Amsterdam. Made up of a number of initiatives, this new collaboration will allow the International Congress and Convention Association to diversify and expand the educational possibilities available to its members at annual ICCA events and online via the ICCA Knowledge Hub, through access to eSpeakers’ expansive and diverse community of thought leaders and subject matter experts.

eSpeakers will use their community’s resources to sponsor speakers for ICCA’s annual Congress and Association Meetings Programme, and in addition create a branded directory of ICCA faculty members within their Marketplace, the largest directory of professional speakers available on the web. Designed to help meetings professionals to hire speakers directly through the eSpeakers platform, event planners can use the directory to find and filter appropriate speakers by subject, budget, language and other customisable criteria.

“This partnership has been born out of our desire to continue to provide top-quality, high-end educational content to our global membership, the leading suppliers to the international meetings industry. When our members attend ICCA events, they expect high-quality speakers and unique education sessions that keep them up-to-date with the latest developments in the constantly-evolving and expanding international association meetings industry – the kind of education they would not receive at any other industry meeting,” said Senthil Gopinath, Chief Executive Officer, ICCA.

“Collaborating with eSpeakers allows us to rise to this challenge. By providing us with access to a broader range of subject matter experts and speakers, we will be able to persist with tailoring our educational offerings to our members’ expectations and address the meetings industry’s hardest-hitting topics.”

ICCA’s and eSpeakers’s collaboration on educational content at ICCA events will also enhance ICCA’s online channels as part of this new partnership, with speakers on various topics appearing alongside relevant expert content in ICCA’s Knowledge Hub.

Gopinath added: “As part of ICCA’s mission to be the global community and knowledge hub for the international association meetings industry, we are developing our online Knowledge Hub to unlock the expertise of our global community of meeting suppliers and association meeting planners. This online platform currently offers expert blog posts and white papers on specialised association meeting topics, and this new collaboration with eSpeakers allows us to expand the resources available by adding links to relevant ICCA verified expert-speakers, while offering a new platform for ICCA Members to share their expertise.”

The first speaker to join an ICCA event through eSpeakers’ and ICCA’s new partnership will be Scott Parazynski, former NASA astronaut and the first man to have both flown in space and reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Parazynski will be speaking at the 58th ICCA Congress, which is taking place in Houston, U.S.A. from 27-30 October 2019.