The primary thing business events professional respondents to the 2026 EMEA Engagement Survey said they will focus on in the coming year — connection and building relationships — tracks with what other sources have identified as a key business and societal trend. Have a look: 

“The events landscape of 2026 will be defined by a critical paradox: As digital interactions become easier and AI makes virtual engagement more sophisticated, the value of genuine human connection becomes exponentially more precious.”  — Worldcom Public Relations Group 

“As AI floods marketing with speed and scale, real competitive advantage in 2026 will come from doubling down on trust, empathy, and human connection.” — MarTech 

“As a business leader, if you want to start strong in 2026, double down on human connection. Most of the attention right now is on technology platforms, AI, automation, and data-driven decisions. Paradoxically, the real edge in 2026 will come from human-to-human capability — the relational and emotional skills that technology cannot replicate. This is where human connection becomes a strategic differentiator.” — Elisa Mallis, global vice president of research and innovation at Center for Creative Leadership, writing in Forbes 

McKinsey Global Institute’s recent report “shows that interpersonal … and judgment-based strengths remain essential even as automation expands. These human-centric abilities matter most in roles that require navigating uncertainty, coordinating across teams, supporting employees, and building client relationships.” — Samantha Madhosingh, Ph.D., executive coach, writing in Forbes 

When 272 business events professionals were asked to pick their organization’s three key priorities, human connection was their most popular choice, chosen by 39 percent  (up 6 points from last year’s survey) — which not only speaks to their own goals in their jobs but also to the larger work they do in convening people face to face. The next-most popular response was innovation, business model evolution, and value proposition, chosen by 29 percent of survey takers, reflecting an awareness of the need to creatively adapt in a rapidly changing geopolitical and economic environment. And no surprise, AI — in the workplace, strategy, governance, and workforce readiness — also was top of mind (at 27 percent).  

Coming in fourth place was data, insights, and measurement for decision-making (23 percent), followed by strategic partnerships and ecosystem collaboration (20 percent). A focus on financial resilience, revenue models, and forecasting was matched by a concentration on community — being relevant, and retaining and growing audiences.  

Further down the list: Professionals are balancing the weight of geopolitical, economic, and regulatory uncertainty, while still aiming to accomplish sustainability and environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) goals. 

Seeking Skillsets

In terms of the capabilities they are seeking to develop in the coming year, AI once again rose to the top — mastering AI tools to simplify event management and boost operational efficiency. The second-most sought-after skill is strategic leadership and management. Respondents said they are interested in developing advanced leadership capabilities to navigate change and drive organizational success in a global context with cross-culture sensitivity. Data-driven decision making to inform strategic planning and demonstrate event value was the third top skill respondents want to pursue. Coming in fourth is innovative event design — creating experiences that captivate audiences across physical and digital platforms. And rounding out the top five: cultivating robust, long-term partnerships to drive business growth.  

Looking at differences and similarities between organizer and supplier respondents, the top two skill-development goals — AI and leadership — were shared by both. But organizers said innovative event design was third on their list, followed by business intuition and financial strategy — negotiation skills, financial analysis, ROI, and procurement. In fifth place for both organizers and suppliers: adaptability and continuous learning. But suppliers are zeroing in on data analysis and digital marketing as their third and fourth priorities when it comes to developing skills. 

Time-Starved 

When asked what would help them to overcome their challenges, “more time” was the most often-cited sentiment. AI came up as a solution next most often, followed by training, education, and workshops. And once again, respondents returned to the theme of connection as being key to addressing issues: networking, relationships, and peer-to-peer sharing appeared often as responses to the open-ended question. 

In a similar vein, when asked what stops these event professionals regularly and slows them down, a lack of time and corresponding workload came up most often. Respondents were also frustrated by bureaucracy and complex approval processes, insufficient time to focus, limited resources, and a last-minute culture. Other dysfunctional practices also were mentioned: misaligned priorities across teams, administration, lack of communication, and tech-integration challenges.

Events for Event Organizers

When asked what they would like to see more of at the industry events they attend, events professionals had a long wish list:  

AI-powered matchmaking and networking
Hands-on workshops and demonstrations
Real-world case studies and problem-solving sessions
First-timer integration initiatives
Interactive tech showcases
Balanced programming with time to decompress
More free connection time
Emerging technologies with potential event applications
Quiet zones and digital detox areas
Creative use of event spaces and local culture
Interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving, including insights from other industries (see Taking an Interdisciplinary Approach below) 

Mentorship Programs 

What they like to see at industry events:

We can only hope they put what they want to experience themselves into practice for their own stakeholders and audiences. 

Who They Are

Out of the 272 professionals who responded to the survey, conducted in January and early February, 72 percent are from Europe, 16 percent from North America, and 4 percent each from Africa and the Middle East. This year’s results also include input from a handful of respondents each in the LATAM and APAC regions. The largest percentage of respondents (19 percent) work for organizations that are in the PCO/meeting planner/DMC category, followed by associations and hotels (13 percent each), CVBs (11 percent), and corporate (10 percent). Eight percent identified as consultants and 7 percent more generally as event suppliers.  

The respondents had an average of 17 years of experience: Nearly half (48 percent) had worked more than 20 years in the business events industry; 23 percent had 11-19 years of experience; 13 percent, 7-10 years; 6 percent, 4-6 years; and 10 percent were newcomers (0-3 years).  

In terms of their roles, the greatest number of respondents fell into the manager category (38 percent), followed by director (24 percent), and CEO/owner (18 percent). Six percent said they were at the SVP/VP level, and 10 percent identified as assistants/ associates/ coordinators, which aligns with the previous data point that one out of 10 survey participants have spent fewer than four years in the industry. Thirteen percent of respondents identify as the next-gen contingent of the workforce (30 years old or younger).  

Taking an interdisciplinary Approach

Technology, IT, and AI tops the list of industries respondents said they would like to learn from. A business events industry–adjacent sector, hospitality and tourism, came next, followed by: 

Entertainment and media
Creative industries (including advertising, design, and arts)
Financial services
Health care and life sciences
Sports 
Marketing and advertising
Professional services (consulting, legal, accounting)
Retail and e-commerce 

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene

For event organizers, “the fears are real” about the impact of the current U.S. administration’s anti-DEI policy, said Melvin Tennant, CAE, president & CEO of Meet Minneapolis. There are organizations, he said, “that have met here or are planning to meet here whose budgets are dependent upon federal dollars and have had to make some adjustments.”

Despite the changing climate, “we’re not changing who we are and what we do,” Tennant told Convene. DEIA — diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility — remains “a core value of our organization and our community.” In February, Meet Minneapolis unveiled a 10-year destination master plan, which includes, as one of five high-level strategic goals, establishing the city as a “national leader in equity and reconciliation.”

The plan’s steering committee was chaired by the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, and Tennant and Meet Minneapolis’s executive leadership team were members of the plan’s project team. The plan included input from 900 residents and stakeholders, which, Tennant said, “speaks to not only our organization’s commitment, but our community’s commitment to equity and inclusion.”

Meet Minneapolis already had an ongoing commitment to those values years before George Floyd was killed by police in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Tennant said. But his murder and the global protests that it sparked put the city in the spotlight as the center of what the plan called “a modern-day civil rights movement, comparable to the March on Selma, the Montgomery bus boycott.” That, “in my view, gave us a responsibility,” Tennant said, “to really look at that as a turning point in our growth as a city.”

Along with goals including creating a nationally competitive convention center district and adding vibrancy to its downtown and riverfront districts, the destination master plan calls for a “renewed focus on solidifying and preserving the cultural legacies that have shaped” the city. That will mean added investment in seven designated cultural districts throughout Minneapolis for the benefit of visitors and residents, including the 38th Street Cultural District, where Floyd was killed, and the Franklin Avenue East Cultural District, the heart of the city’s Native American population.

