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Cape Town: MBA World Summit 2018

January 23, 2019

Cape Town: MBA World Summit 2018

Conferences and exhibitions drive industries, propel business and contribute significantly to global GDP. In South Africa, they contribute over R115 billion to national GDP. They are a transformative strategy for countries looking to boost their knowledge and creative economies.

In March 2018, the MBA World Summit was held in Philippi, the largest township in Cape Town, South Africa, where local entrepreneurs were partnered with international MBA students to help them grow their businesses through skills transfer and knowledge sharing. The MBA World Summit is a perfect example of how business events are the catalyst for large-scale socio-economic impacts, not only on tourism, but also on deal making, business transactions, training, research, development and education.

Read The Iceberg’s case study here.

January 23, 2019

Estonia Is Organising its Next Fam Trip

The Estonian Convention Bureau and the Estonian Tourist Board are inviting international meeting and event planners to an exclusive MEET ESTONIA fam trip, taking place from Tuesday, April 2nd to Thursday, April 4th (with optional post-tours extending to April 5th).

During the trip meeting planners will discover some of the country’s meeting venues and hotels, learn about all the social programmes and activities on offer and get to know key people in the Estonian MICE industry. Optional post-tours will take the planners to Tartu, which is Estonia’s university town and IT hub as well as the oldest city in Baltic states, among others.

Registration is open until January 27th 2019.

January 22, 2019

New Workshop Coming Up by ESAE

The European Society of Association Executives (ESAE), partners of Boardroom, is organising its next event on 19 February. In the framework of a series of workshops announced by the Society since its launch, this second workshop will deal with Digitalisation for Associations.

Co-organised with Cambre Associates, ESAE members will have the opportunity to get unique insights on how to make sense of all the rapid changes that digitalisation brings to association members’ work. The event will explore how to use the changes to create more added value for ESAE members and to make day-to-day management easier.

The next workshop revolves around Crisis management. Stay tuned for program and location.

January 21, 2019

Plant Biologists Cultivate Ideas in Cairns

Cairns Convention Centre will host the 2021 Congress of International Society for Plant Molecular Biology (IPMB) where 1,200 of the world’s leading plant molecular biologists meet to discuss ways to feed Earth’s increasing population. The winning bid was led by Associate Professor Joshua Mylne from the University of Western Australia with the support of  IPMB and the American Society of Plant Biologists. Multidisciplinary approaches to climate change, population increase and the pivotal roles that plant molecular biology will play in achieving efficient crop production systems will be the main topics under examination.

Dr Mlyne said: “In the next few decades the world expects two billion more mouths to feed while our climate changes, so understanding how plant growth, development and crop yield respond to the environment has never been more important. This congress will bring together over a thousand plant biologists from around the world who are making the latest discoveries on how genes, proteins, metabolism and physiology influence plant growth.”

Ross Steele, general manager, Cairns Convention Centre, said, “Attracting this event is a coup for Cairns and required significant collaboration between academia, government and industry which indicates how important the IPMB Congress is to Australia.”

January 17, 2019

Productive 2018 for Dubai

Dubai Business Events (DBE), the city’s official convention bureau, had a fruitful 2018 securing a total of 261 bids which are set to attract an additional 153,640 delegates to Dubai over the coming years. The 24% increase since 2017 signifies a shift towards larger-scale events and further cementing the Emirate as an attractive global business destination.

Key bid wins from 2018 include the World Congress of Gastroenterology set to take place in 2021 with a total of 6,000 delegates in attendance, the Mary Kay China Incentive set to take place in 2019 with 800 delegates in attendance, as well as the World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress, set to take place in 2020, which will bring 1,000 delegates to Dubai. Other notable wins in 2018 include the World Chambers Congress, which will take place in Dubai in 2021 with 1,500 delegates set to attend and the Congress of the Societe International D’Urologie that will bring in 2,000 delegates to Dubai in 2021.

Steen Jakobsen, Assistant Vice President of Dubai Business Events, said: “One of Dubai’s strengths when it comes to reaching out to event planners and creating compelling bids for major events is the close team work and collaborative approach taken by stakeholders across the city. Business events hosted in the city play an important role in the development of our knowledge economy and are a crucial part of our wider tourism strategy and contribution to Dubai’s GDP growth.”

