Behind the scenes at The Gathering

With our bellies full of butterflies, and Premier Inn poached eggs, we took our six legs and two crutches between us for a walk across the Clyde. If you listened hard enough you could hear the ‘Rocky’ theme tune as we made our way to the Conference Centre as long time visitors but first time exhibitors for The Gathering 2015. This was the culmination of weeks of hard graft, months of planning and years of dreaming. We had chosen The Gathering 2015 as the launch of the new commercial arm of Working on Wheels in the form of our Social Enterprise Working on Wheels Promotions. Working on Wheels Promotions is a budding business venture that rents specially converted vehicles to charities, which can be used for outreach work. Our fleet gives you the chance to take your work out into the community, it provides you with a mobile hub for your activities. For most people coming to The Gathering the best way to promote their idea or product is by taking an exhibition stand. But for us, we knew that our biggest selling point was our buses. And being in the business of mobile outreach, it would have been daft not to bring the bus! So we emailed the organisers to ask if we could bring a bus… The excited response we got was really reassuring to our team, who had begun to see buses in their sleep while we planned the launch! It sounded like we were definitely on the right track. Bleary eyed from the night before, our team had never spent so long primping, polishing and prepping for a big event – and one of our team is a born and bred Geordie lass. Ready to go! The end result was more than worthwhile as our gleaming vehicle took in more than its fair share of second glances from exhibitors and visitors alike. First selfie We couldn’t resist taking the first selfie on our bus just before opening to the public. We were in a great location, right between the CJC Media photo booth and the Simulated Driving Experience, both of which went down a storm too! The hustle and bustle of visitors coming and going as they visited stands and the various workshops was brilliant. Meeting representatives from charities opened our eyes, even more so than before, to the amount of good work that is going on all across Scotland. We were able to catch up with Perth Autism and discuss the importance of sensory play and discovered a charity devoted entirely to men and their sheds. I personally took advantage of the fab team from West Lothian College and had a natter while my ‘do' got a much needed seeing to. With lots to see and do, we drew a steady stream of visitors asking about our vehicles. Running a competition to win a roadshow certainly helped hook people in. We had loads of entries and we’re really pleased to announce ENABLE Scotland as the winner of our competition. We are going to be working with ENABLE Scotland over the coming months and we’re really excited to be involved with such a great charity.

And the winner of our @gatherscotland 2015 competition is..... @ENABLEScotland #g2015 we can't wait to work with you! pic.twitter.com/s7eaABwjCe — WOW Promotions (@WOW_promotions) March 2, 2015

We couldn’t have asked for a better experience and both our vehicle and social enterprise were received better than any of us could have expected. Cheers, indeed, from all of us at WOW Promotions!