From Paul Woodward in Geneva: For some, the highlight of this week’s UFI CEO Forum may have been UFI Managing Director Vincent Gérard’s brief performance on the alpenhorn. For most of the 80 industry leaders networking together from 27 countries though, the real substance of the gathering was found in the conference room at Palexpo, the event’s host and main venue in the city.

 As at previous CEO Forum meetings, economist Roger Martin-Fagg took delegates on a tour of the world’s economies. His story wasn’t a particularly uplifting one as he’s predicting a return to negative growth by the end of this year, although less severe than the GDP falls of early 2009. Despite the “W-shaped recession/recovery, however, he did offer the industry a ray of hope: when asked what the business impact of all this would be in the medium term, he predicted a flood of innovative new products and services would come out of companies who needed to build new business and had cut costs as far as costs could be cut. These will all need to be exhibited to find new customers!

 The event had kicked off with Prof. Gareth Jones challenging the CEOs with the question “Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?”. He told delegates that the followers which every leader must have were looking for four things:

 1. Community

2. Significance – voice

3. Excitement – direction, a picture of the future

4. Authenticity

 He ended the talk, as he did his book with the same name, with the suggestion that, in order to lead, you should “Be yourself more with skill“.

 Friday morning, after a memorable dinner in the Palais des Nations the evening before, the UN headquarters in Europe (pictured), complete with Swiss music saw a vigorous debate on the emerging importance of social media to the exhibitions industry. Stephen Nold and Rick Calvert from the US were joined on a panel by UFI Incoming President Eric Everard and tried to persuade the delegates, some quite reluctant, that there are important business opportunities to be exploited in the fast-changing world of social media. Nold’s presentation is available to all on Slideshare. Paul Woodward, Steve Monnington and others were covering the event live on Twitter using the hashtag #uficeoforum.

 More on this event in the next issue of UFI Info, due in early March.