Stephen McLarnon Organising the Great Escape expo in the RDS
It might surprise the young adventure seekers attending the Great Escape Expo this weekend to find that the man running the event is practically one of their own. The expo is being organised by SGMC Group, owned by 30-year-old Belfast native Stephen McLarnon. After studying human resources in Dublin, he established his first business, an internet recruitment company, at the age of 24. It was this work that led him to run his first major exhibition event, the Health Recruitment Expo in 2005. "With internet recruitment there's no interaction with customers or candidates so I thought it would be interesting to bring them together at an event." McLarnon enjoyed it immensely. "It's very project orientated - you work towards a date, you deliver, then you move on."
His next project was the Down Under Expo - "effectively an international recruitment fair for people looking to work in Australia and New Zealand. We turned 300 people away from that event so we ran another one six months later. Our first event had 36 exhibitors. The last one we ran had 104."
The idea for the Great Escape Expo came from the feedback they got from those events. "The Great Escape is broader and we aim at a more diverse audience. We still cater for traditional gap years, people between 17 and 25, but now we also have gap year for grown-ups - people who have made some money and want to take a few months or a year out of work to travel. We also focus on other countries: Japan, Canada, Africa and so on."
The Great Escape also targets people interested in voluntourism, which McLarnon admits is a current buzzword. "It's essentially people who want to travel to a country, experience the culture and give something back by volunteering. We have lots of exhibitors in that space."
Does running an event on this scale give him sleepless nights? "With any new show there are nerves. It's like a finely tuned orchestra; so many little things have to come together for it to work. It is a stressful week and there will be 300 people pulling me every which way. But it's exciting and it's the kind of show I would go to myself if I wasn't running it."
The Great Escape Expo 2007, RDS, Industries Hall, April 21st-22nd, www.greatescape.ie