A showcase of technology and innovation at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed! I project managed this event with the Siemens UK Communications team for around 6 weeks, with some of them working on it for several months to make it the success that it was.
Since the event I have seen some fantastic posts from employees who won tickets, crew who worked hard to speak to the public and what shines through is the pride to be Siemens and that what the team pulled off on the Autonomous Mustang was a sight on the hill they won’t forget! Well that’s exactly the result the project team was looking for and so much more.
I don’t know where to start to talk about what a unique, complex and logistically challenging outdoor event for Siemens partnership with Goodwood, was to project manage. We created 3 different touch points at the event to communicate what Siemens does and how it does it in the event’s Future Lab, in the F1 Paddock and at the First Glance Paddock. The core project team worked in separate workstreams, some remotely and self-collaborating throughout the project, working agile and towards common goals. It was teamwork that made it happen and a lot of hours working endlessly behind the scenes.
What was the hardest part to pull off? Well the unknown which was our autonomous Mustang, from concept to execution was only 6 weeks and this meant a lot of challenges along the way to get a 53 year old legend of a car onto the Goodwood FoS track, Lee Dryden, Head of Planning &Strategy for Siemens UK Communications led this and the overall strategy at the event, and the results are a great showcase for a media moment as well as getting people talking about the future of autonomy. You can see how and why we did this here.
We had over 50 staff working the event, a core project team of 15, many customers, Siemens hosts and 2 thought leadership round tables, 7 demonstration vehicle entries in the infamous hill climb making a historic first at the event with a classic Mustang v8 289 performance engine fitted with robotics, and controlled by GPS, software algorithms, over 85 press & TV pieces featuring the event (probably more to come).
Some fantastic partners from across Siemens divisions for the lead up to the event and spokespersons during the event. With external partners for content, communications, video, public relations, social, web, virtual reality experience and more. We also had the pleasure to host Siemens executives, board members and business divisions leads and they came to visit our staff on stand and around the event experiences.
I was asked what could we do next time to top this event? And you know what there are many ideas because Siemens has great innovations to showcase in the future…
Its great isn’t it when you are working and you are having so much fun, it does not feel like work, now that’s the next project I’m looking for!
After lots of selfies, walking at least 40 miles in 4 days and over 200,000 visitors to our showcases, I cannot finish this post without mentioning my favourite cars?! … well of course our own Mustang but these two stood out. The Lamborghini Aventador supercar and of course the Landy lover in me, the 70th edition V8 Defender that roared up the hill.
