From carving a storage room out of a trade-show stand to building the secret society that won Event of the Year, Olga has turned Alpha’s events into something people keep talking about long after they’ve flown home. As Alpha’s event manager, she treats a stand less like exhibition space and more like the first door into the brand’s world. We sat down with her to talk craft, near-disasters, and what it takes to make Alpha impossible to miss — from Dubai to the season of stands ahead. You didn’t set out to work in events — you started in PR for a toll-road operator in St. Petersburg, then spent a couple of years editing content in tech. When did you realise this was your world? I started in the PR department of the company that ran a major toll motorway in St. Petersburg — and even there, my work revolved around events: receptions for government delegations, opening ceremonies, corporate parties. That buzz, and the anticipation before the result, is what hooked me. I took a detour for a couple of years into editing and content in tech, and it taught me exactly what I didn’t want: I needed real movement, real people around me. Looking back, everything was quietly pushing me in one direction. When I landed in Cyprus and found my way into iGaming, events felt less like a random turn and more like arriving where I was always meant to be. I never planned a career in this — but it found me, and here I finally get to go wild, in the best sense of the word. You’ve just said you finally get to “go wild.” What surprised you most once you were in? I knew nothing about the industry, and I had no idea how huge the events market was. This isn’t the world of stiff trade expos with delegates in three-piece suits — here you have total creative freedom to pull off the wildest ideas. Every time, you’re trying to outdo your past self, and the audience already expects you to break your own mould. You’re clear that putting up a banner and calling it a “Mexican party” doesn’t cut it anymore. What’s changed in what guests expect? Now an event has to feel organic and actually mean something. The guest needs to understand exactly why they’re there and why they’re an important part of it. A single photo zone with a banner isn’t enough. That’s why we design the guest journey across every stage, right from when we’re developing the concept — so a guest is immersed from beginning to end. Guests often feel like an event just “happens.” What’s the least glamorous part of the work behind that illusion? Every tiny, even silly, detail has to be worked through — sometimes you spend days signing off a single menu design, never mind the dozens of iterations on the venue setup. You have to keep your focus on absolutely everything: the moment you think you’ve accounted for it all, think again — and then again. Your rule seems to be “something always goes wrong — but only you should know.” What’s a save you’re still proud of? At one conference we literally carved a storage room out of the stand itself. Production had built a different structural configuration, and there was simply no space left for storage — and we had 15 boxes of merch weighing close to a tonne, with no hope anyone would rescue us. So we came up with deep niches around the walls on the second floor of the stand and tucked everything in there. Renders always look perfect; the build never quite matches. How do you keep your cool when the shiny concept meets engineering reality? The render is always gorgeous, and over a thousand calls you convince yourself everything will look exactly like the picture. But on-site — with all the engineering constraints, deadlines, and production realities — something can turn out different. It’s not always a bad thing, it’s just a fact; you have to think fast and figure out how to fix it. And honestly, be ready to sleep at the stand overnight if that’s what it takes (been there!). Let’s talk about the ideas themselves. Does a concept arrive in a flash, or do you have to chase it — and what helps most? An idea always starts from a tiny grain and comes together piece by piece, like a big puzzle. It usually kicks off with loose brainstorms across the team — event, design, PR & production — where we share what’s inspired us lately and work out how to fit it to the brief. We throw a huge pile of unconnected details and venues onto the table, and at first none of it seems to fit — but within a couple of days a few anchors settle in, and suddenly you can’t picture the event without them. When the internal brainstorms don’t spark, we dive into the internet and gather whatever catches our eye — and every now and then we get a laugh out of finding ourselves in there, our own stands and merch sitting on Pinterest as someone’s inspiration. H