Dear colleagues, dear members, 

What a week we had in Zurich in June – welcoming 300 members and colleagues from more than 40 countries and regions for the many kinds of meetings, including the European Conference. It was surely memorable for all of us who were there (thanks in large part to our hosts, Messe Zürich) – and as the data from our social media analytics show, the events generated an extremely good number of posts and pictures shared online. 

This is partly the result of an AI-driven service that we have rolled out over the past events with our event photographers and our Photo Platform Partner, Memento. This team focused on capturing the best moments with our attendees – they uploaded the pictures with live photography technology into our UFI app. Attendees could receive their photos in real time. Thanks to AI, each guest got notified instantly and connected to a personalised gallery with photos directly featuring them, ensuring a private and seamless experience. We will soon share the method and metrics as a case study on the UFI blog. 

Just days after the events, we could – as usual – send out a mail to participants with links to presentations and session videos for everyone to follow up on specific sessions on demand (a service we introduced back in 2005) – but this time, this package also included a full summary and analysis of the key issues addressed in all the sessions. This packed report came from another of our events partners, our AI Insights Partner, Gevme.  

Both these new services show how we are embedding solutions and services that work with AI-driven solutions into our events at UFI. We are not only addressing the impact of AI on our industry in event sessions and discussions, but we are also using our events to try out and evolve applications that enhance the events for you – and we are happy to share what we learn. With AI one of our “5 trends to watch”, we have also again included this area in the fieldwork for the upcoming edition of the Global Barometer, which will be released this summer.  

We will for sure work to evolve this further in time for our Americas Conference in September in Monterrey, Mexico, and, of course, for the Global Congress in Cologne in November in Germany.  

But ahead of that, most members of the UFI HQ team in Paris will use the coming summer weeks to take some time off after what has truly been a packed first half of 2024, to come back refreshed afterwards. UFI Info will as usual take a break in August, and be back in September.  

Best regards,

Kai Hattendorf, UFI CEO