In 2022, Meet Minneapolis hired Ka Vang as its first vice president of equity and community impact, who works with internal staff as well as the larger community. The DMO has done a number of staff trainings, “familiarizing our team with the various cultural nuances that have impacted who we are as a destination,” Tennant said. For example, “there is a very strong Indigenous peoples presence in our area, and there is, sadly, a story of many of those communities being poorly treated — stories that have been suppressed or not told. But one of the reasons why we want to tell those stories, those untold narratives, is because we feel it’s really important for us to be authentic and to tell the truth.”

‘Making Sure That Everybody Is Included’

Engaging with communities in order to tell authentic stories is familiar ground for Melissa Cherry, senior vice president at Miles Partnership, where she leads the company’s consulting practice in developing inclusive marketing strategies for destinations.

In prior roles, Cherry served as a marketing executive for both the Los Angeles Convention & Visitors Bureau and Choose Chicago, where she worked collaboratively with neighborhoods and cultural groups outside the tourism mainstream to bring attention, economic development, and visitors to the diverse experiences and resources that they offer.

“DEI has not been my ‘thing’ — it’s just been part of who I am,” Cherry said. “I’m a Black woman from Chicago. I’ve worked in the tourism space, specifically convention and visitors bureaus, but I came in through arts and culture. From my perspective, I’m not really focused on what you call [DEI]. I think that we get caught up in the lexicon sometimes — as DEI practitioners, we didn’t do ourselves a great service by not really articulating well what the work is.” What the work looks like, Cherry said, “is engaging with communities and making sure that everybody is included.” And that inclusion is “purposeful and meaningful, that you build trust, that you build some level of a relationship that’s not transactional or performative.”

“And while there are new challenges to navigate, we’ll continue to do the work,” Tennant said. It’s important not only from the standpoint of it being the right thing to do, he said, but because it has paid dividends to the city, “in terms of the way in which we’re able to better interact with our client base, that has become more diverse across different dimensions.” For example, one of the destination master plan’s goals is to become the No. 1 city for women’s sports, “another dimension of diversity,” he said. Diversity “is so built into our DNA, that it’s very natural for us to have these outcomes.”

The business case for diversity won’t change, Cherry said. “The facts are that the global population is going to continue to diversify from a cultural perspective and people consume products based on what resonates with them. And, in order for things to resonate, they have to be familiar and relevant.”

You can’t continue to talk to just one group of people, Cherry added. “There’s no growth in that. You have to continue to expand your customer base, but you can’t do that without thinking about it from a perspective of understanding the different complexities of your audience.”

Both Tennant and Cherry pointed out that we have faced anti-DEI environments before. Cherry said she finds opportunity in the current challenge. “I think, don’t waste a good crisis,” she said. “Crises help us evolve.” Part of that is becoming better about communicating what diversity, equity, and inclusion “looks like — and the outcomes from it.”

Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor.

Tanya Popeau shared how this year’s Convene 4 Climate conference is looking to drive bold, systemic change:

C4C was intentionally designed as a highly curated experience, bringing together key organizations and individuals from across the business events industry — and from adjacent sectors — with a shared commitment to sustainability and ESG. Our aim was to create the conditions for meaningful collaboration, innovation, and inspiration, drawing as much from voices outside our industry as from within it.

Following the inaugural event in Barcelona, we published the C4C Report, capturing the key outcomes and charting the journey ahead. The insights from that first edition are now shaping the evolution of our platform.

We are building on this momentum with an even more globally strategic approach this year. The curated, cross-sectoral audience remains central — ensuring the diversity of thought and experience needed to drive real transformation. What’s new is our focus on translating outcomes into action: helping individuals, teams, and organizations understand how they can meaningfully contribute to shared goals and leveraging peer-to-peer learning and emerging technologies to accelerate our efforts.

The core pillars of C4C guide not only the Rotterdam 2025 event, but the platform as a whole:

Reimagine challenges us to rethink how the business events industry approaches sustainability. We’ll bring together key partners and fresh perspectives to explore bold, future-focused ideas through visionary speakers and innovative formats.
Inspire is about using the power of storytelling and real-world examples to spur action. We’ll feature compelling voices and interactive sessions that help motivate participants to lead change in their own work.
Movement focuses on turning ambition into action. Through peer-to-peer learning and hands-on collaboration, we’ll strengthen a global community committed to advancing sustainability across the industry.

Our diverse global speakers will openly address the evolving landscape of sustainability regulation and shifting commitments. More importantly, the event will serve as a platform for our community to collectively explore new strategies, partnerships, and actions that can accelerate sustainable change in a complex landscape. This moment underscores the critical opportunity for Europe to step up as a global hub for sustainability leadership — hosting influential conversations and inspiring international collaboration to fill gaps left elsewhere.

Rotterdam is known for tackling complex challenges like migration and sustainability, with a vibrant ecosystem of creative businesses, startups, and cutting-edge technologies that will have a place in the event. Ranked as the second-most sustainable city in the world (Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index 2024), Rotterdam exemplifies how collaboration across an entire ecosystem can drive bold, systemic change. Its ambitious goals, such as achieving a carbon-neutral port by 2050 and pioneering vertical farming, provide real-world examples of sustainability in action — and C4C is all about action.

I’m genuinely excited to be leading C4C for the first time. I’m eager to bring together CEOs, policymakers, academics, tech pioneers, and frontline NGOs to co-create a powerful network. The ambition is to move C4C beyond a one-off event — to establish a connected global movement. With each of these efforts, my vision is to foster a vibrant ecosystem where purposeful events, bold thinking, and cross-sector connections converge to deliver concrete social and environmental impact.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene

Learn more about Convene 4 Climate at Convene4Climate.org.

We asked Jaimé Bennett, PCMA’s managing director, EMEA, to share the thinking behind plans for the fifth edition of the conference, which drew a record 648 participants from 46 countries to Barcelona in 2024. Here’s what she had to say.

This year, the entire experience is designed around unlocking tomorrow’s potential today — through deeper cross-regional collaboration, insight-led learning, and more dynamic formats that meet people where they are in their professional journey.

Rotterdam isn’t just our 2025 Convening EMEA (CE) host city — it reflects our spirit. Known for its reinvention, innovation, and cultural richness, Rotterdam doesn’t shy away from complexity — it uses design, sustainability, and diversity to build what’s next. We’ll offer immersive exploration tours which have been co-created with local changemakers, tours of venue host Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre to bring to life their sustainability journey, and our breaks and evening events will showcase the city’s multi-culturalism.

Our EMEA community’s insights, priorities, and challenges form the foundation of CE. Each year, through our annual engagement survey and ongoing dialogue, we gather a clear picture of what matters most to them — from the skills they want to develop and their strategic priorities to the roadblocks they face. We’ve curated a program that doesn’t just speak to them but is shaped with them.

They’ve voiced a desire for greater interactivity, more intentional networking, and content that reflects different career stages and leadership challenges. We’ve taken this to heart and curated an experience that blends macro-level inspiration with micro-level action — supported by meaningful engagement before, during, and after the event.

Three key themes guide our program:

Future: Empowering our participants to build tomorrow together — navigating rapid change, embracing a future-ready mindset, and driving sustainable growth.
Connection: Unlocking potential through meaningful relationships — cross-border and cross-generational connections.
Integration by Design — bringing people, tech, and purpose together.

Five content formats allow participants to curate their own journey:

Main Stages — macro trends having an impact on our industry.
Level Workshops — tailored to the unique challenges of C-suite leaders, senior managers, middle managers, and early-career professionals.

Micro Labs — hands-on, interactive sessions where participants can experiment with ideas, tools, and frameworks.
Insights Series — industry case studies that impact multiple event stakeholders.
Conversation Starters — informal discussions on specific topics.

