Meetings International | Business Intelligence Report #18, Sep–Oct 2023 (English)

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE REPORT

#18, Sep–Oct 2023 €19 / SEK 199

FOR THE BUSINESS EVENTS INDUSTRY

THE

NAVIGATING

MEET WITH PURPOSE Connect with Destination Canada Business Events team at IMEX Frankfurt, Booth C300

Innovation expertise across a range of sectors Exceptional keynote speakers Opportunities for enlightening technical tours State-of-the-art convention facilities Welcoming, accessible and diverse knowledge hubs

Loïc Romer - Tourisme Montréal

Learn more at businesseventscanada.ca

Yes, It Was High Time to

turn the page >

Experience. meetingsinternational.com > Anew.

T +385 1 4898 555 / info@meetinzagreb.hr | www.infozagreb.hr | #MeetInZagreb https://www.facebook.com/MeetInZagreb/ | https://www.linkedin.com/company/zagreb-convention-bureau/

photos Julien Duval

Let’s Meet in Zagreb

Z

agreb, the lovely capital of Croatia, is a charming historic Central European city featuring a distinctive Mediterranean way of life. It is conveniently accessible by road and air from all parts of Europe and beyond. Additionally, the busy international Franjo Tudman Airport is just a 25-minute ride from the city centre.

The rich culture and history, legends and tales, the old and the contemporary are all on display as you stroll down the streets of Zagreb, and are also presented in numerous sightseeing tours, many of which are interactive. The city is conveniently compact, so most of the hotels, venues and sightseeing points are within walking distance.

The venues range from some of the most beautiful historic buildings in the romantic city core to heritage and business hotels downtown. For outdoor meetings and activities, you can always choose one of many elegant urban parks or picturesque downtown squares and pedestrian zones in the city centre. Zagreb has the “sea” – Jarun Lake recreation area with great sports and picnic facilities, as well as Bundek Lake staging cultural activities and shows. Alternatively, one can opt for Mt. Medvednica – the green “lungs” of the city. Take a cable car to its peak, Sljeme, or treat yourself to an

interactive educational visit to the medieval fortress of Medvedgrad with its Visitors’ Center. Memorable incentives are guaranteed.

Zagreb offers a great variety of gastronomic experiences ranging from typical local and seasonal to international dishes.

They can be enjoyed in restaurants, but also from small vendors offering street food during numerous festivals all year round.

Featuring daily fresh and seasonal local produce, it’s no wonder the centrally located picturesque Dolac food market is on every visitor’s to-do list.

The Zagreb surroundings showcase unspoilt nature with tranquil landscapes, romantic mediaeval castles and legends, wine roads, spas, hiking and cycling trails, golf experiences and many more. Less than a 2-hour drive is the Adriatic coast, ideal for an unforgettable incentive or a pre or a post tour. In the vicinity is also the world famous Plitvice Lakes National Park included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Whenever you plan your next event, keep Zagreb in mind – the safe and vibrant Central European metropolis with Mediterranean flair where a captivating city atmosphere and making business makes for a perfect match. The dedicated Zagreb Tourist Board & Convention Bureau team is at your disposal.

Welcome to Zagreb, your next meetings and incentives destination.

SPONSORED CONTENT

L E G A L LY R E S P ON S IBL E E DI T OR IN C HIE F Atti Soenarso

atti.soenarso@meetingsinternational.com P UBL IS HE R Roger Kellerman

roger.kellerman@meetingsinternational.com GL OB A L S A L E S DIR EC T OR Graham Jones

graham.jones@meetingsinternational.com T E X T Mats Alvesson, Paula Fanderowska, Eugene Gerden,

Jane Vong Holmes, Roger Kellerman, Matty Rubenstein, Atti Soenarso, André Spicer, Scott Steinberg, Rohit Talwar P HO T O S / IM A GE S Cover Image by iStock.com/kontekbrothers,

Sara Appelgren, Iryna Lupashchenkom, Ruslan Lytvyn, Magnus Malmberg

Sep–Oct 2023

13 Close the Gaps between Policy and Practise

INTRO Atti Soenarso on COP28 and

the need to disrupt business as usual with action from everyone, as now is not the time to be on the sidelines.

14 Navigating from Now to Next

LIF T LE ADERSHIP Futurist Rohit Talwar

on which capabilities are critical for meetings industry leaders in a fastchanging and uncertain world.

20 The Unbroken Spirit Runs Deep in Lviv DESPITE THE CHALLENGES In Ukraine,

every business now holds its front line, but the war will end, and Lviv is planning for business recovery.

24 The Nexus of Destinations and Associations

THE CHANGE NEEDED Destinations and

associations have both seen unpre­ ce­dented change to their business imperatives in the last decade.

28 The Pros and Cons of Functional Stupidity

A DOSE OF STUPIDIT Y Functional stupidity

can be catastrophic, and yet also produce good, short-term results. This is the stupidity paradox.

No. 18

Navigating the Displacement Era

37 Eating Habits and Sociality Laid the Foundation for Our Large Brains RESE ARCH New research into the

causes of primates’ larger brains, leads to accurate models of predicting brain sizes without measuring.

38 Invaluable Potential of Scientific Staff HUMAN CAPITAL Many scientists,

despite their international recognition, are unaware of their power of influence. A yet unrealised potential.

42 How to Redesign Business Events for an Increasingly Global, Mobile and Connected Audience DISPL ACEMENT Scott Steinberg on

digital nomads and how virtually anything goes for modern pro­ fessionals these days.

48 Russian Business Events: Change in the Formats and Structure

DE S IGN KellermanDesign.com E DI T OR I A L R AY S OF S UN S HINE Music by Vargas & Lagola +

Jón Kalman Stefánsson + Lviv Convention Bureau + Miss Tokio + Athens S UB S C R IP T ION Subscribe at www.meetingsinternational.com

or subscription@meetingsinternational.com C ON TA C T Meetings International Publishing

Formgatan 30, SE-216 45 Limhamn, Sweden info@meetingsinternational.com ­w ww.meetingsinternational.com P R IN T Exakta Print, Malmö, 2023

[environmentally certified, ISO 14001] PA P E R Arctic Paper Munken Elk 100g + Multioffset 250g

FSC labeled paper Cert No SGS-COC-1693 IS S N 1651‑9663

 Facebook @MeetingsIntCom  LinkedIn @Meetings International  Instagram @meetingsinternational

CHANGING ROADMAP A massive exodus

of Western companies and the con­ tinued pressure of sanctions has transformed the industry.

54 The Great Political Hypocrisy: Pretending Not to Understand KELLERMAN Roger Kellerman on the

cost of hypocrisy, the cost of being ruled by ignorance, and the need to build for the future.

Meetings International Publishing uses environmentally ­c ertified printing, paper and distribution

INTRO

Close the Gaps BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTISE If you want to change the world for the better, you must be prepared to contribute yourself. It could mean participating in COP28, which will occur at Expo City Dubai from November 30 to December 12.

At the beginning of COP28, UAE welcomes over 500 policymakers, business leaders and philanthropists from the world when it hosts the Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum on December 1–2.

The forum will address key climate priorities related to the COP28 Action Agenda, which includes fasttracking, a just and orderly energy transition, climate finance, putting nature, lives and livelihoods at the heart of climate action, and underpinning everything with total inclusivity.

Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al-Jaber is the CEO of Adnoc, one of the biggest oil companies in the world. He is also chairman of one of the UAE’s largest clean energy initiatives, which is building a sustainable city: Masdar.

In addition, he is the COP28 President-designate and will lead the climate summit when the world gathers to negotiate how rampant climate change will be slowed.

“To disrupt business as usual and fix climate finance, we need action from everyone. I will strive to build consensus amongst parties to drive climate action,” says Sultan bin Ahmed Al-Jaber.

But “everyone” is not going to attend COP28. The host country has received strong criticism for appointing the head of an oil company as chairman of the forum. For example, none of Sweden’s largest environmental organisations will attend the summit, referring to reprioritisation.

On the other hand, twenty-one of Sweden’s most important companies will be there.

“We want to bring together key stakeholders to work on collective solutions. I am hosting the Business and Philanthropy Climate Forum to deliver concrete outcomes from the private and philanthropic sector that can be presented at the highest levels of COP28,” says Sultan bin Ahmed Al-Jaber.

So far, the UN has received over 39,000 applications from 2,300 civil society organisations. CAN Europe, the largest network for climate associations in Europe, says it has

received no signals from its members about any open boycott.

About 70,000 people are expected to attend COP28, including heads of state, government officials, industry leaders and academics.

Ten mangroves will be planted in Abu Dhabi for each summit visitor.

The project aims to support the UAE’s Year of Sustainability drive, the UAE National Net Zero initiative and the UAE’s goal of planting 100 million mangroves by 2030.

It is easy to forget that while Western nations had the opportunity to develop their countries for hundreds of years and accelerated their growth, particularly after World War II, with oil and gas that they have either taken by force from developing countries or paid less than what should have been shared with energy-rich nations.

Now, some voices want to stifle the growth of developing countries just when these countries have managed to reduce corruption, achieved more stable government, and reached higher literacy rates.

