The inside track on Cityscape Dubai by a conference veteran who says it will blow away anyone new to the event

It's not like MIPIM - it's not boozy at all. There's nowhere you can go for a drink at the conference centre, so there's no lunchtime drinking. Even the evenings are quiet - there aren't a huge amount of dinners although you might bump into someone and go for an ad hoc drink. You've got the awards dinner of course, but even that is a pretty sober affair.

You don't go there to do loads of deals, whatever people tell you. You go to open doors to potential deals. Do you get value out of it? The truth is you don't really know - but if you're not there, people notice.

There are lots of big developers there, but lots of people who visit are small-time speculators. They'll be looking to buy a couple of options in a development or two.

You get a lot of people blowing smoke at you about how they've got the biggest development

You get a lot of people blowing smoke at you about how they've got the biggest development. It will be interesting to see the number of schemes unveiled this year. There'll be a huge amount, no doubt, but things have slowed down a bit in Dubai so I don't know whether there will be more or less.

The event is massive - it'll blow you away if you've not been before - but it's mainly useful for meeting people. Some of the workshops are quite good, you do learn about what people are building and, again, you meet people. On balance, it's worth going.

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