Mipim: Uprighting those twisted views

Leicester and Leicestershire at Mipim 2014: Day three

Fifteen minutes before my flight back to the UK was due to take off my name was announced over the tannoy of the departure lounge at Nice airport

The guys back at the security check point had my boarding pass. But that didn't matter because I'd taken the precaution of printing off a second one, which I had in my hand luggage. But as I searched my bag I realised I'd also left my iPad (the one I'm now typing into) at security. (It has a grey protective cover, a similar shade to the trays they insist you put your electrical items in as they're put through the scanner - I'll say no more).

Cue me running through a busy and seemingly endless departure lounge against a tide of people traffic and then trying to explain to the security guys why I was back, all the time with the dreaded fear I'd delay the take-off of a packed easyJet flight full of business people, including some of Leicester and Leicestershire's most prominent players and my managing director. Needless to say it's the most stressed I've been for the past three days.

Not that my time at Mipim has been a care-free junket - far from it. I've written a series of stories and blogs, prepared major features for next Tuesday's Mercury Business Weekly, arranged interviews and taken a memory card full of photos. I even helped in a bid to persuade a senior executive with a multi-billion-pound cashpile he was looking to invest to plough some of it into Leicester and Leicestershire. The fact the pitch took place on a £10 million yacht is neither here nor there in the world of Mipim.

"The world of Mipim" is something people who experience the Cannes property conference for the first time repeat again and again. Former England and Leicester Tigers star Rory Underwood, a member of the Leicester and Leicestershire delegation, was heard to utter the phrase a number of times over the past 72 hours.

This is because Mipim is unique in that it offers different things to a diverse range of people. A city and county, led by their senior local authority politicians, go to Europe's largest property fair to showcase themselves in the most cost-effective way they can. Business people who are part of that delegation and have helped fund it also use the event to forge their own business relationships. Smaller, but nimble professional firms, sit on the edges hoping to bump into that potential million-dollar client. Mega-bucks investment managers hire yachts to impress existing clients and woo new ones. And journalists report what they see and hear - but within reason, of course. And that's the thing. If you wanted to do a hatchet job on a senior politician or two or the CEO of a major corporate, Mipim would be a good place to do it. Being compromised in Cannes is always going to make a more sensational headline than being boring in Bognor.

Being a journalist who is part of an official Mipim delegation, as was the case with myself, is unusual. Some would say it's refreshing, others would say it's unacceptable. I would say it's perhaps the best way of having an independent voice explaining how £50,000 of taxpayers' money is being spent to make their area more attractive to major investors, which could help bring thousands of jobs to it. For the impact we had and the contacts we made, it was money well spent, and fairly cost-effective compared to the kind of cash spent on economic development each year by local councils. Some have suggested attending the first-ever Mipim to be held in London later this year could be a good way of combating the negative connotations of going to the south of France. Others point out that accommodation, conferencing and corporate entertainment costs in  the capital would mean it would be more expensive.

As with many things in journalism, my presence on a Mipim delegation partly funded by the public purse is a grey area in a lot of people's minds.

By the way, my grey iPad cover didn't result in me delaying the flight in the end. It was already running late. Ainsi soit-il.

The picture is of a model of a building at the Russian exhibition at this year's Mipim