This year, more than ever, it’s about stepping into a brave space. Where innovation is sparked, tough questions are explored, and participants leave not only inspired, but better prepared to lead with clarity and purpose to make a positive impact in an ever-changing world.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene

Learn more about Convening EMEA at ConveningEMEA.org.

As a frequent speaker at meetings and events around the world, Noreena Hertz has a good sense of the unique challenges event strategists are facing in the current moment. One indication: The booking window for her speaking engagements has shrunk significantly, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding business events and the growing need for more nimble planning. Hertz aims to equip Convening EMEA 2025 participants with insights to help them not only navigate present-day conditions but help them plan for what’s around the corner during her opening keynote in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Oct. 14, drawing on her wealth of expertise spanning economics, technology, politics, and society.

Hertz earned a Ph.D. in economics from Cambridge University in the U.K. as well as an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Economics. Her best-selling books include Eyes Wide Open, a practical guide to navigating a world overloaded with data, and The Lonely Century, exploring how loneliness has contributed to the rise of political populism. She has advised global leaders and major corporations. And serves of the boards of Mattel, Warner Music Group and Workhuman. Convene spoke with Hertz in late June about what the CEMEA audience can expect from her talk.

Can you share two or three important trends from the past year that are changing how business leaders are connecting right now at events?
I’m somebody who has historically had great success in making predictions about where the world is going. I correctly predicted the backlash against globalization about 25 years ago, the global debt crisis before 2008, and the rise of populism across the globe before the U.K. voted to Brexit, which surprised a lot of people at the time. But I have never found it as hard to make predictions about where we are heading as I currently do. That said, I think there are some trends that can be discerned.

The first is that globalization as we knew it is no more. For most of the past 30-odd years we lived in a world in which free trade and free markets were the guiding ideology. Today, that is no longer the case. And it’s not just the mindset of President Trump that makes me say this. Actually, we have seen a retraction from global trade for almost a decade. Increasing protectionism, increasing tariffs, and non-tariff barriers have motivated a shift towards less global free trade and more regional trade and bilateral trade agreements. Protectionism has been going on for some time, but the current U.S. government is definitely accelerating that. I don’t see this changing in the next few years, so I think we can take as a given that this is the new direction of travel.

Relatedly, there’s an increased appetite for national ‘content’ over global, whether we’re thinking about pop songs — where historically American and Anglo-American music dominated globally, but today, if you look at France, Sweden, Germany, and a whole host of markets, local repertoire is dominating — or whether we’re talking the rise of populist politicians in part, off the back of increasingly nationalistic policies. Whether it pertains to governments or consumers, this increased appetite for locally made and national products will only accelerate.

Another key trend is the craving for connection that people increasingly have. This is, in many ways, the loneliest time in history. In the United States, one in five millennials doesn’t have a single friend. Forty percent of office workers say that they’re lonely at work. We haven’t seen such levels of this kind of disconnection and atomization before now. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

First, there’s the fact we just do less with others than we did in the past, so we’re less likely to regularly show up at our parent-teacher association, to be members of trade unions, and to go to church or convene with our fellow worshippers in a physical space. We also spend more time online, which we know delivers a less-quality interaction. The upshot is that people feel increasingly disconnected, and that is a trend that I think is only going to continue. It’s not that people don’t want to feel connected — at the same time as people are feeling lonely and disconnected, we’re also seeing that people are craving connection and community more than ever before. It’s not just “a good thing” to deliver this connection, there’s actually a business case to do it.

We know from a vast body of research that lonely workers, for example, are less connected, less motivated, less productive, and more likely to quit than workers who aren’t. We know that the single-biggest reason why somebody will stay at a job rather than quit is because they have a friend there. So, this kind of social glue amongst employees actually has a very significant business dividend.

What other challenges and post-millennial generation and business transformation strategies will you cover?
I don’t underestimate the challenge event planners have right now trying to figure out what content to put into an event at a time that the world is moving as swiftly as it currently is, or the location for an event at a time when geopolitical tensions are such that overnight flights are being canceled and regions are suddenly being deemed unsafe that only yesterday or last week were deemed safe. These are real concerns. There is also  the challenge of advocating for spending on an event at a time when companies across the world are retrenching, cost cutting, and focusing on margins and the bottom line.

Yet events are needed now more than ever, for a number of reasons. First, because attendees need to understand how different today’s world is to the world of the past. We are talking about transformational changes in the way that businesses operate, in the decisions that governments are making, in the needs of employees, and in the next generation of staff, talent, and consumers who are very different to previous ones. Attendees need to understand and be up to date on all of this. This is not a time when people can think this is the way we used to do it, and so we can just keep doing things the way we always did. This is a time when people need to be thinking about how they have to operate differently and they need to understand this new context in order to be able to figure out what this means for their particular business or sector or industry. I’m going to be highlighting what I think are the most fundamental shifts. Now I’m aware that [this] event is in October and we’re now in June, and the world is moving at breakneck speed — I don’t want to pin myself down to the exact trends that I’ll be highlighting then but rest assured that I am on top of geopolitical economic, demographic, societal and political trends, behaviors, and shifts.

I will be arriving in October with the most up-to-date thinking in these key areas with a track record for calling it right more often than most. First, I will address the imperative for organizations to deliver opportunities for their staff, their teams, and their members to connect in real life — in person — and I’ll be sharing with the audience my very deep insight and research into why this is so vital, including helping them articulate the business case for this and the return on event investment. I will also talk about the post-millennial generation, Gen Z, that is entering the workforce and the new [customers] of companies and organizations. I’m going to be focusing on these [people] because they are fundamentally different to the millennials, who [CEMEA] attendees probably know much more about.

Are there any big-picture insights about Gen Z that might surprise us?
For one, they are significantly more anxious. They are also less trusting, more selfie-taking, but not selfish, very concerned about climate change, and incredibly concerned about their future economic security and financial security. Gen Z also needs to feel that they are not passively consuming or taking instruction, but rather that they have agency themselves. They are desperate to co-create, they expect technology to be seamless, and they are much more knowledgeable about AI than most of your other staff because they’re the main users of it.

Will you speak to how event strategists can look after themselves amid so much uncertainty?
In these complex times you, as an individual, need to also think about yourself. Think too about the stress of your teams. I actually did a fireside chat the other day with a group of CEOs, and one of the things I talked about was the importance of recognizing how stressed your teams are right now and being aware that your own teams, yourself, and your attendees are probably all experiencing higher levels of stress and anxiety than in the past and thinking about how that will impact how you design your event.

I really appreciate how hard this must be with all of the various moving parts: getting the right content, getting the right geography, potentially having to move geography, not to mention selling your offering effectively enough so that [enough] people attend … and getting the budget that you need. As a practical note, in terms of content, I would be making decisions as late in the day as possible.

Second, be ready to clearly articulate the business case for why in-person gatherings are so important. Talk about why in-person delivers more than virtual when it comes to connection — because it does.

Third, look after your teams and look after yourself. Acknowledge just how stressed your team is likely to be, but also how stressed you are. This is a time for caring, providing more pastoral care for your teams, but also making sure that you’re delivering on caring for yourself, and I think also think about how you can use an opportunity like Convening EMEA to get support from people who are in your position and are facing very much the same challenges that you are — how can you leverage the PCMA network throughout the year?

The Lonely Century explores compassion, community, and care as sort of rubrics for how we could reimagine our global community. I’m wondering how you see meetings and events fitting into this vision, and how meetings will get us to a more human-centered, equitable world?
One of the things that emerged from my research was the importance of in-person, face-to-face interaction. The collective effervescence of being in a room with other people and having a shared experience is something that cannot be underestimated and cannot be replicated virtually. We’re living in a world in which people are feeling increasingly disconnected from each other in workplaces — and where employees may well be feeling disconnected from their fellow staff, especially after this period we’ve had of working from home and hybrid working where daily touchpoints are much less frequent. Meetings and events are where people can come together, eat together,  be together, and truly reconnect.