Swedish-Indonesian Atti Soenarso has worked as a journalist for close to 40 years. She has worked for Scandinavia’s largest daily newspaper, was TV4's first travel editor, has written for many Swedish travel magazines and has had several international clients. She has travelled the length and breadth of the world and written about destinations, people and meetings. photo Magnus Malmberg

2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 13

RUNNING HEADER

14 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

LIFT LEADERSHIP

Navigating FROM NOW TO NEXT TEXT

image iStock.com/whyframestudio

Rohit Talwar What capabilities are critical for meetings industry leaders in a fastchanging and uncertain world?

changes of approach to navigate from ‘now to next’ and lay the foundations for future success.

Stepping up to possibility Across

Ensuring a very human future Many

the meetings sector globally, many leaders have begun to smile again as the post-pandemic recovery in event numbers, attendances, and revenues continues to gather pace.

Over the last two years, leadership priorities have gradually evolved from securing new business, growing revenues, and improving profitability to a greater focus on innovation and preparing for the future. While this shift is welcomed, there’s also a growing sense both of uncertainty around what the future holds and of the need for ever faster innovation and

may see this emphasis shift as an easy transition, requiring minor adjustments to current strategies. However, far larger-scale change processes or fundamental transformations are required for others.

Some may believe they are doing enough in terms of evolving event designs, adopting greater flexibility around the use of physical facilities, and employing new pricing approaches. Others are moving faster, adopting artificial intelligence (AI) applications, deeper personalisation, and more widespread and accelerated 2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 15

LIFT LEADERSHIP

engagement with Web 3.0, NFTs*, metaverses, and social platforms like Tiktok.

History shows that technology can bring significant benefits. However, systems rarely get used in full, and the benefits often fall short of expectations. For the meetings sector, the core challenge is talent, not technology. In a deep people-centred industry, the not-so-secret sauce for

transformational thinking (LIFT).

While we are familiar with the individual terms, let’s explore what they mean in a meetings industry context.

1

Learning at speed From front-

line event planning and delivery through to leadership of growing multi-business entities in the sector, there can be a sense that we’re just too busy to attend courses.

“The scale of change taking place requires us to rethink”

future success requires a continuous mindset change process and more human-centred approaches to innovation and change.

Every organisation will differ in the required mix and scale of change.

Still, typically, it draws on a combination of incremental innovation, deeper levels of change, and largerscale organisational transformation.

To achieve such levels of change, leaders must guide the journey and model the desired new behaviours and ways of working. So, what might this evolution in leadership look like in practice?

How can we lift leadership? For

leaders everywhere, four core capabilities come to the forefront as critical enablers of the rethinking, redesign, and ultimate reinvention of our businesses. Those critical leadership capabilities are learning at speed, innovation, foresight, and 16 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

Equally, many leaders struggle to invest the effort required to keep up with emerging developments and shifts in the sector and the wider world. However, the scale of change taking place requires us to rethink how we can use our time to learn what we need at speed, and several valuable strategies are emerging to help with this: 1. The first strategy is using proven accelerated learning techniques in multiple contexts to absorb new information quickly.

2. The second is adopting a learning-led approach to conducting key projects so all involved learn the new information and ideas together.

3. Strategy three is embedding the simple continuous individual learning approach of ensuring that we watch two or three relevant 90–120-second videos or listen to short podcasts daily.

2023

These can cover developments in the sector, such as using Tiktok to demonstrate how a venue meets its recycling commitments. They can also help build a proper understanding of broader and potentially high-impact changes such as AI and metaverses.

4. Strategy four is continuous team learning, making every team member part of our ‘radar’, and spotting potentially relevant changes in the world. The kinds of changes we might ask our team to look out for could include the standout features of events and venues that friends, families, suppliers, and clients have experienced and the new tools, applications, and technologies they use in their personal lives.

5. A fifth learning strategy uses the rapidly evolving range of ‘generative AI’ tools like Chat GPT, Bard, and Claude to provide key information and insight quickly. These can provide near instantaneous, condensed format responses on demand. For example: What are the most innovative features of award-winning public conferences worldwide?

These tools offer answers in less than the time it would take to write a description of what we want to know. The superpower of such tools is the ability to change, broaden, and deepen enquiries as the answers emerge. It helps dispel concerns about the time and cost required to do research and the potential risk of misinterpreted or poorly specified requirements.

2

Innovation Across sectors,

shifts are occurring in how we innovate, with leaders getting more involved in conceptualising, designing, and delivering innovation.

LIFT LEADERSHIP

“For leaders everywhere, four core capabilities come to the forefront as critical enablers of the rethinking, redesign, and ultimate reinvention of our businesses. Those critical leadership capabilities are learning at speed, innovation, foresight, and transformational thinking (LIFT)”

Hence, leaders are acquiring both facilitation skills and a toolbox of processes to drive meaningful innovation. Facilitation skills are foundational to most innovation initiatives.

These include problem-framing, brainstorming, conflict resolution, managing group discussions, and consensus-building approaches.

These can be used with mixed teams ranging from business development to venue maintenance and IT. The critical difference here is the shift from designing what we internally think is right to putting the user at the centre of solution design, understanding their needs and desires and involving them at different stages of solution development. Key process tools that can be used here include staged approaches for conducting different scales of

projects, design thinking, visualising solutions, iterative development, rapid prototyping, and design dashes.

3

Foresight A challenge for all

of us is ensuring that we are designing for the future, not just solving yesterday’s problems or merely addressing today’s challenges.

However, in the journey from issue identification and initiation through to implementation, the world around us has often moved on, rendering the solution outdated even before it’s delivered.

Increasingly, leaders understand the need to look ahead and ‘manage the present from the future.’ It helps ensure decisions are stress-tested against key forces and factors shaping the future and the resulting scenarios that could arise. The starting point 2023

here is asking people the assumptions underlying their thinking and testing these against relevant emerging trends, developments, possibilities, and scenarios for the industry and client sector.

Web/generative AI searches on meeting sector trends and scenarios can quickly provide such information.

Strategically, using deeper and more structured approaches to horizon scanning and scenario development can provide us with more comprehensive and tailored perspectives to help sense-check strategies, highlight risks and blindspots, and surface potential opportunities.

Key future factors and scenarios might differ dramatically between the global industry outlook and local meetings sector perspectives. Hence, every manager and leader needs some No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 17

LIFT LEADERSHIP

“Leaders understand the need to look ahead and ‘manage the present from the future’”

basic training to develop their capacity to use rapid and regular scanning and scenario thinking. To embed this, our approaches to planning projects, developing broader strategies, and operational management must all require leaders and managers to use these approaches routinely.

4

Transformational Thinking The elements above, all

feed the continuing process of stretching leaders’ mindsets and reframing their thinking.

The pandemic highlighted how changes and disruptions can happen that are uncertain, unknowable, unthinkable, unbelievable, even uncontrollable, and that they can be repeated, albeit in a different form.

Indeed, many argue that environmental pressures, global conflict, economic volatility, and technological advances could all have an even more devastating impact on the meetings industry. Hence, the drive for survival, recovery, and growth requires us to unlearn many ‘world views,’ assumptions and approaches that served us well previously.

Preparing to compete in a fastchanging, uncertain future emphasises the need for unlearning and a willingness to let go of the past. A 18 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

very powerful and liberating tool here is ‘zero-based thinking.’ It means asking: How would we do this if we were starting again? Whilst the ideas may not all be implemented, this is a powerful technique to generate new possibilities ranging from planning a meeting to developing a complete strategy or rethinking the whole business.

Of course, there are many additional components that an excellent leader requires in their toolbox. However, the Lift framework outlined above highlights critical elements that are central to developing the talent that can lead us through emerging uncertainty to a viable and sustainable future. * NFT is a ‘non-fungible token’ and means something unique that can’t be replaced. By contrast, physical money and cryptocurrencies are fungible, which means they can be traded or exchanged for one another.

2023

Rohit Talwar is a leading global meeting industry futurist, CEO of Fast Future, strategist, and advisor. He is an award-winning speaker who has worked with clients in over 70 countries on six continents. He advises clients in meetings, hospitality, leisure, retail, tourism, travel, aviation, retail, financial services, and government. Rohit Talwar helps clients to understand and prepare for emerging uncertainty and to use rapid learning, innovation, foresight, transformational thinking, and digital advancements to drive their organisations into the future.

Boston. The GOLD Standard for Historic Meetings

Boston is the only city with two AIPC GOLD Certified convention centers – the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and the Hynes Convention Center.

Both offer free, high-speed Wi-Fi, award-winning services, outstanding amenities and more. No wonder so many revolutionary events happen here.

Hosting

Revolutionary Events for the 21st Century

Schedule a site visit and make history with your own event. Call 877-393-3393 or visit SignatureBoston.com

20 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

DESPITE THE CHALLENGES

The Unbroken Spirit RUNS DEEP IN LVIV TEXT

Sculpture on top of Lviv national opera house, Ukraine photo iStock.com/Ruslan Lytvyn

Jane Vong Holmes Lviv’s business events community in Ukraine transforms challenges into solutions amidst war’s impact.

Humanitarian hubs, charitable initiatives, and innovation mark their response. Noteworthy are hotels turned shelters, IT companies aiding modernisation, and Lviv’s commitment to building connections.

