The Direction of the MICE Industry in the Endemic Era <br/> (2022 Global Conferences.zip)
The Direction of the MICE Industry in the Endemic Era (2022 Global Conferences.zip)
Hello, this is Chris & Partners.😊 We've all surely felt the past two years were eventful. Looking only at the situation—the start of COVID-19, living with COVID, and now the uncontrollably spreading variant viruses—it was grim, but within it the MICE industry did its best and achieved much progress. Today, let's look at the endemic era and what impact it will have on the MICE industry, and accordingly the global conferences to be held in 2022.
Endemic and the MICE industry
Source: CTV News Toronto
Endemic refers to an infectious disease that doesn't end but recurs periodically or settles in as a localized disease. When vaccines or treatments emerge and various measures are prepared, outbreaks become predictable and it becomes a narrow endemic. For example, current endemic diseases include malaria and dengue fever. It's also sometimes seen as a word derived from ‘Next Pandemic’—the prediction that even after COVID-19 ends, the appearance of superviruses and the threat of epidemics will recur periodically. It's a term often used in these times of continuously spreading variants. Due to COVID-19, the MICE industry often couldn't host events and had to cancel abruptly, but as online/hybrid technology advanced, vaccinations spread, and each country's COVID policies changed, most large global events began to regain vitality. Holding events by choosing in-person, hybrid, or contactless formats according to the situation is a feature of the MICE industry seen these days. Accordingly, looking at the formats of this year's global conferences, we could also glimpse the MICE industry's ability and flexibility to cope with crises. Let's look at the 2022 global conference list below together! 😁
2022 global conferences
1. Davos Forum 2022 (World Economic Forum)
Source: The World Economic Forum
World Economic ForumKnown as the World Economic Forum (Davos Forum), it's scheduled to be held in person in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, May 22–26 this year. This year, under the theme ‘Cooperation, Restoring Trust,’ it covers pandemic recovery, curbing climate change, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and other agendas. WEF founder Klaus Schwab said, ‘We need to strengthen cooperation and build an atmosphere of trust to solve the many challenges before us,’ and ‘Political, business, and civil-society leaders must gather in person again.’ The WEF said it will communicate with the host Swiss authorities for participants' health and safety; earlier, the WEF canceled last year's Davos Forum amid the pandemic. It was scheduled for January this year too, but was postponed to this May due to the spread of the Omicron variant.
2. Davos Agenda 2022
(right) UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who joined the WEF-hosted ‘Davos Agenda 2022’ by video / Source: EPA-Yonhap
The Davos Forum was postponed to May, but instead scaled down and shifted online, it opened the ‘Davos Agenda 2022’ meeting with heads of state and international-organization leaders, January 17–21 this year. It ran as an online pre-meeting format event from Cologny near Geneva, Switzerland. At ‘Davos Agenda 2022,’ joined by companies, economists, and politicians worldwide, major global leaders named inter-country cooperation to resolve COVID-19 vaccine inequality as a key task in overcoming the pandemic. The meeting discussed ways to diagnose and overcome the pandemic and climate-change crisis.
3. TechCrunch Disrupt 2022
Source: TechCrunch
TechCrunch Disrupt is a startup conference joined by IT-sector companies, venture-capital people, and more. Early-stage startups set up booths to unveil and display new products, prominent figures give talks, and a startup competition is held. Last year the event ran online due to COVID-19, but this year's TechCrunch Disrupt is scheduled to be held in person in San Francisco, October 18–20.
4. SLUSH 2022 (International Startup Conference)
Source: www.slush.org
The international startup conference ‘SLUSH’ is a flagship European startup event where startups and investors worldwide gather, started in 2008 under the simple mission ‘to support founders who change the world so they can emerge.’ Despite COVID-19's impact, in step with the vaccination season, SLUSH 2021 was held in person in Helsinki, unlike other conferences. Heads of global startups—Tinder, Miro, Calm, and more—attended, and their talks can be viewed on YouTube. SLUSH 2022 is, on November 17–18, scheduled to be held in Helsinki.
5. Web Summit 2022
Source: websummit.com
Web Summit is Europe's largest tech conference where the world's tech founders, thinkers, and media gather. Due to COVID-19, Web Summit 2020 was canceled, but in 2021, as Portugal's vaccination rate exceeded 80%, the event ran offline, with the conference centered on mobility, AI, cloud, healthcare, and more. This year's event too is, November 1–4, scheduled to be held in Lisbon.
Chris & Partners event cases
Chris & Partners, over the past two years, online, hybrid events, webinars—planned and ran various events. Shall we look at the cases below to see which events we led to success?
1. Metacon 2021
Metacon 2021 created a forum of opportunity in the new-normal era triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, offering metaverse-industry trends and pioneers' insights in step with an untact era poised to develop in many directions, under the theme of the ‘Metaverse,’ free from the constraints of time and space. Chris & Partners successfully handled everything from booking speakers from global companies leading the metaverse industry to program planning and venue operation. Metacon 2021 was held in hybrid format, with overseas speakers connecting from Korea and across Asia, Europe, and the Americas attending online. For stable video streaming, we ran advance speaker technical rehearsals and on-the-day connection-environment checks and on-site rehearsals, preventing in advance the kinds of incidents that can occur in online streaming.
Go see Metacon 2021 in detail, CLICK CLICK
2. The 1st Seoul Peace Think-Tank International Conference (SPIC 2021)
The 1st Seoul Peace Think-Tank International Conference (SPIC 2021) was held under the theme ‘Cities and the World: A Path to Peace and Coexistence,’ with 13 global peace research institutes that have long studied ‘peace’ and some 30 speakers from home and abroad taking part, diagnosing problems of discrimination and conflict arising in Seoul and around the world and creating a forum for coexistence and peace. Chris & Partners successfully delivered the event planning, speaker management, venue construction, and operation of the 1st Seoul Peace Think-Tank International Conference (SPIC 2021). As a hybrid event held after living with COVID, we conducted even more thorough quarantine. For everyone coming on-site—fever checks, QR-code checks, questionnaires—and real-time quarantine allowed us to close the event safely and smoothly.
Go see the 1st Seoul Peace Think-Tank International Conference (SPIC 2021) in detail, CLICK CLICK
3. 2021 4th African Martial Arts Conference
The 4th African Martial Arts Conference was held under the theme ‘The Potential Role of the International Centre of Martial Arts for Africa,’ and, as in 2020, in 2021 it ran in a hybrid format connecting on-site and online. Chris & Partners operated the event in its 4th edition in 2021, following the 3rd last year. (online conference operation, venue construction, speaker management) Given the fragile network typical of the African region, we ran multiple technical rehearsals in advance and, for the day, prepared a plan for speakers losing their connection, so we could respond flexibly even when a speaker's connection actually dropped.
Go see the 4th African Martial Arts Conference in detail, CLICK CLICK
The MICE industry briefly stalled amid the crisis, but by rapidly advancing online technology (meeting technology, etc.) and applying it on-site, it has now achieved tremendous growth on the technical side—to the point that the hybrid format has become an essential element of the event industry. We can look forward to the MICE industry's path as it copes with crises and moves toward an even more advanced future. 🎉
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