Kate Mulcrone is Convene’s managing digital editor.

Learn more about Convening EMEA at ConveningEMEA.org.

Uncertainty. That was the one word cited most often as the biggest challenge facing 211 business event professionals in the EMEA region who responded to a PCMA survey. And this was in early February, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine created a humanitarian crisis in eastern Europe and set the entire world on edge.

While the fear of a world war may have since overshadowed COVID concerns, there is little doubt that the pandemic will continue to make planning events in 2022 and 2023 a challenge. One planner said s/he is navigating a “very unstable global environment with COVID where I am planning for an in-person event and then may need to pivot to virtual within a very short timeframe. Also, due to profit from events being down, event budgets have been slashed, including professional development.”

Other challenges facing planners and suppliers, who were evenly represented in the survey, include planning for COVID-related regulations/restrictions/travel bans, dealing with COVID protocols, successfully attracting on-site delegates and exhibitors, managing more work with fewer resources, and making do with smaller budgets and rising costs — especially expenses associated with putting on hybrid events.

Hybrid events came up often in the responses. While it was often identified as the path forward, respondents said that hybrid events brought their own set of challenges. One planner was trying to figure out how to manage “hybrid events in an affordable and scalable way. What should be digital and what should be in person? Is there a need for both at the same time?”

Another took exception to the term “hybrid,” saying it sounded negative and preferring to describe an event with in-person and virtual components as a “blended” experience. This planner was challenged with “regaining clients’ and partners’ confidence in future events” and building trust in those blended events.

Another respondent was finding it difficult to maintain “commitment from volunteer leadership after two years of only virtual meetings and making decisions for hybrid concepts with very little evidence and knowledge about delegates’ behaviour” — yet another element of uncertainty that needs to be factored into planning events this year and next.

When asked to identify their two key priorities for 2022/2023, more than one-third (36 percent) of respondents said they are focusing on rethinking business models and reformulating organisational efficiency. One planner alluded to this when commenting on challenges s/he faced: “Associations still rely heavily on revenue from congresses, so [the issue is] to get boards to continue evolving revenue sources and not think they can go back to one main source.” In other words, thinking the 2019 congress model will work in 2022/23. And a supplier responding to that same question, wrote: “Foreseeing the future needs of our clients and how a venue should adapt and review its business model.”

Developing new alliances and partnerships was the second most-popular priority, selected by 27 percent of survey participants, and sustainability was a close third at 24 percent. Survey takers were evenly concerned about retaining or attracting new talent, personal and professional development/career progression, and defining their value proposition (15 percent ticked each of those boxes).

Some respondents were more big-picture about their challenges and priorities — overcoming “resistance to change,” said one. Another event professional summed up the work ahead in one word: “Transformation.”

“There is no doubt that we will continue to operate in a world of uncertainty,” said Jaimé Bennett, PCMA’s regional director, EMEA, “as we navigate the implications of a pandemic — while trying to foresee the ramifications a war will have on the world we live in and the business events industry.

“As event professionals we are trained to plan for every eventuality, which certainly can be overwhelming in the current climate. However, what continues to stand out for me — including in the results of this survey — is the grit and resilience demonstrated by our community. This, coupled with passion and perseverance to unite now more than ever so that we can share knowledge, create new partnerships or alliances, and understand our future, gives me hope. We must create ways for our community to engage, contribute to and learn from each other, and build a stronger future for our industry and those in it.”

When asked what solutions or outcomes they are looking to gain from events they themselves attend, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of respondents said they want to understand future trends, 65 percent are looking to find new ways of engaging audiences and providing value to clients, and 58 percent seek to understand changing participant behaviors. “The want and need to come together to understand and plan for our future is evident among our community,” Bennett said. “PCMA is committed to providing the environment to have these important conversations, share insights, and collaborate on solutions to move the business events industry forward. I passionately believe now is the time for action.”

Convening EMEA 2022 will take place in Vienna from 28-30 September, where the industry will unite to contribute, learn and develop actionable tactics to advance as individuals and organisations. Visit www.conveningemea.org for further information.

Participant Demographics

Most of the respondents work for a CVB/DMO (23 percent), followed closely by PCOs/meeting planners/DMCs (22 percent), and association planners (21 percent). The largest percentage (24 percent) live in the U.K., followed by Germany (11 percent), Switzerland, and Ireland (8 percent each).

Respondents to the survey are an experienced group: 42 percent have worked 20-plus years in the events industry and three out of 10 have spent 11-19 years in the business. The majority (37 percent) are at the managerial level; 34 percent are directors; and 21 percent are CEO/Owners.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

If there was one group Jaimé Bennett, PCMA’s regional director, EMEA, knew she wanted to have represented as active participants at Convening EMEA 2022, Sept. 28-30 in Vienna, Austria, it was representatives from the current class and alumni of PCMA’s 20 in Their Twenties, an annual program that recognizes global industry leaders early in their careers who are the future of the events industry.

At the same time, Bennett and her team had tasked themselves with creating unconventional environments at the Messe Wein convention center and creating safe spaces for exploring complex and sensitive topics like sustainability, mental health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Everyone’s talking about these areas,” Bennett said, but not really “addressing what needs to change.”

What they came up with, “Uncomfortable Conversations: What Needs to Change,” ticked all the boxes — and who better to spark a change in mindset than the cohort in their 20s? The idea was that they would introduce the three topics, Bennett said, help lead the conversations among participants at small tables, collect the takeaways afterwards, and share the findings with her and her team.

Bennett also wanted this to become a “legacy project” for each 20 in Their Twenties class, to take those three challenges in different directions and perhaps create a community around them beyond PCMA events.

She reached out to Jack Owens, International Association Conferences at Fáilte Ireland, and a 20 in Their Twenties class of 2021 member, “because he did a conversation starter at last year’s Convening EMEA on mental health,” Bennett said. She also tapped Katherina Path, marketing manager for conventions, Frankfurt Convention Bureau, current class of 2022, recalling that she had spoken about DEI as a She Means Business panelist at IMEX Frankfurt this year. And she invited Magdalina Atanassova, a sustainability advocate, to present.

“I like talking about the topic and I think it was a perfect fit when it came to uncomfortable conversations,” Atanassova, creative director digital at Kenes Group and class of 2015, told Convene. Climate change “is very uncomfortable. And I like digging deep and saying, ‘Yes, it’s uncomfortable, but we need to face the fear.’ So, in a sense, I was assigned to this topic, but I was also very happy to do it.”

Once Owens and Path also enthusiastically agreed to lead the conversations on their designated topics, Bennett said her next big question was: “If it’s an uncomfortable conversation, how do we make people in the room super comfortable? Because you can’t have uncomfortable conversations if you don’t feel the environment is a place you can trust.”

Prioritizing sensory experiences — sight, touch, hearing, and taste — in the overall program design, Bennett considered how taking one sense away for this session could serve to heighten the others. The original idea was to have Uncomfortable Conversations take place in a darkened room, but because that wouldn’t work logistically, she decided to order eye masks instead. Having everyone wear the masks would ensure they were “all in the same state,” she said. “By removing people’s sight, it meant they had to be fully present. They had to listen. They couldn’t judge people visually. And they couldn’t be on their mobile phones. That was the whole thinking behind it.”

‘I Wanted to Shock Them a Bit’

For the presenters, who had five minutes each to lay the foundation for their topic, there was a bonus to having the audience wearing masks. “The benefit from a speaker perspective was that I could read what I wrote because I really didn’t want to miss a point of what I wanted to say in just short five minutes,” Atanassova said, and nobody would notice she was reading off a script “because they wouldn’t see me.” Bennett also found that the format put the speakers more at ease.

