Event Organizer

Lindy Harvest, Royal Alberta Museum’s “HelloGoodbye” Party, Summer Solstice Swing Dance Festival, Sweet Bal Jam, and Sugar Swing’s New Year’s Eve are some examples of major events that Birkley has created and organized from start to finish. With an attention to detail, Birkley seeks out the best artists available, given his budget, to deliver a quality experience to the event’s guests so that they want to stay for the entire event, and then come back next time!

An event will be successful if the organizers places the utmost value on a fun, engaging experience for the participants. Event organizing experience, along with strong social connections, always guarantees success for an event organizer because they are always able to project accurately the participation numbers, facility and entertainment costs, and ensure their marketing campaigns are a success.

Birkley believes in three life mottos when organizing events: “learn to do by doing” (the 4H motto), “many hands make like work”, and “fit the right person for the job”. With strong critical thinking and problem solving skills (he used to be an engineer, after all), good connections in the arts communities (especially musicians, performers, and dancers), and well over a decade of event organizing experience, Birkley has consistently stayed in the black while also creating fantastic events that people clamour to come back for.

I grew up constantly organizing events while a member of a mostly rural youth organization called 4-H, followed by various events for the U of A Engineering Students Society (ESS) while in post secondary school. Events I organized included curling bonspiels, leadership conferences, ski trips, and even pub crawls. I’ve also been involved several times as a youth camp counsellor at week-long summer camps, and took on treasurer and presidency roles throughout my years at my local & regional 4-H groups and at the U of A ESS. As I started swing dancing, I quickly became VP and later became a two-term president of Swing-Out Edmonton in its early days. This eventually led to the formation of Sugar Swing, which I saw as a great opportunity to grow swing dancing in the entire city of Edmonton, and not just the U of A campus.