From the Diary of Bobie Rahman

BIBI Expo is planned for Olympia London in August 2027. What a brand deciding where to put its support would be backing, from the television producer helping to build it.

Bobie Rahman has been to events where the speakers were good, the room looked great and everybody had a name badge. What was missing, he says, was any “real thought about what people were meant to do with the time between sessions.” People would gravitate towards someone they already knew, “or have the same polite conversation three times before heading home.”

“I think we sometimes mistake putting interesting people in a room for helping them connect,” he says. He has written that the question to ask of an event is not “How many people came?” but “Did anything actually happen?” If nothing did, he has a phrase for the result: “we’ve just hired a big room.”

The room he is now helping to build has a large audience to answer to. Of South Asian communities in the UK he has written: “There is an enormous amount of entrepreneurial talent, creativity, buying power and cultural influence. But those things don’t always exist in the same spaces.” The scale is on the public record. The 2021 Census counted about 1.9 million people in England and Wales who identified as Indian, 1.6 million as Pakistani and 645,000 as Bangladeshi, more than four million people between them.

Bobie is a television producer and director and a co-founder of BIBI Expo, a two-day event and year-round network celebrating and creating opportunities for South Asian women across business, culture and creativity. The first Expo is planned for 18 and 19 August 2027 at Olympia London. He is building it with three co-founders, Dr Zareen Roohi Ahmed, Neelam Sultan and David B. Horne, and the reader he most wants to reach before the doors open is, in his words, “the person at a brand deciding where to put their support.”

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What Will Be Inside Olympia

“BIBI Expo is a two-day event celebrating South Asian women across business, culture, creativity, wellbeing and much more,” Bobie says. Visitors, he says, will be able to “discover businesses and products, watch talks and performances, join workshops, meet founders and creators, and have conversations that might lead somewhere long after the event ends.”

He describes the day through two people he wants it to work for.

“I want someone to be able to come in with her friends or family and have a brilliant day. I also want a woman who comes on her own, perhaps with an idea she hasn’t quite said out loud yet, to leave feeling she has met people who can help her take it seriously.”

Bobie Rahman, Co-Founder, BIBI Expo

The Expo is two days. The BIBI Network is being built to cover the rest of the year, with monthly in-person and online networking, guest speakers and retreats for its members. “The Expo is the big moment, but the BIBI Network is how we keep those connections going through the year,” he says. “We’re building a community around events, conversations, learning and opportunities, so people don’t have to wait until the next Expo to find each other.”

Before sponsors, exhibitors, speakers or members, he says, “the first step is for people to see that BIBI is more than a two-day event.”

What He Wants a Brand to See

The person at a brand is the reader Bobie chose when asked for one. “I’d want them to see the opportunity to reach an audience that is often talked about, but rarely given a space built with them at the centre,” he says. “If they understand that, the conversation becomes much more interesting than where their logo goes.”

He has written about how that audience tends to be described. “A South Asian woman isn’t just a ‘South Asian consumer’,” he wrote in a post that questioned the advice to find a niche. “People are messy.” BIBI, he wrote in the same post, is being built “to create a space where South Asian women can be seen in all their complexity, not reduced to a demographic, but recognised as consumers, founders, leaders, creatives and decision-makers.”

The gap he sees is between businesses and the communities around them. “You can have incredible businesses operating alongside huge consumer communities and still have surprisingly few meaningful connections between the two,” he wrote. “That’s a missed opportunity.” He counts the wider economy among those who miss out. Researchers at Aston University have put a figure on part of that picture: their 2022 report with NatWest found that ethnic minority businesses contribute £25 billion a year to the UK in gross value added, and set out recommendations for raising that to £100 billion.

What Bobie brings to that gap, he learned in television.

What Television Taught Him About a Room

The television is the BBC. Bobie has worked there as a producer since 2019, in BBC Sport and as a BBC Children’s Television Producer.