The time limit was also “a good restraint, because if you have just five minutes, you have to point the listener to a specific direction,” Atanassova said. “I really wanted to challenge them and I specifically picked carbon as the one topic. I tried to concentrate on just a couple of key messages,” she said, “giving them a few pieces that they could grab onto and then discuss. I focused on the fact that recycling is not working, so when people say, ‘We recycled our plastic,’ actually just 9 percent globally is recycled. I wanted to grab their attention on things that they believe they know, but aren’t actually true, and I wanted to shock them a bit. I used ‘climate cancer’ as a new wording for global warming to grab their attention. But I also wanted to give them some hope,” she said, as they discussed their sustainability goals for after the event.

After Owens, Path, and Atanassova had presented, the table participants agreed on which topic they wanted to discuss. Mental health was overwhelmingly the top choice, Bennett said.

“You could hear the buzz in the room,” Atanassova said. “The conversations were going really well.” For those discussing sustainability, she said, some ideas “were super practical. Some really grabbed onto the idea of, ‘Yes, we have to decide on one action and carry it for the year.’”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

An Enhanced Experience

Simona Milenkova, senior marketing coordinator at Kenes Group and a member of the 2021 20 in Their Twenties class, was an Uncomfortable Conversations table facilitator who found the use of eye masks made “the conversation on the importance of sustainability, DEI, and mental health even more powerful,” she told Convene via email. “The sensory-deprivation technique gave us time and space to focus, think about what was presented without distraction, and ask ourselves a few uncomfortable questions. … To reach pressing sustainability goals, we all committed to taking more responsibility and making small steps in the right direction such as using more eco-friendly transportation personally and reducing energy consumption and water use on site at our events. It was definitely the most distinguishing session at Convening EMEA this year.”

Likewise, Clark Massad, vice president, global partnerships & convention sponsorships at IGLTA (The International LGBTQ+ Travel Association), found the format to be “very original and thought-provoking.” He especially appreciated, he shared with Convene, that it was executed by “the young leadership. I was excited to participate in a session that had a different approach.”

Wearing the mask, Massad said, “enhanced my experience and made me even more aware of the unconscious biases that we project on a person just because of the sound, pitch, or tone of their voice, or because of an accent. After each person spoke and we removed our masks, it was interesting to see if the individuals corresponded to the images their voices had provoked.”

Ignite Your Path

The Uncomfortable Conversations session format proved so popular that it will be repeated at Convening Leaders 2023, Jan. 8-11, in Columbus, Ohio. Join other industry trailblazers and register for Convening Leaders 2023.

Have you ever taken a personality test and answered questions that seem to ask the same thing but were phrased in different ways? That’s not your imagination — it’s done deliberately as a way to measure how strongly you feel about something.

Jaimé Bennett, managing director EMEA at PCMA, didn’t set out to follow the personality test model when she designed this year’s Annual EMEA Engagement Survey, which was conducted in late February. But taken together, the responses to three of the survey questions shine a bright light on the issues that matter most to 162 event professional respondents, eight out of 10 of whom live in Europe, and 7 out of 10 of whom have more than a decade of event industry experience.

In the first open-ended question, respondents were asked to type in their two key professional priorities for 2023/2024. For the next question — What are the biggest challenges you are currently facing? — they were to choose three out of 18 options. And the third question, also open-ended, asked survey takers to identify the obstacles that stood in the way of them achieving their goals, or the things that slow down their work.

What was the crossover in those three questions? Let’s start with the top challenges: managing rising costs (40 percent); legacy, sustainability, and impact (30 percent); the option of finding the right talent and another option of communicating efficiently internally and externally were both tied at 28 percent; followed closely by rethinking business models and reformulating organizational efficiency (26 percent). Forming new alliances and partnerships was ticked by 22 percent of respondents.

While rising costs was clearly the biggest challenge cited by respondents, budgeting, controlling costs, and streamlining operations were not often mentioned as areas of professional focus, a sure indication that the increasing price of doing business is seen as being largely outside event professionals’ control and cost containment is not a viable strategy.

And while sustainability came in second as a challenge, it didn’t show up as a major priority that respondents were focused on, although it was mentioned several-dozen times. The split between planners and suppliers is especially apparent when it comes to this area, with one-third of suppliers and only 15 percent of planners saying that legacy, sustainability, and impact is a top challenge. Perhaps that is due to suppliers feeling increased pressure from planners to offer more sustainable solutions at events and planners expecting suppliers and venues to shoulder the largest share of that responsibility.

What did surface as both a major concern and an area of focus is talent acquisition and retention. One respondent wrote that s/he is focusing “on things that really matter — HR, training, and team building.” This, of course, makes perfect sense given how the pandemic caused the business events industry to slash jobs and how organizations are working to restaff as in-person events return. But those who manage teams — nine out of 10 respondents were directors, managers, or CEOs — also expressed concerns about how their current staff is faring. The only area one respondent said s/he was focused on was “looking after the mental health of employees.” That respondent was likely a planner: 16 percent of planners said the wellness and mental health of staff was among their biggest challenges while only 4 percent of suppliers said the same.

Understandably, the largest area of focus is growth, expressed in terms increasing the reach and revenue of the organizations respondents work for, and in finding new opportunities — which taps into the area of forming new alliances and partnerships that one out of five respondents said was a key challenge.

What stops event professionals in their tracks? Everyday stumbling blocks run the gamut from a lack of capacity (resources, time, and talent) and efficient processes to dealing with complexities, uncertainties, a negative work culture, email overload, tech updates, losing and training new staff, and an organizational resistance to change. One responded simply said “life.”

Burnout is spelled out only once, but it’s clear when skimming this long list of complaints that the main problem industry professionals are struggling with can be distilled down to having too much to do and not enough resources. Just a few direct quotes that illustrate this: “too many calls and not enough thinking,” “work overload that doesn’t leave time for learning and exploring,” “the [number] of different activities that force you to jump from one thing to another,” “requests to support activities/projects which diverge from our team objectives,” “unrealistic expectations,” and “[no] time to think. Rat race over innovation.”

Is it any wonder that the events industry has a talent crisis? After several years of weathering the pandemic, the demands on event professionals to make their organizations and the industry whole seem overwhelming. At the same time, we’re still coming to grips with how COVID changed our world view and gave us less of an appetite to join the rat race. As one respondent, who waxed existential when sharing what s/he will focus on this year and next, put it: “Understanding my main purpose in life and how to align my professional life with it.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

Welcome to our first installment in a new Convene series How We Do It. We’re tapping the talent of PCMA’s staff so they can share the design thinking and process behind the innovative experiences they create for PCMA events. In other words, we’re showcasing the event professionals behind the events for event professionals.

Most meeting designers know that beginnings and endings matter, but struggle to craft meaningful experiences that resonate with attendees. We asked Jaimé Bennett, PCMA’s managing director for EMEA and a former senior event producer for Web Summit, about the behind-the-scenes thinking and planning for the opening and closing sessions at PCMA’s Convening EMEA 2023, held in Copenhagen Sept. 20-22.

During the conference opening session, most of the 500-person audience stood to sing along to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” One attendee wrote on LinkedIn that she had attended countless events, but this was the first time she started a conference with tears in her eyes. How did that session come together?

The event’s themes were belonging, impact, and future. From the outset, we intentionally consider the experience we want to create to not only bring the event themes to life, but also create a safe and comfortable environment for participants to learn, grow, and collaborate. And each year, Convening EMEA is opened by PCMA and the host destination — we believe it is an opportunity for the destination to present itself to our audience in the most authentic way. One of the things we talked about with Wonderful Copenhagen is how music had set the scene for previous Convening EMEA events. We saw it last year at Convening EMEA in Vienna — music transcends borders and boundaries connects people from all over the world irrelevant of their background or interests.

