The global association of the exhibition industry, UFI, has announced its worldwide conference will be digital-only this year.
“Our members have been telling us they want to connect, learn and have the global UFI community brought together,” says UFI president, Mary Larkin. “Since COVID-19 will not allow us to do this face-to-face, we are moving online to host the most accessible UFI Global Congress ever. Quality content, flexible timings and accessibility — these are the best ways to serve the UFI community right now.”
The virtual event will be held Nov. 16-19. It will include live and on-demand sessions based around the theme, ‘resilience,’ as well as networking opportunities and match-making across all time zones.
“We have built the program around prime regional time slots for Asia/Pacific, Europe/Middle East/Africa and the Americas, so people don’t have to be online around the clock to follow the event. Instead, everyone can connect and follow live from their own time zone, and review other sessions on-demand,” says UFI managing director and CEO, Kai Hattendorf. “On top of this, participants can use the platform to network with peers around the world before, during and after the event, at whatever time works best for them.”
Three registration packages are available, including single tickets and discounted tickets for groups of five or 10 colleagues from a UFI member company.
“Budgets are tight everywhere, so we are doing what we can to allow anyone who is interested from our member companies to join the event,” says UFI COO, Sonia Thomas.
Those who registered for the previously planned face-to-face gatherings in Basel, Switzerland, and Dubai will be contacted and rebooked based on their preference.
The home of the digital congress will be an online portal, hosted on the Grip platform, with technology from Glisser embedded. The platform will go live approximately one week before the start of the event, allowing participants to become familiar with it and to already begin networking, using the platform’s match-making and scheduling features.
The annual UFI Global Congress is known as the exhibition industry’s largest international meeting of the year. Open to more than 50,000 industry professionals who work for UFI member companies, it’s an opportunity to gain insight into topics of strategic interest, as well as the trends and challenges that the exhibition industry is currently facing.