“Producing content teaches you to think about the person on the other side of the screen,” he says. “What do they feel when this starts? Why should they stay? What will they remember afterwards? I’m asking those same questions about BIBI, only now the audience is actually in the room.”

“A running order can look perfect on paper and still have no energy. A brilliant guest can get lost if you haven’t set up their story properly.”

Bobie, Co-Founder, BIBI Expo

The third lesson is the one he applies to events. “If every moment is planned around what the organiser wants to say, you can forget to make room for what the audience wants to discover or contribute,” he says. He has a habit that guards against it: “I always ask, ‘Who is this actually for?’ If I can’t answer that clearly, the idea needs more work.”

At BIBI his role, as he puts it on his profile, is “to make sure BIBI looks and feels as good as it deserves to, from the visual identity, to the content, to the way the Expo itself is captured and shared with the world.” He is clear about what is different this time. “I’ve spent much of my career helping big platforms tell other people’s stories,” he says. “With BIBI, we’re building the platform as well as telling the stories. That’s the part that feels personal to me.”

Women at the Centre, Allies in the Room

Bobie says he is building BIBI “alongside my co-founders, Dr Zareen Roohi Ahmed and Neelam Sultan.” “They’re both inspirational women,” he says, “and they make me want to build something that lives up to the vision we share.”

He has seen the question that follows, in forms he listed in a post: “Why are men involved?” and “Isn’t this for women?” His answer starts with agreement, that women should be leading conversations about their own experiences. “The answer isn’t to build another room where one half of society isn’t allowed through the door,” he wrote. “The answer is to create a space where women are centred, voices are heard, and allies know how they can contribute without taking over.” He gave the principle in three lines: “Women at the centre. Community around them. And plenty of room for the people who genuinely want to help.”

BIBI also has a harder moment behind it. “There have been times when I’ve shared an idea and felt like I wasn’t being heard or seen,” he says. “That can knock your confidence, especially when you care deeply about what you’re trying to build.”

“I’ve learned that you can spend a lot of energy trying to convince people who don’t share your vision, or you can make your own pathway with people who do. BIBI has grown from choosing the second option.”

Bobie, Co-Founder, BIBI Expo

The foundations for that pathway, he says, were laid before him.

The Foundations His Parents Laid

Asked who is behind the work, Bobie names two people. “My parents,” he says. “As first-generation immigrants, they laid foundations I’m still building on. I wish they were here to see where this journey has taken me.”

He has written about them at more length. “They were first generation,” he wrote. “They came here and laid the foundations for the generations that followed.” He went on: “We’re often the beneficiaries of sacrifices we didn’t fully understand at the time and perhaps part of our responsibility is to make sure we don’t waste those sacrifices. To build. To create. To open doors and hopefully leave something behind that makes things a little easier for the people coming after us.”

Where Bobie Is Now

“We have a clear date and venue for August 2027, and we’re now building the programme and having conversations with exhibitors, speakers, sponsors and potential partners,” Bobie says. “Some of those conversations are exciting, but I’d rather talk about them properly when everything is confirmed.”

The door is open to sponsors, exhibitors, speakers and members of the BIBI Network. “There’s still an opportunity for businesses and people who connect with what we’re doing to get involved and help shape it,” he says. “We’re at the stage where the foundations are being put in place, and the next twelve months are about turning those conversations into something people can walk into.”

Outside work there is football. “I’m a big football fan and a Manchester United supporter,” he says, “although that’s been a painful thing to admit for quite a few years now.”

He has already asked the question the Expo is being built to answer. “What happens when you bring the right people into the same room?” he wrote. “I suspect quite a lot and I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Five Lines from Bobie’s Diary

“The older I get, the more I realise that relationships are built on curiosity before opportunity.”
“You build it by having 20 conversations you actually remember.”
“The way a story is told changes who gets to feel like they belong in it.”
“Invite more people into the room and then, importantly, listen to them when they arrive.”
“You leave with something. That’s the standard I think events should be held to.”