Winning titles like European Youth Capital 2025 and hosting international conferences despite adversity, illustrates the city’s unyielding spirit.

From rehabilitation forums to urban planning dialogues, the city harnesses its legacy from the meetings it hosts.

Yuliia Katynska, Deputy Director of Lviv Convention Bureau, explains why the glass is half full, not half empty: “We are already planning for post-war business recovery and our strategy for restoring business events.

We are talking with our partners on

communicating correctly so that conventions and congresses will return to us. Every business now holds its front line, but the war will end. And Lviv will be ready to welcome back international meeting organisers and delegates.”

Anna Petrova, Owner of MMP Forums and BTL Group: “I think that as soon as it’s possible to host groups, and as soon as it’s possible to host exhibitions, conferences, congresses, there will be a boom. I’m sure of it. We only have to be strong.”

Together in Peace, Unbroken in War

Indeed, Ukraine’s indefatigable spirit among its business events community has kept morale up and the horizon optimistic. When the war started, Ukrainian PCO Global Events, which usually organises festivals and conferences, started humanitarian hubs and 2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 21

DESPITE THE CHALLENGES

collected essentials for those in need.

Other PCO’s organised logistics near borders and railway stations, and local institutions collected money for humanitarian aid. They all acted as ready volunteers, making the city the biggest volunteer hub in Ukraine.

Catering companies and restaurants worked with charities to distribute food. One of them, Fest Catering Company, together with the

management will supervise the Lviv project on-site, as the hotel is next to a school.

Over the years, Ukraine’s leading IT companies have expanded from the basics of software development to higher-value work like systems architecture, business analysis and experience design. Before the war, the country’s rapidly growing IT industry saw exports grow by 20.4 per cent in

“ We are already planning for post-war business recovery and our strategy for restoring business events” international World Central Kitchen, fed almost 35,000 people a day in Lviv.

Hotels opened their rooms to the displaced, while restaurants prepared food for defence forces. In fact, two new hotels opened in the city during the war. One is Best Western Market Square, and the second is Emily Resort and Spa. Their bars and cellars have become bomb shelters for civilians.

The Leopolis Hotel Lviv provided rooms and meeting space for foreign volunteers in addition to providing shelter for people from Kyiv and the eastern regions. In the basement, where there used to be a cigar room, is now a storage area with thermos flasks, generators, rechargeable lamps, and candles. The hotel, which has been operating for 15 years and completed a major renovation just before the war started, has initiated the “Joy of Play” project, together with Finnish companies and individuals, to build children’s playgrounds in Lviv and Kyiv. The hotel 22 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2020, according to National Bank of Ukraine figures. Putting their expertise to critical use now, the Lviv IT Cluster, a community of IT companies in Ukraine, helped modernise the command and reporting centres of the Air Command West and started a Mental Health Center for veterans and internally displaced people.

Arena Lviv Stadium, one of the largest venues in the city, hosted many various events until February 2022. Today, it has morphed into a humanitarian volunteer hub for displaced people. More than 25,000 people have passed through the arena, and Arena Lviv employees now help orient refugees and volunteers and familiarise them with their new surroundings. Arena Catering, which once served football matches, assists with food delivery around the clock.

During the war, the Lviv National Opera resumed work, prepared premieres, and organised events as fundraisers for humanitarian aid.

Lviv’s Honorary Conference Ambassador, professional dentist 2023

Dr Myron Uhryn, started mobile dental clinics for soldiers and conducted maxillofacial surgeries. And Lviv Tourism Office transformed its office into a media centre at the beginning of the war, and then helped create shelters and humanitarian hubs, and organised charitable events to collect money for Ukraine.

In November 2022, the city won the European Youth Capital 2025 title. A jury awarded Lviv the honour in recognition of the city’s plan, which encouraged young people to stay in Ukraine, return those who fled the country, and build connections between the young people in Ukraine and the rest of Europe. European Youth Forum Board Member Tom Matthew commented: “Despite the challenges, Lviv introduced a detailed plan full of hope and aspiration.”

Another competitive bid secured

by Lviv when the country was at war, was the 6th International Conference UNESCO Historic Cities, Heritage of Peace, which will take place in 2025.

The old part of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site with the most significant architectural monuments in Ukraine. Oresta RemeshyloRybczynska, PhD, Associate professor, Architect ICOMOS (International Council of Monument and Sites) and Rotary International member, presented the city at the last conference in Siena, Italy, in April. Other upcoming international conferences booked for Lviv are listed below.

Meetings and Legacies In April,

the city hosted the International Rehabilitation Forum as a follow-up convention to a similar one a year ago. Specialists worldwide, including representatives of international institutions, foundations, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, including the Red Cross of Ukraine, came together to discuss

DESPITE THE CHALLENGES

“Ukraine’s indefatigable spirit among its business events community has kept morale up and the horizon optimistic”

rehabilitation for people affected by the war. The forum included the Innovations for Rehabilitation project, encouraging startups and IT companies to showcase their inventions to facilitate military personnel and civilians’ physical and psychological rehabilitation.

This convention was followed closely by the Ukrainian Israeli Rehabilitation Summit 2023 in May, a platform for developing and implementing a comprehensive physical and psychological rehabilitation plan and ongoing dialogue about the formation of Ukraine’s post-war future and reconstruction.

In June, 700 participants and 40 speakers converged in the city for the Lviv Urban Forum to discuss architecture, urbanism, city planning and rebuilding Ukrainian towns. After the forum, the world-famous Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, renowned for his innovative work with paper and involvement in disaster relief projects, started working on the new surgical building for the national rehabilitation centre Unbroken in Lviv.

In an interview with Kyiv Times in December 2022, the Finnish owner of the previously mentioned Leopolis Hotel, Victor Hartwall, said: “It is

clear that when the war ends and the situation stabilises, investors will come, realising how people work here and with what energy, strength, etcetera.

“The Unbroken Spirit runs deep in Lviv. We look forward to hosting more international conventions which will leave valuable legacies for Lviv and Ukraine,” says Yuliia Katynska from the convention bureau.

Upcoming international conventions booked for Lviv: European Society of Women in Theological Research Conference (ESWTR), 2023 International ABDOS Conference, 2024 Wilhelm Bernhard Workshop, 2025 European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM), 2025 6th International Conference UNESCO Historic Cities, Heritage of Peace, 2025 International Conference on Solid Compounds of Transition Elements (SCTE), 2026

2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 23

RUNNING HEADER

24 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

THE CHANGE NEEDED

The Nexus of Destinations and Associations THE FUTURE OF SOCIOECONOMIC CHANGE TEXT

Matty Rubenstein A Tale of Two Industries Two deeply interwoven industries, destinations and associations, have both seen unprecedented change to their business imperatives in the last decade. Yesterday’s cities would compete for conferences as tourist destinations, a boon for hotels, convention centres and entertainment.

Today, municipalities see masstourism as the key to health, social and economic development. At the same time, associations have seen their core membership, education and publishing businesses continually eroded by new technology and online platforms. In its search for renewed vitality and relevance, the association industry has yet to realise that those destination keys are, in fact, in its pocket.

image iStock.com/bbsferrari

Associations Let’s talk about associa-

tions for a minute. When you think about associations, it brings people,

shared experiences, and a shared industry or academic background to mind. At the heart of associations is sharing – sharing of ideas, sharing of goals, and sharing of vision. Volunteers happily give more time managing their associations, planning and running events, and educating one another than any company could possibly afford to fund.

Associations are a multi-billion dollar industry, funded by a mix of membership dues, industry sponsorships and conferencing. However, that funding is under threat, and entrenched association operational models leave an industry poorly positioned to find and take advantage of new opportunities.

But we haven’t talked about associations’ biggest asset because it is so intangible that even associations have trouble capturing it, and that asset is passion. Members gravitate to associations for many reasons, often 2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 25

THE CHANGE NEEDED

as mundane and practical as cut-price insurance and industry credentials.

However, the heart of associations beats with members’ desire to impact the world. It may only focus on the world around their shared interest, industry, or academic discipline, but it beats loud and demands a stage to perform. The higher cause and mission is what sets associations apart from any other company or organisation.

Social media has provided some level of outlet for our collective passions, but needs to deliver real

Destinations now understand that opening access to local government, health systems, research and education establishments, and industries may encourage focused groups like academics, medical professionals, and industry leaders to bring their specialities, influence and knowledge as change agents to their cities.

Convention bureaux are moving away from focusing on fun and towards being an interface between visiting conventions and local government, social, health and industry stakeholders. As James Latham of

“ It’s fair to say that destinations and associations have not yet reached matrimonial harmony” results. This is the higher calling to which associations are now being summoned.

Destinations Growing up in Europe,

I had the privilege to travel to most capital cities and experience the history, culture, and gastronomy they offered. Who would ever think those same cities are now the breeding ground of anti-tourist organisations?

Surely, having the world eat your ice cream and visit your sites is the desire of any human being, or perhaps not. Some municipalities have also started to realise that mass tourism, in groups of thousands, does not necessarily bring enough value to a city.

