer experience and marketing manager at Finning UK and Ireland, told Project Plant the firm has spent the last year developing the island and event to ensure that it doesn’t stand still.
One of the most notable additions to this year’s line-up is the new sustainability zone, which will give visitors access to the thoughts of experts on matters such as renewable energy, facilities optimisation, fleet improvements, and emissions reductions as Finning looks to aid the sector in meeting pressing environmental targets.
“Sustainability is a really important topic in all the industries we serve, and I think that’s going to be the case for many years to come,” Peter explained. “It’s going to have a big impact on how we operate. That’s why one of the new zones centres around sustainability and how we can work with our customers to support and increase sustainable job sites and reduce their impacts on the world around us.”
Visitors will be able to virtually view the latest technology offerings to help aid them in meeting not just their sustainable goals, but overall company objectives as well. Finning experts will be on hand to detail what best suits the needs of each business.
“It’s important not to think that by signing up to one product, or buying one thing, or getting a piece of consultancy that it’ll solve everything – it’s got to be tailored and adapted for each individual customer to what’s right for them,” Peter added. “Thankfully, we have got far more cleverer people than me in the business who will be at Finrock to provide something that’s unique and specific to the individual, customer, jobsite, and industry.”
Another new feature is the Top Gear-style review show, which Peter tried to keep schtum on as he teased with some very basic details on the show which will put plant machinery to the test in the hit show’s style.
This segment won’t be the only to be laced with banter, with the Great Demolition Debates set to return – which sees Finning give carte-blanche to individuals from across the industry to debate construction topics live and unfiltered. Other topics centre around getting the best out of equipment and challenges in different industries, with the debates featuring experts from the likes of Caterpillar, Trimble, Finning, and SITECH.
“It’s very easy to make everything look really polished and therefore look frankly rubbish,” Peter explained, when asked why Finning chose to run the debates live. “Doing something live takes away your ability to edit, it takes away your ability to filter, and what you’ve got is raw people, with raw emotions, saying things as they think of them, probably making a few mistakes – but you know what, we need to be brave enough to accept that and just let people be people and interact and talk. It doesn’t help my grey hair, but it’s the right thing to do and I’m really keen we keep that live element!”
Finrock will also take the time to once again have some difficult, but essential, discussions. Last year, Matthew Ayres, group MD at Bennie, bravely took to the stage to reveal his regret at allowing homophobic abuse he was subjected to in the workplace slip. He urged fellow business leaders not to make the same mistake he did and actively ‘stamp out’ such behaviour. Peter revealed this talk in particular received a very large amount of interactions – even months after the official launch-day of the event.
This year, the event will delve into gender diversity. Again, Peter remained quite tight-lipped on what sort of content visitors can expect from this segment, but he did say that he and his colleagues found some of the material ‘very moving’.
“For me, it is so, so important,” Peter said, referring to why Finning uses Finrock to have such important discussions. “We’ve all got a responsibility to drive towards a more inclusive and open society. Matthew was fantastic last year; that discussion was one of the most popular pieces of content in the entire event.
“We don’t just want to repeat things because clearly the whole point of the inclusiveness is that we look at a variety of different topics. So, we have made sure we’ve got similar diversity topics on the agenda without being a replication of what was done last time – and I think that’s really, really important for us as an organisation to set our mark out and say we are committed to an inclusive and diverse workforce, we’re committed to supporting the industry.”
Although Finrock 2021 proved to be a success, which is expected to be replicated this year, Peter still believes in-person events can’t be replaced, but said the virtual Finrock environment means that anyone, anywhere in the world can visit, view equipment, and chat to experts without the necessity of hotel rooms, travel, and time.
“I think it’s really important we retain face-to-face events, but what this gives us is a way of reaching far more people in a far more environmentally sustainable way, demonstrating far more things that are relevant to them than we could before,” Peter said. “People have really embraced it and we’re seeing people coming back time and time again; even still to this day.”
• Finrock22 occurs on November 24 with live events from 2-8pm.
