Eindhoven centreThe City as a Living Case Study
A tour of Eindhoven provided an ideal beginning to get a glimpse of the power of transformation. Instead of demolishing the past, Eindhoven builds upon it by repurposing its constructions to preserve its heritage and accommodate the future.
Where once Philips engineers experimented with new technologies, now researchers and entrepreneurs co-develop at the High Tech Campus – known as the smartest square kilometre in Europe. Here, delegates walked through smart green offices optimised for employee well-being, and visited sample hotel rooms designed with embedded sustainability and health technologies.
Even the venue choices reinforced this idea. Sessions were hosted both at the High Tech Campus and at Mariënhage, a former monastery repurposed into a design-forward hotel and event space.
Innovation Needs Weak Links
The opening panel discussion, “Welcome to the (Un)Conventionals,” set the meeting’s tone of collaboration. Panellists Katja Pahnke, Bert-Jan Woertman, and Beatrix Bos explored the Triple Helix model – where government, academia, and industry collaboratively drive regional growth. Their argument was that innovation doesn’t occur in dry presentations, but in the spaces between – the weak links, the coffee breaks, the “Friday afternoon experiments” once pioneered by Philips. “Innovation is not a straight line but a dance between unlikely partners,” said Woertman.
This notion of serendipitous innovation recurred throughout the session. Whether through events like Dutch Design Week, which serve as city-wide testbeds for new ideas, or agritech innovations in start ups supported by Startlife, the message was that effective innovation ecosystems are improvised and anchored in community.
Rethinking Influence
If the opening panel laid the theory, Maarten Reijgersberg’s keynote, “The Renaissance of Mascots to Virtual Brand Ambassadors,” brought it into the digital world. He offered a provocative glimpse into how AI-generated personas are reshaping marketing, branding, and even internal communications. With examples ranging from Esther Olofsson, a virtual influencer for Postillion Hotels, to virtual in-house assistants, he challenged delegates to think beyond conventional brand identity.
“Virtual influencers allow us to build scalable relationships without losing emotional nuance,” he argued. “Esther was not just a gimmick – she’s part of a new media strategy where humans and AI collaborate to tell place-based stories in new formats.” He stated that in a digitised landscape, innovation also means rethinking who speaks for a brand and how that voice is constructed.
When tackling influence, utilising the media is key. As part of the programme, Boardroom had the privilege of hosting a workshop titled “Mastering the Destination Message”, co-led with Skift Meetings. The session explored how destinations can more effectively craft and communicate their identity to association audiences, offering tools and tactics to ensure that a good story has maximum impact.
Beyond the Ivory Tower
One of the most interesting and urgent sessions – led by Catherine Kalamidas from Rotterdam Partners, was “ICCAUni: Beyond the Ivory Tower”, which addressed the widening gap between higher education and the needs of the meetings industry. Lars Crama and Amber Herrewijn led a session that felt like a call to action: if we want resilient, future-ready professionals, we need to co-create learning environments that reflect real-world complexity.
“We need to move from ivory towers to sandboxes,” Crama stated, calling for more practical and collaborative models of learning between academia and the meetings industry. The session exposed a deeper issue: most students – and their professors – still have a limited understanding of the meetings industry in its full scope. Their exposure tends to focus almost exclusively on hospitality and general event planning, with little or no mention of associations, convention bureaux, or the role of international meetings in knowledge transfer and policy dialogue. As a result, CVBs increasingly struggle to find graduates equipped with the right perspective and skills.
Innovation in Practice
Gamification also made an appearance in the programme, with the session exploring how game mechanics can enhance participation, problem-solving and knowledge retention in events. By introducing challenges, scoring systems, or role-based tasks, event organisers can transform passive delegates into active contributors. The discussion highlighted how these techniques, already common in training and education, are finding their way into the design of business events with promising results.
The session on “Innovations in Our Field” was a practical example of our industry’s innovative achievements across Europe. From reusable electronic badges with embedded chips by Vianomo, to the community-focused The Association Place in Brussels (TAP), the examples presented were varied. Emphasis on ESG not just as compliance, but as strategic necessity. Adriana Migonney’s overview of Lux Expo’s journey toward B Corp certification showed how venues are reengineering their entire value proposition around sustainability and social impact, urging everyone to join the journey.
AI could not be absent from a case study on how to best utilise the ICCA database. “AI isn’t replacing event planners, it’s extending their capacity to anticipate, personalise and optimise,” said Mickael Benaim, in a presentation that demonstrated how such tools are evolving from analysis to strategy creation.
Perhaps what made this ICCA Chapter Meeting stand out was that it was designed as a lab, hosting part of its programme in the very spaces where innovation happens, from start-up hubs to academic think tanks and creative spaces. In this sense, Eindhoven offered its blend of repurposed architecture, design thinking, and tech-driven experimentation, to match the content of this Unconventional Convention.