Some municipalities have learned that these visitors may be better positioned to be catalysts of health, social and economic development rather than just beer and ice cream consumers.

26 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

The Iceberg (an organisation that champions such seismic shifts in the destinations industry) describes it: “moving from being travel agents to change agents.”What is driving this transformation? What do these forward-thinking cities want from visiting conferences? Why are they investing in such resources? The answer is one word: legacy.

Legacy An emerging movement

believes that it is not enough, not acceptable, and just not OK, to bring thousands of delegates to a destination without leaving behind a three to five-year legacy for the local community. This legacy could take the shape of a social, healthcare, or economic program, one that’s germane to the group visiting the region.

A city that has become the home for a particular technology or industry may use a conference to 2023

raise its international profile, highlight employment opportunities and bring investment. Or a local community may struggle with a medical condition, and a medical convention may bring educational programs, medical specialists and interventionists that can provide a boost to local health systems and professionals.

The opportunities are as endless as the need for such legacy conferences worldwide.

Legacy meets associations, associations meets legacy For an industry

like associations, this is a tailor-made opportunity. Associations are packed with passionate specialists who understand their worlds and their associated challenges and opportunities, and who are begging for opportunities to plug into the destinations with which they resonate. They’re ready to collaborate in the creation of legacy outcomes. Associations are conference specialists, they’re doing them all the time, there’s nothing new there.

The change needed in the association world is a paradigm shift from member-centric to mission-centric, from an internal to an external focus.

We need to see associations raising themselves on the value chain, taking their place at the table with industry and government rather than appealing to their philanthropy and lobbying for change. Executive Directors and presidents should see the creation of their legacy portfolios as a badge of honour and achievement on their tenures.

A Taste of Success Let’s take a look

at what a successful legacy conference leaves behind. Starting with a fairy-tale ending, about five years ago, the annual congress of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology, ESTRO, chose Madrid as its

THE CHANGE NEEDED

“The change needed in the association world is a paradigm shift from member-centric to mission-centric”

destination because it recognised that the city had a challenge with cancer.

ESTRO’s legacy was a 700 million euro investment. It will result in the diagnosis and treatment of hundreds of thousands of patients over the 25-year shelf life of the equipment secured and the training of health care professionals to operate it. Let’s be clear: this is unusual and may never be repeated. However, similar events by the European Association for the Study of the Liver, EASL, have run more than one conference, leaving an impact on education programs for parents, resulting in reduced junk food consumption by kids in the host cities, along with a mobile blood testing lab that toured the region giving service to communities that may have shied away from public health systems, leaving them at high risk of liver damage.

The European Stroke Organisation, ESO, aim to reduce the burden of stroke by changing the way that stroke is viewed and treated. As part of their annual congress organised

by Kenes Group, they arranged a public education symposium, attendees spoke in local schools, students visited the congress, and to highlight the benefits of exercise, the congress sponsored the annual Göteborgsvarvet half marathon in Sweden.

Outstanding resources and video case studies about legacy

conferencing are on The Iceberg website.

The State of the Union So, it is clear

that associations and conference organisers can deliver legacy events.

However, I think it’s fair to say that destinations and associations have not yet reached matrimonial harmony.

Although many major cities have transformed themselves and stand ready to work with associations, most have not. While a few associations have produced successful legacy conferences, a majority are still far away.

The destinations industry has seen the success and value of these posterchild conferences, and has started to try to sell the concept too, but can’t understand why associations aren’t rising to the challenge. How can an association industry that claims to be mission-centric not take the opportunity to make a real impact aligned with their goals? I’ve heard it posited that they think that the associations are either unable or unwilling to join the party. I don’t believe that is true.

What is clear to me is that trying to sell legacy to associations through the usual conference channels is not going to work. These stakeholders do not understand legacy, are not measured on legacy, and are not positioned to move the organisation towards legacy. Someone must coach 2023

boards and staff through the legacy negotiation process, which will affect the whole organisation. In parallel, conference specialists can do what they do well: plan a conference. This coaching may need to come from the destination themselves, consultants, or conference organisers.

The adoption will be slow and painful, like all changes in the association space. Destinations must understand that the transition period will be long, but the results are ground-breaking. To put it bluntly, destinations don’t have a choice, the association industry is holding its keys, and the destinations industry can’t borrow the car from anyone else.

Matty Rubenstein has been advising senior executives of large associations like the $1/2 billion IEEE for almost 15 years. He has an enviable portfolio across almost every association vertical, completing projects around Non-Dues Revenue, New Product Development, Industry Engagement, Partnerships, Education, Conferencing, Standards, Operations and AI. Matty Rubenstein is passionate about the future of associations and the impact that they can have on society. He also brings over 15 years of industry experience in sales, education, consulting and project management.

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 27

RUNNING HEADER

28 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

A DOSE OF STUPIDITY

The Pros and Cons OF FUNCTIONAL STUPIDITY

image iStock.com/lupashchenkoiryna/Iryna Lupashchenko

Excerpt from the book The Stupidity Paradox – The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work by Professor Mats Alvesson and Professor André Spicer. (Profile Books) Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an overreliance on brand and image.

And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, shortterm results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox.

The book The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You’ll discover what makes a workplace mindless,

why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity.

It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge.

The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

We are publishing a short excerpt from the book with permission from the authors Mats Alvesson and André Spicer, and Profile Books, the publishing company.

2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 29

A DOSE OF STUPIDITY

“Why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term”

Part One: Stupidity Today Chapter 2: Not so smart Ignorance Overlooking what is

blindingly obvious can be a nasty side effect of professional obsessions. But there are also many cases when we ignore crucial information because it is in our best interests.

The fact that we so often turn a blind eye to inconvenient facts can be seen in an experiment conducted by Joël van der Weele. He got groups of German university students to play a game where it paid to collaborate.

Economists use this kind of game all the time to test out how people make decisions about collaboration, but there were a few unusual twists to this experiment. First, one of the players could pick the rules. Second, they could choose to remain ignorant about whether it paid to collaborate.

The researcher found that people were five times more likely to choose to remain ignorant when it was in their own interests. Further, he found that when people chose ignorance they were twice as likely to engage in selfish behaviour. The implication was clear: when it is in line with our own selfish interests, we often choose 30 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

to remain ignorant, and when we pick ignorance we act selfishly.

This study was conducted in the rather artificial setting of a computer lab in a university department. We might not be so surprised that students studying economics are willing to overlook information when it is not in their interests and that they act selfishly. After all, economists are often more inclined than others to maximise their self-interests.

However, the kind of behaviour that Joël van der Weele discovered in the lab can be seen all around us in everyday life. People at high risk of contracting an STD often avoid getting tested, wealthy people avoid driving through poor neighbourhoods, investors monitor their portfolios less when the market is declining. We tend to go out of our way to ignore crucial information when the results might be disturbing or not in our best interests.

Consider the scandal at Volkswagen during 2015, when it was revealed that VW had installed ‘defeat devices’ into over 800,000 of its cars. These allowed the cars to pass increasingly stringent emissions tests through limiting the output of noxious gases 2023

only when the output was being tested. At other times the car would be up to five times more polluting.

Senior executives at VW initially claimed that they had no knowledge of these devices. Although this is a matter of debate, in many ways it was in their best interests to remain ignorant. By not knowing about the covert technology, executives were able to claim unabashed that the cars their company made were clean and green, cheap to produce and also had high levels of performance. When the bad news came out, they could also claim that they had no knowledge of these underhand means.

Usually, we associate ignorance with having too little knowledge about a topic. Ignorance can be a great spur for unreasonable action.

An excellent example of this is when senior managers adopt a new management technique such as TQM (total quality management). One study of the implementation of TQM found that managers were usually ignorant of the technical details. As a result, they have unrealistic expectations of its potential. Because they have little idea about the outcome, they are all the more keen to give the ideas a try.

A DOSE OF STUPIDITY

“We tend to go out of our way to ignore crucial information when the results might be disturbing or not in our best interests”

This ignorance means most managements can charge headlong into implementing new fads and fashion that they don’t understand.

Ignorance can be an important motivator. Often it is people who are ignorant of the potential chances of success who are the keenest to act.

One of the more curious reasons for this is the ‘Dunning-Kruger Effect.’

This is the tendency of people with very low levels of skill to systematically and unreasonably overestimate their abilities.

This effect was identified in 1999

by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, two psychologists working at Cornell University. They were inspired by the unfortunate case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks disguised only by lemon juice rubbed on his face. He believed this would make him invisible to security cameras.

Dunning and Kruger wanted to know whether such delusions were unique to a few idiotic criminals or whether they were more common than we think. They conducted a series of experiments where they asked people to rate their own skill at some basic tasks like humour,

grammar and logic. They also measured people’s performances on each of these tasks. They found that: “participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humour, grammar and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put subjects in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.” In other words, the least skilled were not just bad at the tasks, they were also bad at recognising their own incompetence and poor at asking for help.

We might expect ignorance from incompetent amateurs, and yet hope for more from professionals. But the University of Chicago sociologist Andrew Abbott thinks we might be too optimistic. In 2010 he examined research published in his own area of expertise: the sociology of the professions. He was struck by the amount of ignorance he found. There were many pieces of work by amateurs who blundered into the debates and made claims that were either patently wrong or excruciatingly obvious.

