Flying in a new world with AI as co-pilot

We’re not the same as we were before the pandemic – we’re better equipped to handle the challenges we’re facing, says PCMA and CEMA president Sherrif Karamat, CAE When the global business events community gathered at the San Diego Convention Center, California, in January for PCMA Convening Leaders, bringing together 5,000 participants from 47 countries, we broke our previous attendance record, set at our prepandemic meeting in 2020. Among the many lessons the pandemic brought the world is that face-to-face connection is irreplaceable. But I’m not looking backwards. We’re not the same industry that we were before the pandemic, and we are not living in the same world. We face many problems, including the fact that society is divided and polarised around the globe.

The effects of the climate crisis can’t be consigned to some far-off future but are on our doorsteps, demanding urgent action. A workforce that is quickly redefining the future of work. And the widespread adoption of generative AI tools, which has many benefits and at the same time, can contribute to the spread of disinformation, brings new meaning to the term ‘disruption’. AI is “the biggest disruption in the history of humanity by a very large margin,” Mo Gawdat, the former CEO of Google X, told us in San Diego. “What we are about to witness – some people will say in the next 20 years, I will say in the next two years – is beyond science fiction.” These are enormous challenges that ask us to expand our thinking and act in new ways. And one of the reasons that I have great confidence that we are up to the task is that we are not the same organisation or community that we were when the pandemic began four years ago. PCMA’s footprint now spans five continents, a sign not only of an expanding global influence, but our increased capacity to join with others who bring new ideas and approaches to solving problems. We believe in the power of technology combined with our humanity to bring about positive change. Last year, PCMA, in collaboration with Singapore-based Gevme, funded the tech start-up, SPARK, which uses AI tools to automate business events tasks and processes along with many other enterprise productivity gains. SPARK continues to evolve rapidly as the space is changing so quickly and so has been the adoption by our industry. And later this year, we’ll launch the industry’s first climate tech conference. A community of 5,000 business event professionals in more than 40 countries is now engaged with SPARK, stepping ahead of the technology revolution that is coming at us and coming at us quickly. Please join us if you haven’t already, by visiting sparkit.ai. As we navigate a new world, AI truly can be our co-pilot.