Dear colleagues, dear UFI members,

Collaboration is at the core of the work of every successful association. By definition, industry associations exist to serve industries, to support developments, and to represent the industry’s businesses and activities. Last week, Global Exhibitions Day 2022 again showed us all the power of collaboration. When we work together, we make a difference.

Luckily, teamwork is part of our industry’s core identity, our very own DNA. And it serves us well in many ways. Take our UFI education programme and the “UFI Certified Professional” designation that we launched a year ago. This month, we are already running the 4th edition of the “Exhibition Management School” programme, assisting another strong group of industry colleagues on their professional journey.

As we are all facing the challenge to bring new colleagues into the industry after the pandemic, we as well have to provide upskilling and re-skilling to our colleagues. Thanks to the guidance from HR leaders in our global UFI community, we have addressed this early on, and developed completely new programmes with the “Exhibition Management School” and the “Venue Management School”. Multi-day compact learning – delivered online as well as in-person – covering today’s relevant issues as defined and selected by you, our members, in collaboration. I encourage you to have a look at the calendar of UFI educational programmes at ufi.org/education.

The scale of collaboration also goes hand-in-hand with the respective challenges we face – take the climate crisis for example. Six months ago, we made it to the UN Climate Summit, with a pledge for our industry, developed in collaboration with more than one hundred businesses and institutions from across the events industry. Now, just months later, we are already discussing the fine print of a roadmap document that will show us how we can fulfil these pledges. Don’t be fooled please by the “technical” wording here. This document will allow us, as an industry united, to define our own path ahead here, instead of waiting for governments to make that call. We are a pragmatic, hands-on, “let’s go do this” industry – and therefore the initiative has, in parallel, already released a guide on how to get started. You will find all of this at netzerocarbonevents.org. If you have not yet signed up as a supporter or even signatory of the pledge, please do so today.

Finally, collaboration needs dialogue and exchange – so I am looking forward to seeing many of you, in person, later this month in Hamburg at UFI’s Global CEO Summit – or later this year, in November, at our Global Congress in Oman (registration is open at uficongress.org).

Kai Hattendorf

UFI CEO