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In this episode of The Meeting Room podcast, host James Lancaster talks with Tamar Beck, CEO of events marketing agency Gleanin, about one of the most pressing privacy and risk-related issues facing our sector, exploring what can be done to ensure attendees feel safe and secure in the age of covert surveillance.
Can an event change the way people think, feel and behave – and, crucially, can we measure it? One UK festival is putting this question to the test, asking attendees whether exposure to different ideas and perspectives has shifted their outlook and behaviour. Paul Harvey, M&IT, asks whether we should all be following their example…
AMI’s James Lancaster poses an existential question for anyone involved in business events advocacy: what if the reality for most business event organisers doesn’t align with the messaging of the industry that supports them? If we place too much emphasis on the society-wide and host destination-specific benefits, are we failing to deliver sufficiently authentic messaging?
BESarawak’s CEO Jason Tan Chin Foo elaborates on the close collaboration required between government, industry, academia and local communities to ensure business events create meaningful and lasting benefits, creating opportunities to improve lives, strengthen communities and influence future services. From M&C Asia…
Crisis and leadership communication expert Marjie Hadad gives an outsider’s perspective and issues a strong wake-up call to the Business Events sector, arguing that we need to craft far more effective messaging, tailored carefully for every key audience and group of stakeholders, with local voices but high-level consistency of our key talking-points. Business Events leaders…
Peng Ee Ooi outlines the unfulfilled needs that led to the creation of Associations Commons as a portal for associations in the Asia-Pacific region to share their perspectives, challenges, and solutions with one another. Western know-how and methodologies are often not easily translatable, for cultural or economic reasons, into Asian scenarios, whereas local associations have…
Y.T. Anderson, of Visit Northern Finland & Oulu Convention Bureau, reflects on City DNA’s 40th Summer School, designed for newcomers to business events. He shares insights into the changing models of destination leadership, the shift from bednight-driven metrics to societal impact, and the growing influence of the new generation of future leaders in our sector.
Destination Canada’s Virginie De Visscher calls for the wider industry to adopt the lessons from the first three years of their unique study into international event impact and legacy. The biggest surprise in the research: the power of inclusion and diversity during planning, creating and delivering events. From Conference & Meetings World…
AMI’s James Lancaster argues that when so much of our professional life has been compressed into screens, feeds and notifications, conferences seem a little quaint – people travelling for hours to sit beside colleagues, listen to someone imparting information and then chat about it over a coffee. But this quaintness increasingly looks like the point.
Ihor Chava from Kyiv School of Economics argues that the primary purpose of place branding is not to shape a new image for a destination, but to create a space where all place stakeholders can align themselves around a shared vision, agree on the highest priorities and collectively nurture civic pride. From CityNationPlace…
Meeting design guru Adrian Segar argues the meetings industry has spent decades measuring success as a matter of volume: more attendees, more exhibitors, more sponsors, more square footage. But bigger events don’t necessarily create greater value for the people who attend. Segar puts forward his predictions for the rise of delegate-centred success metrics.
GCB Managing Director Schultze argues that while the world of business events has access to more data than ever before, and destination and venue information is widely available, the real value emerges only when different data sources are connected and placed into a meaningful context. Schultze outlines what Germany is doing to illuminate these connections.
Kai Hattendorf conducts a deep dive into Informa’s recent state-of-business report for the first half of 2026, drawing our attention to the impact of geopolitics on global trade show sector performance, and the company’s strategic and tactical decisions on issues such as event postponement vs cancellation, regional prioritisation and differentiation, and risk management.
Destinations International’s President & CEO Don Welsh shares his personal business philosophy and his views on the future role of convention bureaux or DMOs. Leaders of these organisations will need to evolve into “alternative mayors”, ringmasters of the complex institutional relationships that make up modern place leadership in destinations large and small. From GatheringPoint.news…
David Adler takes a critical look at the threat to scientific and medical meetings should US federal regulation OMB-2026-0034 go ahead, prohibiting grant recipients from attending conferences not named in the original grant proposal (in practice, an impossibility!). David also brilliantly articulates the processes by which face-to-face meetings generate scientific insights and progress.
An industry asked its government for attention, got it, and watched the government defund it mid-conversation. Parliament formally objected, demanded the cuts be reversed, and proposed moving the entire sector out of the culture department and into the trade department. David Adler translates the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee report into plain English…
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