A record-breaking 180 delegates, from 17 countries, took part in EFAPCO’s 4th Congress held at the new state-of-the-art SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre.Themed on Sustainability and Competitiveness in the Meetings Industry, it proved to be a landmark event in many ways.
Two days of action-packed plenary and parallel sessions featured experts from all manner of fields analysing the impact of new social media on the meetings industry, the implementation of sustainable solutions and creating new opportunities out of the current global economic challenges, to answering the expectations of PCOs and the upcoming Generation Y, plus understanding the impact of new VAT regulations on the congress industry.
EFAPCO President, Nicolas Le Brun said: “Post-event feedback has been tremendously encouraging. Everyone seems to have savoured the programme content, as well as its social programme. We made a deliberate decision to embrace as wide a vision as possible. Indeed over the two days there was only one PCO speaker – and she was not an EFAPCO member. The emphasis was on information-gathering, business networking and professional education.”
Indeed, a Future Leaders Forum, organised in conjunction with IMEX, the acclaimed Frankfurt trade show, attracted some 35 young participants from Poland, Italy and Brussels. A plenary session moderated by IMEX’s Director of International Relations, Tom Hulton, proved to be as enlightening and entertaining as the rest of the sessions – and an encouraging highlight.
The congress, organised jointly by EFAPCO and BAPCO – the Belgian Association of PCOs – scored a technological “first” with an impromptu videoconference session.
At short notice, video links were set up with a snowbound David Stubbs, Head of Sustainability for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Prevented from travelling to Brussels by heavy snowfalls across England, he made his presentation on Delivering Sustainable Games from his London base.
It was made in tandem with a similarly topical report from Jan-Chrtistoph Napierski, Head of Sustainability for COP 15, the UN Climate Change Conference, which took place in Copenhagen in December.
The overall Congress philosophy on “thinking outside the box” was echoed by the social programme, which included dinner at Brussels’ new Musee Magritte Museum, a fabulous showcase of the life and work of surrealist artist Rene Magritte. Appropriately, that event was titled: Ceci n’est pas un Gala dinner”.