The bureau had been telling us about how, during the pandemic, the nation gathered to sing along with a television broadcast every morning in their homes, and how it became a moment of connection. When they suggested inviting two of the musicians who led Denmark in singing together during the pandemic to open the conference, we gave it the green light. We felt it would be a very authentic way to start the event with a true sense of belonging — to have everyone stop and create a moment together in a unique way.

The way you closed the event was unique as well — you dimmed the lights as a local meditation teacher led the group in a session, including a loving-kindness practice which asked them to send good wishes to themselves, their loved ones, and those around them. There was at least one group hug.

The program content started with the head, and we wanted it to end with the heart. Many of the keynote talks were on heavy topics that required a lot of thinking. The final session was on nuclear war and disarmament — you cannot then end on a high with, “Thanks so much and now we are off to X destination next year. Woohoo and safe home everyone!” You need time to consider what has been said, how that could impact you or others. We felt the guided meditation would allow that to happen and for people to have some time to stop, consider, and reflect individually and collectively.

Were you at all nervous about attendee participation in such interactive and unconventional sessions?

I don’t know if nervous is the right word. When you try new things or experiment with event design and creating unique experiences, I suppose you always worry about how it will land. But as long as what you are trying to achieve is from a place of authenticity and it intentionally adds to the overall event experience and complements what you are trying to achieve, you should carry on regardless of nerves.

We must take risks with our events and experiences to evolve and innovate. When I looked around the room during the singing to see that people were visibly enthralled by the experience, with some having tears in their eyes —”What a Wonderful World” was a great choice, which also obviously added to the experience.

And I have never known of or been to an industry event that closed on meditation, so yes, I would say this was also a risk. But having talked it through with our team, some colleagues, and our speakers, and knowing it was what we felt our community needed to close the program and the experience we had worked to create, we wanted to try it. Many of the attendees said that the sense of belonging and connection they felt and experienced was very different and authentic.

Barbara Palmer is deputy editor of Convene.

Visit the Archive

Read past installments of Meetings and Your Brain.

Collaboration is critical in uncertain times, three global business strategists wrote this month in Harvard Business Review. Recent research suggests that when resources become limited, business leaders tend to become risk-averse and prioritize stability over innovation, according to the article. This, they said, is a mistake. “It’s precisely during these challenging times,” write the authors, “that the untapped potential of collaboration can be a game-changer.”

Businesses that collaborate with synergistic organizations that share the same values and customer targets, they write, thereby enable their teams to do more with less and unlock growth. For individuals, collaborating with others offers many benefits, including gaining “access to a broader resource pool, diverse knowledge bases,” they write, “and a wealth of life and professional experiences.” (Sounds like the value proposition for events, no?)

The 2024 PCMA EMEA Engagement Survey results could serve as Exhibit A for the HBR article — collaboration is a goal that pops up repeatedly in the responses of 223 business events industry professionals. Survey participants were almost evenly split between suppliers and planners, and the majority of them reside in Europe.

Conducted between December 2023 and January 2024, the survey asked business events professionals to identify their biggest challenges. Their responses are similar to last year’s survey, with rising costs cited often. But resource management and workload challenges were mentioned more often this year than financial challenges. And industry evolution and change were also top of mind — those that were wished for and those that have been thrust upon respondents, with the fast pace of tech and adapting to AI specifically mentioned in the latter category.

According to the logic presented in the HBR article, given such an uncertain environment and extensive resource and time constraints, the top priority for the organizations that the respondents work for is collaboration and developing strategic partnerships. Moreover, three out of five supplier respondents cited collaboration and strategic partnerships as a priority, followed by growth — trends, future scenarios, and opportunities (45 percent); environmental, social, and governance (32 percent); budget and risk management (21 percent); and innovation in business models and design (19 percent).

Organizers weighted their priorities differently and had two other priorities not shared by suppliers. Looking at their priorities as an inverted pyramid, budget and risk management is at the top (46 percent); growth follows (32 percent); the third and fourth priorities, cited by three out of 10, were collaboration and strategic partnerships and technology integration (including navigating AI). One quarter identified event design and content delivery as a priority.

Organizers said the five most important skills they are focusing on this year are leadership/change management; understanding best practices around and implementing AI; growth — strategy, budgeting, risk, negotiation, and partnerships; sustainability; and soft skills (i.e., communication, negotiation, and presentation skills).

When respondents were asked in an open-ended question to name one thing they would like to see at an industry event, networking and collaboration was among the top three most mentioned areas, in the same bucket as peer learning, knowledge sharing, and opportunities for meaningful engagement and exchange.

Topping that wish list is a focus on sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion. From an environmental standpoint, survey participants want to see sustainable F&B options and initiatives at events and they want to understand how the event reduced its carbon footprint. They are looking for DEI to be front and center in terms of attendee and speaker representation and in sharing insights that carry DEI forward. They also want industry events to help them understand how new technologies, particularly AI, can be harnessed in their roles, with demonstrations, discussions, and case-study examples of AI in action.

Case studies, in fact, with their associated learnings and insights, topped suppliers’ and organizers’ preferred event experience formats. Following case studies were debates and panel discussions, interactive workshops, and thought-leadership sessions — three formats that were neck and neck and reflect the desire to learn from and with each other and to co-create the future of the events industry.

“Although the results have not revealed anything unexpected,” said Jaimé Bennett, PCMA’s managing director, EMEA, “we continue to welcome the engagement of our regional community and their honest feedback. Their willingness to share with us and each other to foster the collaboration they want to see take place in the business events industry is inspiring. It is only through continual dialogue, engagement, and creating platforms to exchange ideas and experiences with one another that we can understand and evolve — not only as individuals, but as teams, organizations, and the industry as a whole.”

Who They Are

One out of five respondents work for an association; 17 percent identified as a PCO/meeting planner/DMC; another 17 percent work at a CVB; and 14 percent are employed at a hotel or venue. Almost nine out of 10 live in Europe, 5 percent reside in the Middle East and 4 percent live in North America. The largest portion of respondents — 45 percent — have more than 20 years of experience in the industry; 30 percent have more than one but less than two decades of experience; 15 percent have 7-10 years of experience; and 10 percent have spent six or fewer years working in the business events industry.

In terms of roles, nearly two out of five survey takers are managers and nearly three out of 10 are at the director level. Fifteen percent occupy the C-suite and 9 percent are in the VP category.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

A recent McKinsey study corroborates what we all know: There has been a massive adoption of AI in the workplace. Cited in a recent Forbes article, the study found that 72 percent of organizations are using AI in at least one business function, with three-quarters of respondents predicting that generative AI would lead to significant change within their businesses in the coming years.

But despite AI’s major integration in the workplace, questions remain about how to use the tool to drive positive change, rather than just jumping on the AI bandwagon for fear of being left behind.

“These emerging digital technologies all come with complex trade-offs around ethics, sustainability, and ‘tech for good,’” said Richard Markoff, supply chain management professor at ESCP Business School in Paris in the Forbes story. He noted that AI should only be used when there is “a robust business case” and when AI is subject to “a careful implementation with deep engagement and commitment from company leadership.”

Using AI tools in a meaningful and effective way is something Albert Cerezales Garcia, strategic consultant at MCI Group, and Stephen Rose, head of global communication services at Siemens AG, have been seriously considering in their daily work, they both told Convene podcast host and Digital Media Editor Magdalina Atanassova at Convening EMEA 2023 in Copenhagen.

Cerezales Garcia noted that AI has “grown exponentially” — a year ago, he said, “maybe I used half the AI tools, or even less than half, than I use now.”

Cerezales Garcia thinks most workers are still in the experimentation phase of using AI tools — himself included. “I think we’ve got maybe 20–30 tools, and I maybe know how to use two or three properly, because it’s such a new field and it’s so broad that you never get into the specifics of it,” he said. New tools come out every day that may be more appropriate for his work needs, he added. In his role, he uses AI tools for market research tasks such as social listening, segmentation of data, and persona analysis. “I don’t think what the tool is matters, I think it is what the purpose of it is that matters.”

