Arinex brings Australia’s business events sector back with biggest event of 2020

Australia’s business events sector came together to attend ‘The Turn of Events, Bringing Business Events Back’ in a nationwide hub and spoke format on 16 September. The collaboration aimed at kickstarting the business event sector in Australia and organiser Arinex’s CEO, Nicole Walker said she was proud to bring together 25 organisations to showcase business event readiness. Live and virtual events from six capital cities in Australia launched the process of reigniting the passion to 500 business event planners and associations in Australia and globally. Keynote speaker, Patrizia Buongiorno, vice-president of AIM Group International and co-chair of the International Conference Organiser Network (INCON), spoke on global readiness, sharing examples of recent European events and how they had innovated to enable safe and practical meetings and exhibitions. Dr Vanessa Findlay from Business Events Council Australia (BECA), provided details about the newly announced A$50m business events government funding package.

Business event professionals and clients were able to attend in their preferred city, either in person or virtually, with Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre offering virtual attendance only due to current safety restrictions. Virtual and live attendees were catapulted out of hibernation by Saxton Speaker’s MC Nick Bartlett, who guided attendees to their selected breakouts that featured over 20 industry panellists followed by a real face-to-face networking experience. Bronwyn Green, president of the Queensland Branch of Australian Association of Teachers of the Deaf, attended the event at The Calile Hotel in Brisbane and remarked: “I feel very comfortable after listening to the business event experts discuss CovidSafe readiness in Australia and am excited by the options available for our international July 2021 event. It will be a different and exciting challenge for us to come up with new ways to connect our audience. I now realise there is a great deal to be gained by opening our event to greater audience participation and delivering new goals for our association.”