January 16, 2019

ICC Sydney’s Geoff Donaghy on CSR and Legacy

Boardroom receives some insights from ICC Sydney CEO and Director Convention Centres, AEG Ogden, Geoff Donaghy, as ICC Sydney prepares for its busiest year ever after a successful run of events of all kinds and formats in 2018.

In what ways is CSR embedded in your business model? How do your clients relate to that?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is deeply embedded in ICC Sydney’s philosophy, culture and business model. We consider CSR as both an obligation and opportunity. As we are managing a major piece of city infrastructure that involves very significant amounts of public and private investment, the obligation is to manage the venue as successfully as possible and create the maximum economic impact. The opportunity on the other hand, is to create a new paradigm in the way that venues, like ICC Sydney, operate and to deliver the maximum community impact by ensuring the flow of benefits from events reaches a broad cross section of the community.

You just launched the 5th stream of your Legacy Program: Creative Industries. Can you tell us about it? 

The Creative Industries stream has been curated to complement the Legacy Program’s four core streams – Innovators & Entrepreneurs, Generation Next, First Australians and Sustainable Events and to drive long-term social, economic and environment outcomes, which are both meaningful and measurable.

The program will actively work to cultivate a lasting legacy from fostering support for Sydney’s emerging and established artists through cultural institutions and colleges to engaging new talent for event performances from Talent Development Project and connecting with festival programs including VIVID and Sydney Festival. From a design perspective, ICC Sydney has partnered with Dinosaur Designs, maker of bold and instantly recognisable Australian homewares, to create bespoke Sydney gifts and handmade award trophies in their signature style.

What has been the feedback on the Program from your clients’ altogether?

Our Legacy Program is still in its early stages, as is ICC Sydney as we have just entered our third year of operation.

The feedback we have received from clients about the program has been overwhelmingly positive and we are now starting to see the benefits of the discussions that have taken place well before the event delivery. As events often go through a three to five year planning process, it’s important to discuss the opportunities through program at the stages of the planning phase.

You successfully hosted  SIBOS last year: how did you help them make an impact/leave a legacy?

The multi-faceted Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program executed at Sibos was designed by ICC Sydney’s dedicated CSR team in partnership with event organisers, SWIFT. The program focussed on reducing the ecological footprint of Sibos at all stages of event delivery as well as support community engagement. This included organic waste and recycling processing initiatives, minimisation of plastic water bottle consumption, excess food donations and the establishment of the first ICC Sydney Charity Market Day. Here, event exhibitors collectively donated 150 items to seven local charity organisations to be repurposed for their communities, from astro turf to umbrellas and potted plants.

In a record result for an event of its size and scale, a waste diversion rate of 62.5% was achieved, including 88% of materials being diverted from landfill during the event bump out and 15,200 plastic water bottles being saved.

ICC Sydney’s partnership with OzHarvest and Mathew Talbot hostel resulted in 855 kilograms of food being saved across a one-week period, representing the equivalent of 2,564 meals being donated to community members in need and 1,120 tonnes of fertilizer being produced from organic waste matter.

January 16, 2019

Darwin Attracts International Mining Community

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) held its 2nd Annual OECD meeting of Mining Regions and Cities at the at the Darwin Conveniton Centre. More than 250 delegates attended the meeting which focused on productivity and diversification, quality of life and well-being, new models of partnership between the private sector and local communities as well as subnational governance and fiscal arrangements.
Delegates agreed that attracting investment is key to ensuring opportunities abound for cities and regions. As does ensuring that benefits flowing from these projects remain within local communities and are truly capitalised upon. Hosting this meeting places Northern Australia at the forefront of global conversations regarding cutting-edge approaches in regional development, models for inclusive growth and benefit sharing across stakeholders involved in energy and mining industries.Department of the Chief Minister Chief Executive Jodie Ryan said this meeting provides a significant opportunity to showcase industry capability, innovation and opportunity. And with a truly global reach, opens up important linkages for local businesses to build their connections and grow their footprint both within Australia and the world.