Any area of knowledge or expertise will always have chumps who think they have discovered a great insight when in fact they are merely 2023

repeating a mundane point. The hearer learns to smile and switch off when faced with such characters.

What was more troubling for Abbott was a second kind of ignorance he detected among experts. He noticed that many people who should know better often overlooked vital or blindingly obvious points. It meant they were unable to see things that an outsider would readily perceive. It was often the experts’ own expertise that blinded them. Trapped within what they knew, they missed the obvious.

All too often it is useful to be able to profess ignorance about awkward facts. Knowing what to know, but also what not to know, is a crucial skill that people working in any organisation pick up rather quickly. The sociologist Linsey McGoey has explored how this strategic ignorance works in a range of settings. For instance, in the wake of the financial crisis, many of the senior managers of large banks pleaded that they had been ignorant about what their employees were doing.

In organisations, there are often subtle procedures of ignorance, where people avoid informing senior people about problems. This is No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 31

Mark your calendar now for IMEX

If you

live events

If you

business

If you creativity and innovation

Save the date

If you learning and growth If you meeting new people from all over the world

You’ll

Save the date

A DOSE OF STUPIDITY

“Knowledge-intensive organisations are often crowded with people with limited emotional and practical intelligence”

because senior managers do not want to face too many complicated issues. They also want to be able to claim ignorance when ‘blame time’ arrives. This can of course be a pure blame-avoidance tactic, but normally it is good to actually be ignorant. You have a clean conscience and you don’t have to think about issues that go on under the radar. If things go wrong, it is difficult to prove that you really were told. There is a tricky relation between being informed about things that must be managed and being ignorant about issues that may go away or never come into light.

Junior people are often faced with a difficult choice: should they inform senior people and risk being seen as someone disturbing the peace by telling them things they prefer to be ignorant about, or do they want to leave their superiors in blissful ignorance and risk being blamed for not having informed them about a problem that may escalate?

If we take a look at the managers at the company Technovation, we find an interesting case of ignorance at work. The managers of the software development teams felt they had to support innovation and do ‘creativity

management.’ However, it was not really something they were required to do. Their main goals were improving details of products and minimising errors. Seduced by the images of companies like Google and Apple, they wanted to emulate these firms by becoming more innovative and creative, but this turned out to be easier said than done.

The various initiatives they tried did not always work very well, and rather than deal with these failures, managers largely ignored them. They silently dropped initiatives, without looking into whether they worked or not. Not learning from experiences helped these managers to concentrate on doing something new. Ignorance was bliss. Managerial ignorance can allow you to continue your work without the pesky pressure of having to think and reflect. Genuine learning sounds great, but it takes time and energy. It is tricky, complex and ambiguous work. It can also lead to hesitation, doubts and other costly downsides.

Conclusion Many contemporary

organisations claim to be knowledgeintensive firms, but such claims can 2023

be thoroughly misleading. For sure, there are organisations that rely on intelligent, well-educated and creative people. Some organisations have units staffed by people who specialise in sophisticated problem-solving, and there are those who do this, but these activities tend to be rare. But most organisations are actually hothouses of non-knowledge-intensive work.

Of course a degree of competence is needed, and few jobs are entirely brainless, but supposedly knowledgeintensive organisations are often crowded with people with limited emotional and practical intelligence.

These smart people may avoid careful analytical processes and instead rely on fast and frugal mental rules of thumb to get the job done. What’s more, many firms actively encourage employees not to exert their intelligence overmuch. They push smart people into dumb jobs, swamp staff with information, enforce behavioural scripts that are followed mindlessly, encourage colleagues to avoid addressing tough questions, and incentivise experts and amateurs alike to be ignorant.

As a result organisations can often help to encourage remarkably bright No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 33

A DOSE OF STUPIDITY

“We are often much poorer informationprocessors than we believe … often guided by emotions, fixed ideas or assumptions”

people to do stupid things. And people’s inclinations to use their brains in narrow, unreflective ways lead to less wise decision-making and working practices.

We like to think that we as human beings are very intelligent creatures, but there is also overwhelming evidence that we make fundamental cognitive mistakes. We are often much poorer information-processors than we believe. We engage in wishful thinking, jump to conclusions, overestimate positive outcomes. We are often guided by emotions, fixed ideas or assumptions. Work life is often more comfortable if it is carried out mindlessly. Ignorance often is bliss.

All this enables us to avoid difficult issues.

Human psychology and the organisation of work can be a big impediment to our cognitive functioning. It can mean we don’t make full use of our intelligence, reach less than rational decisions, and even act in stupid ways. Normally we think that this is a bad thing, but it is only part of the picture. Being stupid has its upsides. In fact, it is something that many organisations positively encourage.

34 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

In the following chapters we ask how stupidity can be functional.

Mats Alvesson is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Lund, Sweden, University of Queensland and Cass Business School, City University, London. He has published extensively across a wide range of organisational behaviour topics and issues, is one of the mostly frequently cited European researchers in management and organisation studies and a sought-after speaker around the globe.

André Spicer is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University, London, known for his research in the areas of the human side of work, leadership and ethics. He is widely published in both academic literature and the general business media and is a frequent commentator on sustainability business, behaviours at work and business culture.

2023

Meet Estonia!

Iconic event spaces, inspiring incentives, exceptional hotels and world-class service for your next event!

visitestonia.com ecb.ee

ibtmworld.com/mi

Register now

image iStock.com/wildpixel

RESEARCH

Eating Habits and Sociality LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR OUR LARGE BRAINS For more than 40 years, researchers have disputed whether eating habits or social interactions led to the large brains of humans and other primates. Now, a research team in Lund, Sweden, can show that our giant brains result from both diet and sociality.

One feature that separates humans from all other vertebrates is our large brains. It’s not just humans who can boast voluminous organs for controlling the nervous system. Even apes have relatively large brains.

In a new study published in the scientific journal Systematic Biology, a Swedish-British research team examined how primates’ brains have evolved. All to understand the mechanisms that have led to modern humans (Homo sapiens) and other primates having such large and complex brains.

The researchers collected information from previous studies on brain size, body mass, and other variables such as diet and activity. They then used advanced statistical methods to analyse the material.

“Our results show that it was a combination of diet and sociality.

Shifting from simple to more complex levels of sociality resulted in relatively larger brains. In comparison, the transition to a more leaf-based diet led to relatively smaller brains,” says Masahito Tsuboi, a biology researcher at Lund University who conducted the study with colleague Mark Grabowski at Liverpool John Moore University.

Given the lively debate about which of these factors played the dominant role, the study provides novel insights into our understanding of how primates’ brains evolved into what they are today.

“In some cases, our model prediction was extremely precise. With knowledge of body mass, diet, and sociality, we could predict brain size across 32 species with 98 per cent accuracy. This means that, even though we don’t know the brain mass of a South American monkey, we don’t need to measure it. It adds evidence that diet and sociality were important drives of brain size 2023

evolution in primates,” says Masahito Tsuboi.

By revealing the driving forces behind the development of primates’ brain size, the study provides a valuable stepping stone for future researchers on the origin of humans, or the evolution of primates in general, regarding important variables to focus on.

“It’s a question that fascinates the whole world. Nobel laureate Svante Pääbo’s work on the ancient human genome is currently hotly debated.

We are all interested in where we come from because understanding our origins will guide our paths towards the future,” says Masahito Tsuboi.

The study is published in Systematic ­Biology: “Both Diet and Sociality Affect Primate Brain-Size Evolution.”

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 37

RUNNING HEADER

38 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

HUMAN CAPITAL

Invaluable Potential OF SCIENTIFIC STAFF TEXT

photo iStock.com/sanjeri

Paula Fanderowska The scientific potential of Kraków’s universities can be used to strengthen Kraków’s position as a place for organising congresses, conferences and international artistic events.

Paula Fanderowska, Vice President of the board of Kraków 5020, comments on the topic of studying intellectual potential and the importance of cooperation with the academic community in attracting international events to Poland.

Below, she shares her thoughts on the importance of human capital.

Acquiring international conferences and congress events is one of the key strategic objectives of Kraków’s sustainable tourism policy adopted by the City Council for 2021–2028. It is necessary in Kraków, as the city is trying to restore its tourism potential, strained by the pandemic and the nearby war in Ukraine.

The scientific potential includes about 12,000 academic teachers (including 794 full professors) educating nearly 130,000 students at 23

universities. However, it needs to be determined how many academics and researchers, working in public and non-public universities, have a tangible impact on attracting prestigious international events to the city.

The strength of Kraków: human capital After Warsaw, Kraków is the

best-developed metropolitan city in Poland, with a well-established image and substantial development potential. The destination’s strengths lie in its human capital: academics, university graduates, and specialists in various fields.

The Kraków Convention Bureau, the Kraków Network, the Kraków 5020 company (managing the ICE Kraków Congress Centre) and specialised entities (such as PCOs, DMCs and incentive travel offices) actively organise events. The city also has a well-developed congress and trade fair infrastructure, and rich cultural and recreational offers. And another asset is the city’s location, with air connections to many other international destinations.

