Dear colleagues, dear friends, 

Here we are – our next peak exhibition season is underway. I don’t know about you, but September looks more than just packed in my diary – including a trip to Paris this week for our regular September UFI Executive Committee meeting.

We will discuss finances (excellent), discuss and hopefully accept another slate of new members (welcome!), review last week’s pilot of UFI’s new educational programme in Riyadh (a promising start!), work to prepare UFI’s centennial (get ready!), and get updates on recent as well as upcoming UFI events and research as well as put a focus on the specific actions in our five chapters around the world. All these issues are testament to the strength of our organization, with the great team we have in place in Paris and around the world.

Also, as you will have heard, and as he explains in this UFI Info, we will have to say goodbye to our CEO Kai Hattendorf in a few months. Here and now is not the place to reflect on his work at UFI since 2015 – we have some road ahead of us here still – but I want to assure you that the trio and Kai have been preparing for this properly, and that we already have a process underway to find UFI’s next CEO. I promise you that we will keep you informed about this in the coming weeks. For now – it’s “business as usual”.

Our association’s activities during the summer and this month again show the best of the organisation. I guess most of you already digested the 33rd and latest edition of the Global Barometer which now projects our industry’s revenue growth this year to come out at a staggering 17%. Also, 48% of businesses across our industry as looking to add new and additional staff – my company dmg is in that group.

We have multiple milestones to celebrate as well for UFI Education. UFI has selected Macau as our education partner for the Greater Bay Area in China and regular host for our “Venue Management School (VMS)” and “Exhibition Management School” courses there. The first ever English-language VMS took place already. And just last week, in Riyadh, UFI launched a new entry level education programme for our industry, piloting it with and for our colleagues from Tahaluf there.

Next week, around 150 or more colleagues will be in Monterey, Mexico, for the UFI Americas Conference. True to our global reach, we will have a Chinese delegation among them, looking to drive business growth between China, Mexico and Central & South American markets. And the team is working on the sessions for our Global Congress in Cologne, Germany, this November, all build around out theme “Changes to Chances”.

As busy as we all are, please, everyone, take the 5 minutes it takes and sign up today to be in Cologne in November!

Yours,

Geoff Dickinson, UFI President