Workshop. Over 600 viewers from 75 countries joined ICCA’s hybrid workshop on bidding for international association meetings on 10 July. ICCA’s first hybrid workshop received very positive reactions from the global meetings community. The 2-hour hybrid seminar, sponsored and supported by the Thailand Convention & Exhibition Bureau, was broadcast live from the ICCA Research, Sales & Marketing Programme in Amsterdam, and had a live link with another ICCA seminar which took place simultaneously in Bangkok, Thailand. The session focussed on subjects as: what do associations look for in a bid, what are the biggest challenges and frustrations they face, and are there any changes in the internal decision making processes that affect meeting suppliers? ICCA CEO Martin Sirk: “Bidding is without a doubt the most critical specialised skill for success in the international association meetings sector. This online event allowed us share the insights and updates on trends from our panel of experts with as many ICCA member and other industry professionals around the world as possible.”
The online session was presented by Gerrit Heijkoop of How Can I Be Social (HCIBS). This was the first time ICCA organised a full hybrid session. ICCA was overwhelmed with positive reactions from all over the world. The Twitter hashtag #ICCAbidding reached a visibility of 42,210 Twitter accounts with a grand total of 282,098 impressions.
ICCA CEO Martin Sirk said: “This event was an experiment for us on a number of levels. We were able to schedule the pre-planned ICCA Thailand seminar to coincide with our Amsterdam session, so we could test how well two separate live sessions on the same topic could interact, and could compare this with the experiences of ICCA members in their offices and homes. What we hadn’t anticipated was the number of impromptu study groups that sprang into being to take advantage of the seminar, from Denmark to China. This demonstrates what a hot topic international association bidding is, and how little we really understand about the self-organising capabilities of our members around the world! I’m particularly pleased that we didn’t try to do this on the cheap: we worked with great consultants, great technical supporters and we were in a venue, the RAI Amsterdam, with great internet infrastructure; we needed to carry out extensive and carefully planned marketing, build new websites, and think creatively about the format of the session so that we could engage both our live audience and the participants all over the world.”
