Skift Take
The meetings industry is beginning to evaluate the long-term impact of conferences on a host destination's economic growth, and the business outcome for both local and visiting participants, with much more intention than in the past. It's going to get bumpy, but it's time for the industry to start taking itself seriously.
The Future of Meetings & Events
The Iceberg project is a new initiative developed by the Joint Meetings Industry Council (JMIC) to educate the meetings industry about the long-term economic impact of conferences, especially in high-priority, advanced industry sectors.
The theme itself is not necessarily new but there's a definite groundswell of interest in 2017 to better evaluate and codify the impact of events on a destination's economic development and the business outcomes for participants. That's easier said than done, but at least the meetings industry at large is finally beginning to elevate the conversation around why it exists on a global scale.
"The difficulty here is that every single event has a different set of objectives, so therefore every single event is going to have different kinds of legacies and leave-behinds in the community to measure," Rod Cameron, executive director of the JMIC, told me. "We need to make sure that we advance in the area of getting more credible value mea