2023

Up until the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the overall business events industry was one of the key service sectors of the city. 2019 saw a record number of participants in meetings and events: 1.2 million.

More than half of these were conferences and congresses attended by 670,000 dele­gates. But despite Poland’s growing recognisability in organising events for associations and international organisations, Kraków still doesn’t rank very high internationally.

According to the 2019 ICCA Statistics Report, the city ranked 48th in the world ranking of host cities, for example – a list ranking the most important cities in terms of the number of meetings hosted.

And in International Convention Destination Competitive Index 2021, a GainingEdge ranking of the competitiveness of congress cities, Kraków ranked 66th worldwide, and 34th in Europe (out of the 101 most important conference destinations). In the GainingEdge Leveraging Intellectual Capital report, which ranks the top No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 39

HUMAN CAPITAL

50 global destinations in terms of the number of intellectual leaders and their influence in attracting international events to destinations, Kraków isn’t even mentioned at all.

And the impact of domestic decisionmakers on attracting congress events to Poland has been estimated at only 37.9 per cent.

and congress events. For this purpose, the structure of universities in Kraków was analysed, the fields of science and scientific disciplines with the greatest chances of generating scientific leaders in the meetings industry were identified, the achievements of research and teaching staff were analysed to select key representatives of the fields in which the

“Many scientists, despite their international recognition, are unaware of their power of influence”

Meanwhile, the development of the Kraków conference and congress segment, and the city’s business events sector on a whole, creates an opportunity for the city, threatened with over-tourism, to change the tourism model. This could mean a transition from excessive, and not fully controlled, development to a sustainable tourism model, allowing for a balance between the needs of various interest groups and the protection of existing resources.

Kraków leaders The city has many

world-renowned scientists in various fields, such as well-known doctors, architects, economists and engineers.

These key players, however, are many times unaware of having great opportunities to attract international events to Kraków.

A preliminary study, carried out by a team from Kraków University of Economics, was conducted to assess the city’s scientific potential in attracting international conferences 40 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

destination is a vital hub, the number of local leaders active on the boards of international associations was determined, and their potential to attract new association events to the city was assessed. And finally, the potential of the city in terms of individual scientific disciplines and the potential of particular scientific and didactic staff was examined.

The research covered six Kraków universities (five public universities with an academic profile, and one non-public university): Jagiellonian University Kraków University of Economics Hugo Kołłątaj University of ­Agriculture in Kraków Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Kraków University The study was conducted based on 5,574 records about scientists from 2023

Kraków representing 45 disciplines.

The academic work allowed the selection of scientific leaders: in non-artistic fields and disciplines, with the highest rate of scientific achievements (taking into account the number of citations, the number of publications, and the number of points obtained for publications), in artistic fields with the highest rate of artistic achievements (participation in international creative events, number of awards and distinctions received in international artistic events, managing/ participating in the jury of international artistic events, organising artistic events, curating exhibitions, participating in a competition jury).

The research identified the top 100 scientists in Kraków (from among the analysed universities), and the following disciplines were most represented in that top 100: medical, biological sciences, chemical, pharmaceutical and physical sciences, and astronomy. The study also identified people with promising potential who may join the group of the best scientists within the next few years.

The prestige of intellectual leaders in the international arena is built not only through the number of publications and citations but also through their organisational and conference activities. After all factors had been taken into consideration, the subjects were divided into four groups: Masters, Sages, Activists and Journeymen.

Twenty-six Masters were selected, including three academics who held positions on the boards of international associations. These Masters are scientists who, due to their scientific achievements and activity in international fora, have the greatest opportunities to attract significant scientific

HUMAN CAPITAL

“The prestige of intellectual leaders in the international arena is built not only through the number of publications and citations but also through their organisational and conference activities”

events to Kraków. And they are the ones who should primarily be supported and motivated in the process of obtaining congresses. Additionally, 68 Sages were also selected, consisting of scientists with outstanding scientific achievements but without a declared association.

Building synergies between academia and business Due to the

study’s limited scope, it wasn’t possible to examine, or draw conclusions for, the entire academic community of Kraków. That makes it necessary to continue the efforts, and widen the scope, by convincing other local universities to participate in the project, in order to be able to identify more intellectual leaders from all the entities in the city, and to identify which of them are best suited to attract events.

These people are invaluable with regards to building the city’s competitive advantages and increasing the inflow of business events to Kraków.

But the Kraków survey conducted by the team from the University of Economics was based on anonymised

data. To be able to make full use of the study’s results, it’s therefore necessary to obtain consent from various leaders from the respective universities to declassify their data, to be able to publish their names.

Achieving that, would allow the Kraków Convention Bureau, the Association of Polish Conferences and Congresses (SKKP) and entities associated with the Kraków Network, to reach out to these leaders, directly, and invite them to the Kraków Congress Ambassadors programme.

And that is something that would be hugely important, seeing as so many scientists, despite their international recognition, are unaware of their power of influence.

Creating a special programme for potential event ambassadors should primarily aim at promotional and networking activities. Such a programme would enable new partnerships between the world of science and public and private actors, for example: organisers, service providers and subcontractors.

Identifying academic and scientific intellectual leaders is the 2023

beginning of an internal city-wide process of building synergy between academia and business.

Paula Fanderowska is Vice President of the Board of Kraków 5020, President of the Board of the Association of Conferences and Congresses in Poland (SKKP) and Vice President of the TUgether Meetings and Events Industry Council.

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 41

RUNNING HEADER

42 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

DISPLACEMENT

How to Redesign Business Events FOR AN INCREASINGLY GLOBAL, MOBILE AND CONNECTED AUDIENCE TEXT

image iStock.com/triloks + royyimzy

Scott Steinberg We all have somewhere that we grew up, somewhere that we may dream of moving to or somewhere that we fondly call home. But in this age of remote work and seemingly endless mobility, what does it really mean to “live” somewhere?

After all, many young and old families have recently fled big cities in favour of small towns, where they continue to dial into weekly meetings and conference calls and stay productive. Likewise, many executives now perform their job roles thousands of miles from corporate HQs or freely commute between cities and client worksites as necessity demands, seldom setting foot in an office of their own.

As a futurist and professional keynote speaker, I often joke that I “live on a plane” and frequently wake up all

night to give virtual presentations to audiences in every time zone and on every continent. One has to wonder, though: What will this modern diaspora mean for meeting and event planners and their audiences?

Interestingly, we already see its impact on younger audiences who grew up alongside ubiquitous Internet connectivity, such as Generation Y and Generation Z, whose friendships, acquaintances, and associations know few geographic bounds.

Despite being US-based, my daughter, a member of the latter cohort, spends most of her time online chatting with, and coordinating groups of, individuals in the UK, Poland and other territories through team-based missions in the latest online games.

But the odds are that no matter your age, you’ve already seen this 2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 43

DISPLACEMENT

phenomenon, a blurring of geographic borders thanks to the rise of digital communication channels and shared online experiences facilitated by today’s biggest technology platforms, manifest both in your household and organisation.

In the time of Zoom, Teams, Slack and other remote-conferencing tools, it is frankly hard to imagine a day in which you wouldn’t be able to inter-

having put flight/hotel bookings, ticket purchases and insights into local hotspots at our fingertips, for decades, travel planning is often just as simple as tapping a touchscreen, and no longer as big a deal as it used to be.

Want to spend the season working from an Airstream trailer while touring all 50 United States of America?

Are you looking to kick back and take

“One might argue that we’re experiencing a digital Renaissance as we speak”

act with peers, partners, friends or customers at locations situated the entire world over.

It means that on the one hand, we’re not only now training entire cohorts of working professionals in every field that an environment of endless diversity and multiculturalism is the new normal. We’re also teaching them that what was once an entire world’s worth of seemingly exotic and unfamiliar experiences and opportunities is now just a click or call away.

Once upon a time, for our parents, it was a big deal to take a trip overseas, and it’s certainly nothing to scoff at these days either. Of course, times have changed, but that doesn’t mean that anyone and everyone is in fact planning to attend meetings or conferences half a world away. But for today’s working professional, let alone members of Gen Y or Z, planning distant trips is now practically an afterthought. With the Internet 44 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

client meetings from the pool at the French Riviera between stopovers at the biggest cities in Europe? For the modern professional, virtually anything goes these days. You’ve doubtlessly heard the term digital nomad tossed around to describe a legion of workers who are now more mobile than ever and working online from any location that strikes their fancy. From now on, we’ll simply call them ‘colleagues’ because this level of mobility will be the new normal for workers in every profession that doesn’t require them to be hands-on day in and day out with equipment or clients on a job site.

Looking ahead, it’s not hard to see the beginnings of a Great Displacement already taking shape. A world in which many of us are infinitely mobile and infinitely connected, and the ideas of national borders begin to blur as ideas and inspiration proliferate the globe over. In coming years, all of us will certainly come to celebrate 2023

concepts like diversity, equity and inclusion more, noting that tomorrow’s working professionals will be more diverse and well-educated than ever and draw upon an increasingly international array of backgrounds and insights. At the same time, I suspect that we’ll also become so used to working with others on a crosscultural and cross-border basis that we will all begin to share more common worldviews and vernaculars as citizens of planet Earth as well.

