ICCA Big Data Search tool opens up 25,000 potential association meeting ambassadors

The International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) claims its upgraded Big Data Search tool, just launched, offers members 25,000 high-potential association meeting ambassadors –10,000 more than before. At ICCA’s 2014 Congress in Antalya last year, ICCA launched an extra sophistication to its original Big Data Search for potential local meeting ambassadors, identifying whether professors and academics identified in Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search are also featured within the websites of associations and congresses in the selected academic field. This makes them more likely to be involved in the organisation of a new edition of the association’s conference and thus very important contacts to identify for ICCA members. That process initially identified approximately 15,000 high-potential local meeting ambassadors. Since then, new meetings, mainly taking place in 2014 and confirmed for the future, have been added to the ICCA Association Database. An additional 10,000 academics have been identified based on association and conference websites of these newly identified meetings. ICCA CEO Martin Sirk (pictured): “By automating the research to see if high-profile academics, as identified with our Big Data Search tool, are actually active with an association and its meetings, we create a shortcut for ICCA members to identify suitable local meeting ambassadors. This should save our members a lot of research time.” ICCA’s Big Data Search gives the association’s members a simple way to search vast public databases of academic content and contacts. The results are linked to the structure of ICCA’s own Association Database, containing profiles of 20,000 regularly-occurring international association meetings. Identifying leading academic contacts in specified cities and regions, related to a specific meeting in the ICCA Association Database or a specific meeting subject, is a crucial step in preparing a successful bid to host the next edition of an association’s international meeting. The 54^th ICCA Congress takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1-4 November 2015.