In its latest communication, the International Association of Convention Centres (AIPC) has issued a call to the industry to join “Many Voices, One Message” movement known as The Iceberg 2.0.
Industry leaders co-created The Iceberg in 2017 as a metaphor to highlight the benefits of events and their social and economic impacts.
Thanks to funding support from the sector leadership, The Iceberg has used the intervening period to curate a powerful and compelling body of evidence-based data and storytelling, which has helped to reshape the narrative of the business and professional events sector beyond its consumption economy.
The Iceberg has witnessed growing recognition, across the sector, of the transformational value created by congresses, trade fairs, and corporate meetings. These social, economic, and societal outcomes in individual and organisational success, trade and exports development, inward investment, scientific research and innovation, start-ups and scale-ups, job creation, and lives saved are so often sourced through events.
And it has witnessed increasingly sophisticated impact methodologies and tools emerging from within the sector to support, and evidence, these impacts as fact.
The Iceberg’s Global Advisory Board has concluded that now is the time to take the message beyond the echo chamber of the sector itself, and to present the unique combination of the value consumption, and sustainable value creation, of the business events economy to governments and their policymakers.
This will require consistency of message delivered globally – and locally – through our many voices because no one individual or organisation can do this. It must be a collaborative effort from both the demand and supply sides of the sector. And it will require a unique combination of organisational and individual messengers, articulated in the video below:
It’s time to break out of the echo chamber – to establish ambassadors in every city or country who can connect business and professional events to government agendas.
A recent report from Business Events Industry Week in Washington DC and at EU Dialogue in Brussels illustrated the power of collaboration when the industry conveyed a united message to governments and their policymakers.
This effort inspired the Global Advisory Board, supported by a Theory of Change devised by The Iceberg Partners, #MEET4IMPACT and Talley Management Group, to develop a Strategic Plan designed to make The Iceberg more interactive globally, to strengthen and leverage its global movement to advance the focus on event impacts further and faster, and to mobilise the whole sector in an effort to achieve the goals identified in its Theory of Change.
The Board are calling this effort The Iceberg 2.0 and its Chair, Gary Grimmer, explains the approach:
Why The Iceberg 2.0?
We want to help event organisers and destinations build stronger partnerships to increase the impacts of events and to gain more government support for the business events industry. The key to the effort will be increasing awareness that events are powerful drivers of social, economic, societal, and environmental impacts.
What are the overall goals of The Iceberg 2.0?
- To continue to strengthen awareness of the importance and broader impacts of meetings
- To elevate the focus on event impact by event organisers
- To deepen the involvement of host destinations in building event impacts
- To strengthen government support for business meetings and events
What will The Iceberg be doing to accomplish these goals?
- Partnering with other industry organisations and peak bodies to support and help amplify their own event impact initiatives
- Animating a global ambassador programme
- Activating a global network of advocates to governments at all levels
- Creating feedback loops so that stakeholders become active participants in The Iceberg’s network and programmes
- Making tools available to event organisers and destination hosts to enhance their abilities to maximise event impacts
- Curating and disseminating knowledge on the impact of business events
Join The Iceberg 2.0 movement here: www.the-iceberg.org/join-the-iceberg-movement
