Skift Take
Germany has one of the most innovative business strategies and fresh content models to attract more international conferences by focusing on extensive research development and sector-specific industry expertise. But managing and delivering on those effectively and consistently comes with its growing pains.
Sascha Lobo is a popular German tech author, blogger, and speaker with a pointy red mohawk and an unfiltered opinion on just about anything relating to digital society.
The German Convention Bureau (GCB) recently published a Q&A with Lobo on its new content-driven website about the impact of technology on meetings. It's not the most cutting-edge insight on the future of business events, but it does signal a shift at convention bureaus toward more multi-disciplinary, tech-driven content designed to both inform and inspire meeting planners.
The most innovative aspects of the convention bureau's content strategy are the omni-channel delivery and the volume of research focusing on both macro and micro industry trends. However, there's room for improvement in terms of how the bureau organizes the growing body of online thought leadership, and how it serves it to planners effectively.
The GCB has invested heavily in recent years toward developing a scalable online framework with two aligned missions. The first goal is to drive attention to the individual cities by positioning them as important hubs of specific industry sectors, ranging from automotive in Stuttgart to logistics and mobility in Hamburg. The second is to continue investing in big-budget industry research in an attempt to position the country at the leading edge of European meeting design innovation.
Looking ahead to 2017, one of the GCB's primary goals will be educating the different German cities about how to create more informed online content individually for the national bureau to promote worldwide.
The following is an overview of the GCB's multitude of research and content marketing initiatives during the last few years, and the strategy behind them.
Future Meeting Space
Germany's newest research is a multi-phase, multi-year project called "Future Meeting Space," presented in different formats on both the main GCB website and a dedicated microsite.
The first section of phase one of Future Meeting Space launched in December 2015 with the Meeting Space Innovation Catalogue, highlighting 30 new event technologies, industry trends, and group collaboration strategies. The themes range from 180-degree projection mapping to the role of 50-year-old-plus veterans in the industry, described as "silverpreneurs."
The value here is somewhat of a shotgun approach to throwing every idea against the wall to see what will stick. Some of them, such as