Rose noted that there are a “multifold of challenges” when it comes to widely adopting AI tools in the workplace — particularly when it comes to getting employees to understand its best-use cases. “I think technology with purpose is the key word here,” Rose said. “Only if you understand how you can use it and what the purpose is, it’ll actually be taken and applied,” he added, which is why he feels employees should be trained to learn exactly how AI works — or doesn’t work — in the context of their roles.

Learning to use a knife makes a good metaphor, according to Rose — if you know how to use a knife, “you can cut bread, but you can also kill people,” he pointed out. “So, it’s really important to understand how to apply this technology in the process so that it actually is for a better and greater purpose … I think we really have to think about where it adds value.”

In the events industry, Rose would like to see how AI can help integrate various touchpoints, from marketing to sales to communication processes. “I think that’s where we need to see where the interfaces are, to other tools from marketing automation and others,” he said. “It’ll definitely become part of our job, but we really have to understand how it fits into the overall value chain.”

Listen to the full episode below or visit the Convene Podcast page, where you will find all our episodes.

Casey Gale is managing editor of Convene.

Abir Haddoud grew up in a small village in Algeria and moved to France on her own at the age of 16 to pursue engineering studies at one of the country’s top engineering schools. Once she graduated, she joined a business strategy consulting firm and then a few years later, took a leadership role at a global animal nutrition company, becoming, at 27, the youngest executive of a $2-billion company.

The two career experiences provided her with an outside-in and inside-out view of business strategy. “When you are in consulting, you are an outsider, so you give somehow a different point of view — you have this global picture,” she told Convene. “But when you are inside, you have somehow another way of seeing things and you are really involved in the day-to-day job.”

Which, for her, was strategy around mergers and acquisitions — and also, she added, “the transformation of the company.”

As she hit 30, Haddoud decided on her next move: launching a strategy consultancy company and now, several years later, she is continuing her “entrepreneurial journey” by starting an edtech company “around what I call the how-to,” she said. “For me, strategy is somehow a mix between a what and a how. What is what to do, and then there is the how, how to do it. All the aim of my edtech company is really to go back to basics and explain how to do simple stuff, how to write a strategy, how to succeed in business, how to make more money.”

In advance of her Convening EMEA keynote on Oct. 2 in Barcelona, Haddoud shared insights about her particular brand of strategy and what masculine and feminine traits have to do with it.

Some would say that the how part of your approach is tactics, not strategy.  But a plan really can’t stand on its own unless you know how to implement it, right?

Exactly. For me, when we say how to do it, somehow we are also making decisions and trade-offs because in the how, we have limited resources and we need to choose which resources and where to focus them. The how part is very, very important in strategy. How I differentiate the strategy and the tactics is more a matter of time.

For me, tactics are more short-term. You define your strategy. You define how to get there, which is a part of the strategy, and then when you are in your day-to-day job, you may have some setbacks, some problems, the markets are very volatile, and you might have some stuff to deal with. The tactics for me are more the day-to-day short-term arbitrage, but within a global strategy that encapsulates the what and the how, which is more made for long term.

Now I am getting into the educational parts of it which I really enjoy very, very much as well. I think at my core, my Ikigai [purpose] is more about this education part.

How does your approach differ from that of other strategy companies or consultants?

I’m going to answer that question with different layers. The first layer is more about the definition, and then the second layer, I will be answering it when we talk about the feminine and the masculine, which is also another subject that I love. In my consulting work, I’ve always focused on a principle that’s a bit unconventional in today’s world, which is less is more — or minimalism — because I think that strategy is often overcomplicated. Businesses end up doing too much without getting the results they want.

My approach is really to help businesses focus on what truly matters, whether it’s identifying their core strength, streamlining operations, or making deliberate trade-offs. It’s about creating a strategy that is focused and actionable.

The actionable part is also very important because we want to know how to do it and be sure that we have the resources to do so, rather than what we can see today — a broad strategy, very scattered.

What differentiates my approach is a blend of simplicity and clarity. I prioritize helping clients cut through the noise and make strategic decisions that lead to measurable impact.

I think it’s even more important in this post-COVID era when VUCA [volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity] is enhanced. We’ve never seen this amount of complexity before. We need to cut through the noise.

I think we also sense a lot of fear. It’s fear from the side of employees, but also fear from corporations. They are really struggling with the trust issue. In this new hybrid model, trust is key. You can see that corporations like Amazon [which recently announced a new policy of returning to the office five days a week] struggle with that dimension and struggle with that value.

How do you put your engineering background to work?

Engineering gave me a really structured way of thinking about strategy. Engineers are basically trained to solve problems by breaking them down into smaller, more manageable parts. That’s the job of an engineer, basically. I do apply that same mindset to business strategy, which means instead of focusing on the entire business landscape at once, I help companies narrow down their focus to the essential components and see what’s really driving value and what’s getting in the way. It’s like really simplifying a complex system into a more efficient functional form.

The business events industry is predominantly female but women are in the minority of leadership roles, so I’m interested in your work and research about women in leadership, since you are writing a book on that topic to be published next year.

I really believe that women bring so many strengths to leadership and to business, and that it so often goes underappreciated. I have noticed that we as women are always trying to find balance in a system that is at its core, male dominated. For me, it goes beyond just the workforce — capitalism is a masculine system.

It’s always about action, always about delivering, always about moving forward, always about growth. It’s never really about taking time and having patience and taking the long-term view. We are trying to find balance as women in that model or masculine system. Often, we think that our feminine traits are our weakness, whereas in fact, I truly believe that these are strengths.

Each one of us has both masculine traits and feminine traits. Women are more maybe in their zone of genius with feminine traits and males are more in their zone of genius with masculine traits. One of the key feminine traits is, for example, empathy. Women are often better at understanding and managing people, which is crucial for building strong, motivated teams. We are also more collaborative. We are more for innovation, inclusivity in decision-making. I believe that the best leaders today balance both these masculine and feminine qualities.

Decisiveness, confidence, action are more of the masculine side — blending them together makes a more well-rounded, adaptable leader. I think that people are starting to [place a higher] value on traits like vulnerability and emotional intelligence in leaders, which were once seen as a weakness.

We are definitely not there yet, but I think there is a shift opening up more space for women to step into leadership roles and celebrate these qualities that make them exceptional.

Any examples come to mind?

The former prime minister of New Zealand [Jacinda Ardern] is amazing because she managed to succeed in a very difficult job while honoring her feminine side. We’ve seen her crying, we’ve seen her with her baby working, and I really respect that.

Moving on to a different topic, what role do face-to-face events play in an organization’s strategy?

I am a true believer in face-to-face events. Even in a hybrid world, I truly believe that in-person conferences still hold tremendous value, even in this post-pandemic world. There is something about the energy and connections you make face-to-face that simply cannot be replicated in virtual settings. I think that as humans, we thrive on personal interaction and the spontaneous conversations that happen at in-person events. I think that in-person really can lead to breakthroughs that you would never get over Zoom.

That said, the pandemic has made us rethink the way we approach work. Flexibility is no longer a luxury. Now it’s a necessity. Hybrid and remote are here to stay, but I think the most successful companies are the ones that can balance the moments of real in-person connection with digital flexible work. I think the workplace now has become more adaptable, more digital, but hopefully, more human also in how it supports employees.

What do you hope the Convening EMEA audience will take away from your session?

I think the biggest takeaway I want leave the audience with is really the power of focus. My whole presentation will be about showing how focusing on less can actually help you achieve more because as we mentioned, we are in a complex world. I think the world is really overwhelmed. People are overwhelmed about so many things, there are so many different choices, that I want to keep them with this power of focus and to explain that strategy is not about doing everything, it’s about doing the right things and making the right choices.

