Dear colleagues, and UFI members,

It is almost time to pack for Oman. I’ll be adding a stop-over in Egypt on the way, to make it to COP27 in Sharm el Sheik for the United Nations’ Global Climate Conference. On 11 November, our industry will take the stage again at COP27 to give an update on the “Net Zero Carbon Events” Initiative. What began as a gathering of interested industry stakeholders from UFI, ICCA, AIPC and the Scottish Event Campus has now become a global industry movement, hosted and facilitated by the Joint Meetings Industry Council. In Egypt, we will present the roadmap for the global events industry to become net zero carbon by 2050– a roadmap that is now backed and developed by more than 400 businesses from across the events industry, namely from  the exhibitions sector.

This is the result of collaboration and persistence. The report, “Finding the Future, Together”, was published in the US – a multi-year collaboration of 14 interested parties, including UFI and its members and partners like Informa, RX, Emerald, IMEX, Freeman, GES and SISO, as well as other players from the US.

Full list here in the report: https://www.ufi.org/archive-research/finding-the-future/).

The report consolidates and simplifies a series of internal research reports analysing the environmental impacts of the U.S. and Canadian B2B trade show industry. For the first time, we can now add North American industry data into the global conversation, closing a long-standing major gap.

The path to closing this gap began at an UFI Sustainability Forum held in Florida, in 2018. The event, held co-located to the SISO Summer Conference, sparked the conversation that kicked off this project.  We often speak about the legacies that our events create – and here is one from our own industry, that will now feed into the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative going forward.

Now we have Oman ahead – and afterwards, on the horizon, a full programme of events announced for next spring connecting our members in Lisbon for the Global CEO Summit, in Bangkok for the Asia Conference, in San José, Costa Risa for the LATAM Conference, in Doha for the MEA Conference, and in Maastricht for the European one – not to mention the 2023 Global Congress in Las Vegas in November 2023. For the full list of UFI events, have a look at our calendar here: www.ufi.org/events

I’m excited to see the legacies that you will all begin at our Congress in Muscat, and at these future events!

Safe travels, and see you in Oman later this month!