During the 14th through 16th centuries, Europe experienced a historical inflexion known as the Renaissance. It was a time when classical learning and arts flourished, scientific advances boomed, and advancements in trade and communications helped connect what were once largely isolated parts of the planet with ideas and people from many nations. The introduction and growth of the printing press, the establishment of trade networks between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and the migration of scholars and artisans helped bring the world closer together. It helped spark a global sharing of knowledge.

Given the growing availability of technology, mobile devices and online communication platforms today, coupled with lowering costs and more widespread access to these solutions, one might argue that we’re experiencing a digital Renaissance as we speak.

One in which, for example, meeting and event planners in Ireland could easily host a series of online conferences, allowing preeminent American and European speakers to disseminate their ideas across hundreds of organisations in Latin America and the Caribbean in real time. I know this because I recently hosted one for Mastercard, and it was just the first of many virtual get-togethers they’re holding to help finance and digital payment leaders all around the planet

G W S

A

E

N

O

G

U

J

L

U

DISPLACEMENT

get on the same page and share best practices and insights worldwide.

The way I see it, this Great Displacement, or era of heightened mobility, won’t just likely usher in a new age of productivity and prosperity, even in a world of growing disruption and uncertainty. It will also herald the dawn of a new era of enlightenment, one in which thought leaders’ concepts and ideas have the potential to connect with millions of individuals across an ever-growing range of touchpoints and formats

speakers from various backgrounds that offer diverse perspectives and insights. With new trends and innovations capable of emerging anywhere, anytime, it’s equally important for, for example, Swedish audiences to get a Japanese futurist’s viewpoint on change and innovation as a local presenter’s thoughts.

On another, it also means having to look at communities on a global and local/regional level and think about how to target their shared needs best when building content

“An environment of endless diversity and multiculturalism is the new normal”

seemingly overnight. For meeting and event planners, this means recognising three key points: 1. Tomorrow’s audiences may be defined more by psychographics (aka shared attitudes, values or interests) than cultural demographics.

2. They’re likelier to want to consume and interact with program content on their terms and using an array of different devices and online connection points.

3. If you want to learn to speak the lingua franca, or common language, of all these netizens, or citizens of the Internet, it means having to both celebrate what brings us together and uniquely sets us apart.

On one front, that means actively making a point to populate meeting and event programs with global 46 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

programming to maximise timeliness, trendiness and universal appeal.

And, of course, it also requires you to design your gatherings to fit a broader range of attendee consumption patterns and formats, especially for those of us who are more mobile and expect more customised and personalised experiences every day.

Should event programs be offered in digital and/or hybrid formats?

Does it make sense to tape conferences or meetings and offer them for streaming play or download? As a business events pro, is there merit to repackaging and repurposing live sessions as books, blogs, whitepapers, animated explainers, infographics, online training courses or all manner of micro-learning or interactive offerings? By this point, I’d argue that we shouldn’t be asking these questions.

Instead, all should be considered table stakes for any event planner to 2023

invest in, noting that you can use dayof exclusives as an added incentive to spark on-site attendance.

In addition, when designing for what will increasingly be audiences of highly mobile, highly informed, and highly demanding attendees from now on, you’ll also need to learn to share and spread information in various content models and formats. For instance: Streaming Media Leveraging live-

streaming solutions, online archives, and other digital communications channels such as shared discussion groups or chatrooms to enable audiences to drop in, drop out, and consume content as much or as little as they prefer, when and how they like.

Extended Reality Using virtual real-

ity (VR), augmented reality (AR) and Metaverse solutions to create virtual gathering places where get-togethers can be held, and audiences can attend and enjoy shared experiences akin to in-person visits from anywhere, anytime, no matter how distant they are.

Microlearning Modules Bite-sized

content offerings, interactive tutorials, animated explainers, or shortform prepackaged teaching lessons.

Anything that allows you to make content more approachable, and to more rapidly present and summarise event sessions.

Simulations and Games Educational

experiences that draw on the art of gamification (applying gameplay elements to other areas of activity) allow audiences to go hands-on with tasks, topics, and challenges and learn in real time.

Crowdsourced Solutions Programs

are being designed to draw on ideas, concepts and contributions from

DISPLACEMENT

“Looking ahead, it’s not hard to see the beginnings of a Great Displacement already taking shape … The ideas of national borders begin to blur as ideas and inspiration proliferate the globe over”

large groups of individuals, and offer various insights featuring a wide range of perspectives and opinions.

In effect, designing event programs to speak to increasingly globalised and mobile populations in fresh and novel ways will be the new normal. So, too, we will be crafting meetings and gettogethers so that audience members can attend them virtually anytime, anywhere, and access featured content through a growing array of online and digital channels.

As I note in The Future is Yours, our training game for meetings and events, this means adapting event content to be presented via an ever-growing range of channels and formats. But on the bright side, it also means that, as a result of these efforts, you’ll not only discover new ways to present material in an increasingly attention-getting and engaging fashion. In addition, it further means that as an event planner, you’ll be able to speak to an ever-growing audience and extend the value and impact of special occasions far beyond day-of attendance.

As a global and motley group of people, we may be increasingly scattered geographically. But online, we’ll stand more and more united in interest and enthusiasm as tomorrow’s meeting audience.

Hailed as the World’s Leading Business Strategist, award-winning strategic consultant, and professional speaker, Scott Steinberg is among today’s best-known trends experts and futurists. Also, he is the bestselling author of “Think Like a Futurist: The Next Normal, Make Change Work for You” and “Fast >> Forward: How to Turbo-Charge Business, Sales, and Career Growth.” The creator of The Future is Yours, a training game for play at meetings and events, and the President and CEO of BIZDEV: The International Association for Business Development and Strategic Partnerships. www.

FuturistsSpeakers.com.

2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 47

RUNNING HEADER

48 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

2023

CHANGING ROADMAP

Russian Business Events: CHANGE IN THE FORMATS AND STRUCTURE TEXT

Downtown Moscow, Russia photo iStock.com/scaliger

Eugene Gerden Russian business events are experiencing tough times as the ongoing aggressive war in Ukraine, and the resulting ever-tightening sanctions on the regime, put severe pressure on the industry.

Before February 24 last year, the business events industry in Russia was one of the largest, not only in Europe but also on a global scale.

According to the Russian Ministry of Science and Culture, there were hundreds of international conferences and events annually, and many thousands of business delegates visiting the country every year. As stated in a study by the Russian Union of Exhibitions and Fairs, before the war, the annual volume of funds generated by the industry was about 3.2 trillion rubles (€31.4 billion), equivalent to three per cent of Russia’s GDP. Like everywhere else, the Covid pandemic hit the industry hard. But

in contrast to most other countries, where the meetings industry has recovered from the pandemic and its consequences fairly quickly to some degree or other, the Russian industry has been seriously pushed back due to the continued pressure of unprecedented sanctions on the country.

One of the reasons for this was the massive exodus of Western companies that occurred shortly after February 24 last year, many of which were anchor clients for many Russian agencies, specialising in organising meetings, events and conferences.

And the remaining Western companies have temporarily or indefinitely reduced their budgets for advertising and holiday projects. The situation has resulted in structural change of the entire market, and its focus.

As Vadim Zelensky, the founder and CEO of Zelenski Group, one of Russia’s leading agencies in the field 2023

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 49

CHANGING ROADMAP

of meetings and events, said in an interview with the Russian business publication RB, most international audience and business travellers who visit Russia these days are now predominantly from the CIS countries or Asia. In contrast, the Russian government becomes the primary customer of the industry.

In terms of the structure of business travellers, according to data from the Russian Ministry of Culture, currently, the top three countries in

switched to small and medium-sized events for no more than 50–100 participants. Following statistics from the Russian Ministry of Culture, the share of small meetings of less than 50 people this year increased to 75 per cent (compared to 65 per cent in 2021), and the percentage of mediumsize ones fell to 20 per cent in the overall structure of the market.

At the same time, the per person cost of participation has increased.

Thus, analysts say that the budget for

“The very geography of the Russian meeting sectors is expanding to the East”

terms of the number of business delegates visiting Russia to participate in local meetings and events are Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and China.

About 41 per cent of all foreign business delegates travel to Russia from neighbouring countries and 22 per cent from Europe. In the latter case, this is still significantly lower than the figures of some previous years. Still, the demand from the pharmaceutical industry, financial and consulting companies, FMCG and IT sectors remains generally high, which allows the industry to stay afloat.

Local analysts in business events claim a severe change in the formats and structure of the industry, as since the beginning of the war, the number of large events, conferences and meetings in Russia has significantly decreased. The primary demand 50 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

meetings for up to 50 people over the past year has increased by 58 per cent compared to 2022 and by 19 per cent when compared to 2019. (Due to the pandemic, no business events were held in 2020.) In the mediumsized events and meetings segment, the growth of budgets was 70–100 per cent.

According to data from the local agency Aeroclub Tour, the geography of the Russian business events sector is currently concentrated mainly within the country borders. At the same time, foreign events account for only seven per cent of the overall structure, while in precrisis 2019 that figure reached 30 per cent. And as Russia witnessed a withdrawal of Western events, the process turned out to be less painful than might have been expected. It could perhaps be argued that many foreign companies’ 2023

Russian presence was perhaps more image-related than an actively pursued presence in the Russian meetings and events market.