I want them somehow to walk away, I would say, feeling empowered to simplify their approach to strategy and focus, to drive value, not only in business. For me, it starts with our own lives. Strategy applies to life and then to business. I want them also to see that strategy is not just a business tool, it’s a mindset that they can apply to every part of their life, and that’s when they focus on what matters to them most, they can create more impact with less effort.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

“Get ready for a paradoxical year where the surreal gets real, advanced technology meets digital disconnection, and the dawn of the trillionaire collides with cost cutting,” write Emma Chiu and Marie Stafford in the foreword to the 2025 edition of “The Future 100.” Chiu and Stafford are global directors at creative agency VML Intelligence, which publishes  the report identifying 100 game-changing trends across 10 different sectors every year.

It’s almost as if the 321 event professionals who responded to PCMA EMEA’s recent engagement survey took a page from “The Future 100” trends report: Their responses reflect that they are navigating a business environment in which the juxtaposition of going all in on tech and being fully human are an everyday reality — that bit from the report about advanced technology meets digital disconnection. Respondents to the PCMA EMEA survey shared that they are simultaneously focusing on high-tech and high-touch — their top priorities are both incorporating AI in their work and designing face-to-face events that engage their stakeholders, especially next-gen participants, in analog experiences.

The survey results, said Jaimé Bennett, managing director, EMEA, at PCMA, underline the role of AI in the events industry. “Technology should be our ally in amplifying human connection, not a replacement,” Bennett said. “By mastering both digital tools and analog experiences, we can become more effective and innovative while remaining deeply human. The true power of technology lies in enhancing our human connections, creating authentic, meaningful engagement in every event we design.”

A Look at Participants

Nearly three-quarters of respondents were from Europe, with 11 percent from Africa; 10 percent from North America; and 4 percent from Middle East.

More than half — 52 percent — were organizers; 37 percent suppliers, and 11 percent said they had other roles. The largest type of organization survey takers represented was PCO/meeting planner/DMC (29 percent); followed by association and hotel/venue (13 percent each); corporate (10 percent) and consultant and CVB (8 percent each). Six percent came from university and learning institutes; the same percent worked for event suppliers.

Survey participants were largely experienced industry professionals, with the largest percentage (36 percent) in a managerial role and 22 percent serving as a director. Sixteen percent were top executives in the CEO role or owner of their own company and 7 percent were at the senior vice president/vice president level. The largest majority (38 percent) had 20-plus years of experience in the events industry; followed by 23 percent with 11-19 years; and 15 percent with seven to 10 years.

But the survey also benefited from the input of newer-to-the-industry professionals as well: Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) had worked in events for up to six years and 17 percent said they were next-gen professionals.

Areas of Focus in 2025 and 2026

When asked to identify the three key priorities for their organization this year and next, event organizers put their community — audience engagement, growth, and next-gen involvement — as their top focus. Their second priority is AI in the workplace: How to benefit from the technology tool, master security, and train their teams. A close third to that is how to use AI in events to elevate the participant journey. Fourth on their top-five-priorities list: event and content design, personalization, and gamification. Strategic partnerships came in fifth.

Those priorities shuffled for suppliers and others, who indicated that they had two areas of greater focus than their planner counterparts, beginning with their top priority: sustainability and ESG, which came in sixth place for planners, underscoring the expectation that venues and suppliers take the lead in environmental practices. Their second priority syncs with planners’ top priority: community. Strategic partnerships came up third for them, followed by innovation and business models (in the seventh spot for planners); and AI in the workplace — planners’ second-highest priority — was fifth in line for planners.

Skillsets to Master

When asked what professional skills they would like to develop in the coming year, overall responses put AI, technology, digital transformation, and emerging technologies at the top of the list. Next in line: strategic leadership skills, including multigenerational team development and adaptability.

Survey takers prioritized strategic partnerships, understanding market trends, and growth as the third skillset they are seeking to develop, followed by sustainability, ESG, carbon neutrality, and reducing environmental impact.

And in the fifth spot: soft skills — cross-culture communication, negotiation, and emotional intelligence. In the open-ended comments section, one respondent expanded on that, expressing a desire to invest in learning a skill of a different sort: “Writing smashing LinkedIn posts. Become better at storytelling.”

Stumbling Blocks

When asked what stops them in their tracks regularly and prevents or slows down their work, event professionals typed in a variety of challenges, from a lack of resources and demanding workloads to keeping up with the rapid pace of technological change and lack of strategic leadership at their organizations. Here is a sampling of responses:

“I guess varying views and commitments on topics. Some say AI is great, some say not so much. Some venues say they are all about sustainability yet make it extremely difficult for meeting professionals to implement fully.”

“The volume of emails and administrative tasks that need to be managed alongside the strategic aspects of my work. While these tasks are necessary, they can sometimes distract from more critical, higher-level responsibilities.”

“A lot of the suppliers (especially the salespeople) are not open for developing a good relationship. A lot of new people have entered the industry and only have their KPIs in mind without seeing the bigger picture. We have to educate them [on the importance of] long-term relationships and to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ more often.”

“Younger team members who have the skills but don’t have the confidence to try things for themselves or need hand-holding on site.”

“The long process to get new technology implemented. Hotels/suppliers taking several days to respond to inquiries or replying after the deadline for the proposal — then wanting a decision within days.”

“Lack of clear objectives and strategy. Slow decision-making or too many approvals. Limited access to data and insights. Resistance to change.”

“Not being recognized for my wins. My thoughts and concerns not being taken seriously or properly listened to.”

“Balancing the need for creativity with tight deadlines and logistical/financial constraints. Staying updated on the latest trends and tools can be challenging amidst the demands of day-to-day tasks.”

“Rapid changes in technology and marketing trends that require constant adaptation. Uncertainty in economic and political landscapes affecting long-term planning.

Where to Find Help?

As far as what would help them overcome their current challenges, this respondent seemed to say it all: “More time, more manpower, more compassion from line manager and organization.” But many respondents are taking a practical approach, saying they are seeking out workshops, think tanks, webinars, and taking courses and attending events — “being out there” is how one respondent phrased it — to help them boost their skills and surmount those challenges.

Going Beyond Our Industry

When asked if they think there are other industries they can learn from and why, survey takers shared an appetite for taking lessons from beyond the business events community.

“Yeah — cross pollination is key,” said one respondent. Only one respondent said no thank you: “Happy to stick to mine.” Here are some of the other sectors event professionals think have something to teach them:

“Sports industry, consumer goods, IT/tech, automotive, cosmetic, fashion because these industries always need to be one step ahead, especially within brand experiences and event management.”

“TV and cinema production — many similarities. Very strong with it comes to creativity and marketing campaigns.”

“Fintech because it involves technology and finance, which control the majority of industries.”

“CME providers because education shapes the purpose of the organization, and industries that are at the forefront of innovation and R&D.”

“The digital marketing industry and the music production industry.”

“Startups, as they often drive efficiency and disruptive thinking.”

“Apps like Tinder can be investigated how to matchmake better in B2B.”

“The retail industry, particularly luxury brands, excels in creating personalized customer experiences, something that can be directly applied to hospitality to enhance guest satisfaction. They also use advanced customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track customer preferences and behaviors.”

“The gaming sector is an expert in building immersive, interactive, and gamified experiences. Applying their techniques to create more engaging and participatory conference sessions could boost attendee involvement.”

Bennett said that she is grateful to all those who took the time to complete the survey and that it yields insights that are immediately applicable. “The level of engagement we received this year with our annual survey is the highest since we launched this initiative in 2021,” Bennett said. “This is not only reassuring but also reaffirms that to truly deliver for our community, we must ask, listen, and understand where our industry stands across various levels and organizations. This approach will enable us to create platforms and opportunities that address people’s priorities and help them overcome their challenges.”

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. Graphics by Jo Harrison.