Creating Meaningful Events in Challenging Times – Invitation: New "Future Meeting Space" Insights Live on January 22, 2024

In order for business events to fully unleash their potential for success even in challenging times, they need to serve a purpose, leave a legacy, and have genuine meaning. But how can meetings, conferences, and congresses meet these requirements? What are the event features that organisers need to focus on in the future as key success factors? In its latest research phase, the Future Meeting Space innovation network looked at these and other questions. The key findings of the analysis will be presented by the network’s initiators – the GCB German Convention Bureau and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO – in a free online event on January 22, 2024, at 3:00 PM (CET).

Kicking off its 2023 research, Future Meeting Space identified what triggers and motivates organisers to run business events. In a next step, co-creation workshops and interviews with experts from diverse fields, including community building and business ethics, provided interdisciplinary insights for the development of new event concepts.

Among the emerging trends and developments that shape future events, the experts surveyed identified sustainability and digitisation as the most impactful topics. However, they also viewed factors such as economic viability, shortage of skilled workers, cost pressure, globalisation and regionalisation, demographics, and our new flexible ways of working as playing a significant role for future business events.

Based on these findings, the research team then developed and evaluated the building blocks that are essential for an integrated event concept. The goal and result of the process is a “periodic table for events” with practical recommendations for meaningful events of the future.

The GCB and Fraunhofer IAO research team, together with other experts, will present selected results in a free online event (approx. 60 min) on January 22, 2024, at 3:00 PM (CET). Registration is now open here.

About Future Meeting Space

The Future Meeting Space innovation network was launched in 2015 by the GCB German Convention Bureau e.V. and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO with the key goal of boosting the role of business events as a driver of innovation and an essential instrument of corporate communication.

Providing trends research, the Future Meeting Space anticipates relevant developments in the business event ecosystem and identifies requirements for successful events as regards concepts, technology, and event spaces. The innovation network develops topic-specific and distinct recommendations for different stakeholder groups and regularly validates them in a real-life lab with what is happening within the industry in practice.

As one of the world's leading destinations for meetings and congresses, Germany stands for innovation, sustainability, and comprehensive expertise in key sectors of business and science. Against this background, the GCB and Fraunhofer IAO as Future Meeting Space initiators, together with a diverse range of research partners, take on the role of catalysts for the future of business events "made in Germany".

Research partners for the 2023 research phase “Navigating Business Events in Challenging Times“ are 7Cities, AllSeated GmbH, Bayer AG, Bayern Tourismus Marketing GmbH, DEUTSCHE HOSPITALITY Steigenberger Hotels AG, Didacta Ausstellungs- und Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne Convention Bureau, Encore, EVVC European Association of Event Centers e. V., Hamburg Convention Bureau GmbH, Leipziger Messe GmbH, Stadt Münster/Messe and Congress Centrum Halle Münsterland GmbH, Radisson Hotel Group, SAP SE as well as Siemens AG.