Photo : Darwin Convention Centre

January 15, 2019

Investment and Re-development for Leeds in 2019

2018 saw Leeds climb to the fourth place of most popular conferencing city in the UK, according to the 2018 British Meetings and Events Industry survey (BMEIS). The city plans to continue last year’s investment also in 2019 with the refurbishment of many more Leeds venues, with the Leeds Town Hall and the recently re-named Leeds Playhouse currently undergoing a massive redevelopment to improve their conferencing spaces. Alongside this, a variety of new venues are set to open and some of the cultural spaces in the city continue to benefit from investment.
The brand new NEXUS centre will also open up this year providing a range of spaces for networking and collaboration, including meeting rooms, presentation space and an innovation suite, as well as offering office and laboratory space for external technology-led companies. This will be part of the new Innovation Centre in the city, which is focused on the academic and economic strengths of the city, particularly health innovation, engineering, financial and business services, data analytics and digital technologies.
Leeds has already laid the foundations for the Innovation District, the largest centre for knowledge-based industries and financial services outside the capital which attracts some of the best and most innovative companies and researchers from within the UK and further afield.

January 14, 2019

Innovate Canada Boosts Life Sciences Sector

Business Events Canada is launching the second event in their Innovate Canada series, leveraging the country’s intellectual capital and industry strengths in the Life Sciences (medtech and pharma) sector to promote meeting, investing or doing trade with Canada. The exclusive four-day event invites global C-suite executives to explore the work taking place across Canada’s life sciences, pharmaceutical and medtech industries. Innovate Canada will be hosted in Toronto, one of Canada’s leading hubs of innovation for life sciences from May 21 – 24, 2019.
In partnership with Tourism Toronto, and eight Canadian centres that lead in life sciences, the event is timed to coincide with the inaugural Collision Conference, North America’s largest tech event. In addition to a curated VIP experience during Collision’s HealthConf track, guests of Innovate Canada will learn about leading life sciences centres across Canada during B2B exchanges with destinations and industry experts, and take part in behind-the-scenes tours of Toronto’s living labs and the companies revolutionizing Canada’s life sciences ecosystem.

January 11, 2019

The Ultimate Legacy Ever in Adelaide?

Last month, the Premier of South Australia in a joint announcement with the Australian Prime Minister announced Adelaide would be the home of Australia’s new A$41m Space Agency and in doing so, created one of, if not the largest legacies of any Australian business event.

Held at Adelaide Convention Centre, the 2017 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) with 4500 delegates remains the largest business event won by the Adelaide Convention Bureau and Team Adelaide for South Australia.  From the outset of the  decade long process in bidding, losing, re-bidding and winning the highly prestigious event, the goal of the  local IAC committee members from the Space Industry Association of Australia was to utilise the event to ignite discussion and enthusiasm at a federal government level with the aim of creating an Australian Space Agency.  Their goal was realised on 25 September 2017 at the opening ceremony of the 5-day event with the announcement that the Government would indeed open a National Space Agency –  and thus began a fierce bidding process by most Australian states to house the agency’s permanent headquarters.

The Australian Space Agency location announcement is the pinnacle of a series of legacies eventuating from the IAC 2017.  It will be housed, along with similarly aligned businesses, innovators and organisations, in the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site (now known as Lot Fourteen Innovation Hub) in the eastern end of the CBD – just walking distance or a free tram ride from the Adelaide Convention Centre and the BioMed City including the new hospital all located the West End of the city.

Set to open in 2019, the Agency will employ 20 people and will regulate, licence and assess space-related activities conducted by private industry. It gives Australia a new seat at the table in the regulation of space under international law, will include a mission control centre and will be responsible for facilitating industry growth.  The Federal Government hopes that the agency will help coordinate Australia’s space industry to create 20,000 new jobs and triple its current A$4bn worth to A$12bn by 2030.

Damien Kitto, CEO Adelaide Convention Bureau, commented: “The Space Agency location announcement  truly is the ultimate legacy following the hosting the IAC and it presents a huge opportunity for the Adelaide Convention Bureau.  As with medical and health-based events following the massive investment in infrastructure in the BioMed City, this development has opened the doors to the Bureau now having a huge asset to utilise when seeking to attract space and related industry events to Adelaide.”