Anna Gaber, CEO of AG Agency, another leading Russian agency in business events, claims that today’s Western businesses do not consider Russia a priority market. “Also, many companies went bankrupt, while others tightened the terms of cooperation,” she says. This creates conditions for an increased isolation of the Russian business events sector and its development, primarily within the country’s boundaries, with a minimum number of guests and business travellers from Western countries.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that about 100 major hotels in Russia, that traditionally have had important international conferences and meetings conducted in them, are now no longer part of global hotel chains, leading to complications also with their work in the local market.

According to Ilyas Badretdinov, Executive Director of Tagras-Business Travel, a Russian agency specialising in organising meetings and conferences, one of the main distinctive features of the current Russian meetings sector is its ongoing pivot towards the East, with closer ties to the long-time partners of Russia.

This means that the very geography of the Russian meeting sectors is expanding to the East, and Ilyas Badretdinov also added that after restrictions on Western air traffic and the resulting annihilation of established logistics chains, the CIS countries and the Asian region are becoming the leading business partners and suppliers for Russian business events.

One of the biggest problems became the disconnection from the global services for booking and selling

CHANGING ROADMAP

“Most market players maintain a level of optimism, as they feel that the industry has yet to reach a critical point”

air tickets like Saber, Galileo and Amadeus, as well as the exit of more than 50 international airlines due to exchange rate fluctuations from the BSP Russia mutual settlement system, which unites travel agencies and carriers. And the departure of major hotel brands like Marriott and Hyatt and the suspension of Booking.com also seriously complicated the current situation in the market.

Market players have also talked of severely tightened conditions for the provision of loans by local banks.

Yulia Lipatova, managing director of the Aeroclub meetings agency, claims that the situation started worsening during the pandemic, as amid a critical decline in turnover for the Russian business events industry, banks began to assess the event and meeting business as high-risk and often refused to provide loans.

In 2023, the industry faced yet another challenge: the Russian Central Bank raised the key rate several times, which led to the growth of interest rates on loans of up to 25–27 per cent per annum, compared to the previous 13 per cent. In this regard, and after the beginning of the Russian-Ukranian war, the industry faced an acute shortage of funds, paying

particular hopes to an increased support from the state.

In the meantime, the Russian federal government and the authorities of the major regions of the country, particularly Moscow and St. Petersburg which traditionally accounted for most of the industry’s activities, are aware of the sector’s current problems and are considering solutions, primarily in the form of financial support in both direct and indirect form.

For example, the Moscow City Government plans to compensate up to 10 million rubles (€98,000) of expenses for organisers of some meetings and conferences conducted within the city’s territory this year.

According to organisers, such support is primarily conducted through various grants, which compensate for approximately 10 to 20 per cent of the budget for premises and technical equipment.

Particular hopes of the industry are put on preferential lending programs, as commercial loans from banks are currently practically inaccessible for most companies operating in the Russian meetings and business travel sectors, due to high interest rates and the requirement of advance payment from most clients.

2023

Another support measure is the government signing additional contracts with the industry.

According to Anna Gaber from AG Agency, many local business event providers have had to cut their staff during the ongoing crisis. The issues of team retention have also reached an acute status, with an active outflow of personnel from the industry due to its current lack of prospects, with the biggest problems presently observed with regards to skilled personnel.

Most interviewed analysts believe the industry will face further consolidation in geographical terms, as the share of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the overall market structure will continue to grow, amid the simultaneous contraction of the overall business event sector across the entire Russian province. The combined share of the market for these two cities is already estimated at 70 per cent, which many expect could grow to 80–85 per cent within the next year or two.

Moscow city alone represents 50 per cent of the national market. The popularity of the city might in part be explained by the recent launch of several modern meeting venues, such as, for example, the Technopolis

No. 18

MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

| 51

CHANGING ROADMAP

“Local analysts in business events claim a severe change in the formats and structure of the industry”

Moscow Congress Center, Afimall City, Skolkovo and Zaryadye.

Despite the market’s problems, most market players still maintain a level of optimism, as they feel that the industry has yet to reach a critical point, and at the same time, almost 100 per cent of the departed suppliers and services can be replaced.

Analysts from AG Agency expect the market will be able to at least partially recover in October–November when some new major conferences and meetings are scheduled.

They maintain optimism, expecting a recovery of business activities in certain segments of the Russian economy, primarily retail and the banking sector. In part, an expected upswing could come as a result of local businesses rushing to occupy the niches vacated by foreign actors.

As Alena Eivel, Operational MICE Director of Vipservice, one of Russia’s leading companies in the field of booking, observed in an interview with the Russian Kommersant business paper, there is a sharp increase in the activities of local companies, many of which are no longer restricted to one event per year.

During the pandemic, some customers refused entertainment events in favour of business events, but with 52 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

restrictions now lifted, these customers are yet again in the market for both. Another rejuvenation is coming in the form of ever-growing activities from governmental customers, reflected by a postpandemic return of previously cancelled or postponed governmental events.

In contrast to previous years, when a main focus was given to the attraction of international business visitors from the EU, the US and other Western countries, these days, particular attention will be paid to the interest of business delegates from so-called “friendly” countries for Russia, such as China, Turkey, Brazil and India.

2023

KELLERMAN

Roger Kellerman Publisher, business intelligence analyst, trend creator, educator and networker. Has over 40 years’ experience of the global meeting industry. Founder of Mötesindustriveckan. twitter.com/thekellerman photo Sara Appelgren

The Great Political Hypocrisy: PRETENDING NOT TO UNDERSTAND Many associations and companies know that politicians, worldwide, need more knowledge and better understanding of the benefits that meetings and events can add to the development of, for example, universities, and destinations, regions and countries.

No one knows how many associations there are in the world. But we know, for example, that there are medical associations in every country, and often for almost every discipline in medicine. Even certain diseases have their own dedicated associations, technical areas and different kinds of engineers, technicians, economists, etcetera. In fact, almost all professions have their own associations, trade unions and political organisations. And these all tend to have congresses nationally, continentally and globally.

Universities and colleges all around the world send people to congresses and conferences, seminars, events, symposia, colloquia and trade fairs to acquire new knowledge and build their networks. This is why every university city should have a congress facility that can host international congresses and conferences. So why doesn’t this happen?

Why do so many politicians postpone their decision to build a convention facility even though the university 54 | MEETINGS INTERNATIONAL | BIR

No. 18

in the same city sends hundreds of employees elsewhere to develop their research and knowledge and to establish the university? For politicians to not acknowledge that fact is simply a form of hypocrisy.

Two synonyms for ‘hypocrisy’ are ‘double standards’ and ‘lying’. When examining the situation, it is evident that way too many politicians are just pretending not to understand, while they really must be aware of the importance of people attending congresses or inviting congresses to their city. It is simply elementary.

Knowledge thrives at congresses. The exchange of knowledge helps develop individuals. The breeding ground for future Nobel Prizes is often burtured or even created in just such environments. And the benefits of attracting talent and prominent visitors to your city is self-evident.

If you are a leading politician in your city, you really must be able to understand the connection between the exchange of knowledge and future breakthroughs and awards, and their ensuing ripple effects.

Because if you aren’t, you are simply out of your depth and unqualified to be a politician responsible for your destination’s development. You need to support your city’s universities and colleges to help both your current citizens and future generations.

2023

It is pretentious, if not outright deceitful, to merely create pilot studies and architectural competitions for conference facilities that are never allowed to actually come to fruition just because some naysayers object that the proposed facility is an ugly building, in the wrong place, and will cost too much.

The list of objections may of course go on, but all too many yielding politicians and civil servants must really be aware of why a convention facility isn’t just nice, or even important, but actually necessary. It is simply required in order to develop universities, the city itself, and its residents. And we can’t allow ignorant voices veto power over our cities’ development.

We can’t afford to let hypocrisy rule. We can’t afford to let people without full-picture knowledge intimidate politicians into not daring to make decisive and essential decisions about the necessary development of our cities. All politicians need to understand the connection between congresses and future breakthroughs or even Nobel Prizes, and the obvious benefits of amassing a wealth of knowledge and attracting talent. And they need to understand that unless we build for the future, there isn’t going to be much of one.

No Ordinary Team This is The CCD, where people are the heartbeat.

When you choose The CCD for your event, you’re not just getting a venue, you get a team of passionate and collaborative experts. We bring together a specialist team in events, hospitality and technical production to work with you to ensure your every need is met. We will partner with you every step of the way, ensuring your event is seamlessly delivered beyond your expectations.

No Ordinary Event. www.theccd.ie

Bring yourself.

Why is the Netherlands ideal for your next meeting?

Obviously our central location, our focus on sustainability and our ability to innovate. These trades allow us to adapt to any meeting plan. But what really makes the Netherlands distinct are the people. Light-hearted, entrepreneurial and working together through consultation, cooperation and consensus building. We welcome everyone in our open, inclusive, and resourceful country. Bring yourself, we’ll do the same.

We’ll do the same

See more on Holland.com/meetings