Return on Investment. During 75 minutes on 14 February, 109 participants from all segments of the European meetings and events industry gathered for a virtual brainstorming on the viability of the 7Cs Manifesto, a potential roadmap for the future of the industry which was launched at the Event Summit in Luxembourg last year. The virtual meeting was held via “Synthetron”, a web-based tool for collaborative discussion to gather ideas and achieve consensus in groups. The 7Cs Manifesto survived the test, 69% agreed or strongly agreed that Change, Creativity, Content, Credibility, Collaboration, Connectivity and Cost effectiveness capture well the important issues for the meetings and events industry to move forward.The strongest C-word was Content, “Creating meaningful experiences that deliver real ROI”. Content was seen to bring together many of the other Cs, requiring Creativity and Change from how most events are delivered today and providing the Change in participant behaviour required for Cost effectiveness. Good Content requires Collaboration (Co-creation), provides Credibility and through Connectivity becomes available outside the meeting room. In a word cloud drawn from the discussion, the most dominant word was ROI together with Content.
But much work remains for the 7Cs Manifesto to become a guideline for the industry, says Elling Hamso, Managing Partner of Event ROI Institute. The next step is to prepare the programme for the Event Summit in Luxembourg 30 August, says Netty Thines of Mediation SA. “We need to achieve clear definitions of the 7Cs and practical guidelines based on experience and success stories which will make our industry more effective and respected.” The 7Cs Manifesto Synthetron Report may be downloaded from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1818905/synthetron7csmanifesto.pdf.
