The events industry, hit particularly hard by the pandemic, is feeling the sting as business returns with a lack of talented professionals — on the planning and supplier sides — to pull off events.

Collecting data about events is critical, but planners need to communicate those stats and numbers through a compelling story that helps stakeholders take action. Here’s how to get started. 

It’s about time we have a conversation about mental health and wellbeing in the business events industry — how we foster it for each other in our workplaces and our participants at our events.

In the wake of the pandemic’s disruptions, convention centers are going all in on human-centered needs — plus broadcast capabilities, nature, and outdoor spaces — to bring back groups.

Amid continuing uncertainty around planning events during COVID’s wild ride, we turned to professional futurists to help put us on the path to envisioning business events going forward. Here’s a shorthand guide to thinking like a futurist.

How the United Nations’ biggest climate conference — and a critical moment in human history — could change the event industry’s “business as usual” narrative on sustainability.

As the COVID-19 crisis has rocked the business events industry, new business models have spring up — not as short-term workarounds, but as lasting shifts.

The pandemic’s effects were so profound and far-reaching that not changing ceased to be an option for almost everyone on the planet. But which changes will be permanent, and how will they transform events?

Perhaps we once took for granted the larger role that face-to-face events play in our society, but the past year has shown us that they are far more than economic engines. These case studies show how physical events have given fledgling industries a foot-hold and path to success.

These digital gatherings connect participants to the physical world, transporting them to real places and engaging their senses and emotions.

To make virtual trade shows and exhibit halls work, exhibitions industry practitioners have found that you have to rethink the physical experience — and embrace tech tools that entice attendees to connect with suppliers.

“Necessity” is a mild way to describe the impetus for invention brought by COVID-19. We’ve learned in 2020 that creativity is, as business strategist Natalie Nixon argues, “incredibly practical and crucial to survival” — in the business events industry especially, where the pandemic has forced us to go digital or go dark.