Four years ago, in March and April, Europe went into lockdown as COVID shut down public life – and our industry. In the past few days, I have been following a number of media reports and expert reviews on what we all have learned from the pandemic: how countries and societies managed to get through the waves of infections, how industries dealt with it and recovered, what we have learned from it, and what changes it has brought.
A few days ago, I could catch up with Amy Saleh, Operations Director at Hannover Fairs Australia. We were both attending the AIME show in Melbourne and chatted for half an hour about the state of the industry in Australia. Now, Amy has been a member of our 2023 Class of “Next Generation Leaders” and together with her colleagues Otero from the UK, Elizabeth from the US, Tehchad from Thailand, and Aya from Egypt, have presented their ideas for a new blueprint for exhibition operations a few months back at our Global Congress in Las Vegas.
Happy New Year to all of you – this first edition of UFI Info comes out a few weeks into 2024, and just ahead of Chinese New Year on February 10, which will ring in the year of the dragon. Sound powerful?
It took our face-to-face industry only two years to essentially [...]
Dear colleagues, dear members, I am writing this as [...]
Dear members, dear colleagues, Ahead of our Global Congress in Las Vegas, I have had the opportunity to connect with our members and community in Asia, Europe, and North America in recent weeks – having been in Bangkok, Düsseldorf, New York. And when you read this, we will be in Singapore with a team, jointly producing the Asia CEO Summit, a collaboration between AEO, SACEOS, SISO, and UFI.
The whole Paris team is back in the office after having used the past two months to take some time off respectively. Recharged and energised, we are working now to prepare our Global Congress in Las Vegas. We will have a unique event for all of you, and with colleagues from more than 50 countries around the world signed up already, we may see our most international event ever this November. Check out this UFI Info for more updates, and don’t forget to register.
In our latest UFI Global Barometer we are – for the first time – sharing data tracking the adoption of the use of Generative AI in the exhibition industry. We discussed how to interpret the data – and we decided to ask ChatGPT to analyse the numbers
In life as in business, closure is important. It marks a moment in time when something truly comes to an end. A few days ago, I felt a sense of closure, attending an industry summit in Shanghai. Again, for one more time and for one last time, I was at a major meeting where colleagues from our industry were meeting again for the first time after the pandemic break in their region.
Spending some time at IMEX in Frankfurt a few days back, being involved in various industry initiatives, I once again experienced that we are a “we” industry. An industry that delivers best when people, businesses, and organisations work together. Collaboration happens on every level. Done well, it makes a difference. In a discussion at IMEX, a room full of association and policy leaders was asked to state what is holding our industry back. The results were shown in a cloud of words. One of the biggest terms: “Industry Egos”. A timely reminder from within our global industry leadership that getting things done needs frameworks and structures, but mostly the willingness to walk together, not alone.
