Dear colleague, dear UFI members,

We are wrapping up a busy first half of the year – with UFI events around the world, and UFI being present at many industry events again in person. Just a few days ago, we held a successful Summer Edition of the Global CEO Summit in Hamburg, thank you to all of you who attended for your positive feedback!

Now we’re shifting our to the 89th UFI Congress this November in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. Work on the programming is underway! To reflect the financial pressures that many parts of the industry still feel, we are – for the first time – offering an “early bird” rate for the Congress, which allows you to lock in the reduced ticket price from last year for this year as well. Please see www.uficongress.org  for details.

Even further on, scheduling is underway for the 2023 events – with the Congress in Las Vegas, the GCS, and some regional conferences already fixed. As a reminder – you always find all the confirmed dates in our events calendar here: https://www.ufi.org/our-events/ufi-events-calendar/.

2023 will be the first time UFI returns with the Congress to North America since the 1970s. In the past years, our associations presence and reach into this market has grown organically, as more and more UFI members have expanded their business there, and as we have welcomed US based businesses into our organization. UFI research has become a highly regarded source of information, and our advocacy work globally in collaboration with all our association members has made a difference. Today, UFI works more closely than ever with SISO, we have been a founding partner of “Go Live Together”, and are now one of the industry associations funding and backing the Washington, DC based “Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance” (ECA) – the North American counterpart to the EEIA office we are backing jointly with EMECA in Brussels. In fact, I am writing this column as I am on my way back from the annual summer conference of ESCA (the Exhibition Services & Contractors Association) – who have recently joined UFI as an industry association as well. There, I experienced again how we all benefit from our US colleagues being more connected to the global industry community.

To reflect all these developments, we are happy that we can draw on the experience and expertise of two trusted US colleagues going forwards – as Martha Donato and Marty Glynn (MAD Event Management) will work with us to evolve further in North America, acting as our official representatives. You can read more on this elsewhere in this UFI Info.

As our industry evolves, we evolve as your global association – this newsletter again highlights a lot of these development. Enjoy the read!

UFI CEO

Kai Hattendorf