PCMA Education Foundation to fund Phase 2 of GCB ‘Future Meeting Space’ project

The German Convention Bureau (GCB) has announced that the Education Foundation of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) is to fund the second phase of its ‘Future Meeting Space’ research project. Future Meeting Space is a co-operation between the GCB, the European Association of Event Centres (EVVC) and the Institute for Industrial Engineering of the Fraunhofer Association (IAO) – Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation. In June 2016, the research findings of the first phase of the project resulted in an ‘Innovation Catalogue’ and six ‘Future Meeting Scenarios’, which authors say mirror current developments in the meetings industry. Building on these findings, the innovation network developed the ‘Future Meeting Room’, a practical example which helps both meeting planners and suppliers to meet future needs and requirements of meeting participants. (Results of the first phase of the research project can be found here.) The second phase of the project will build on the initial results and investigate how different elements of meeting methodology and technology affect the success factors of events such as user acceptance, knowledge sharing, learning progress and experience value for different types of participants. By August 2018, the Future Meeting Space project aims to deliver specific, hands-on recommendations for all in the business events industry to create successful future events given the ever-changing meetings landscape. “The Future Meeting Space project is critical to helping organisations better engage their event participants. The PCMA Education Foundation is a perfect addition to the innovation alliance team as we build upon phase one of the project,” says GCB managing director Matthias Schultze. Meredith Rollins, executive director of the PCMA Education Foundation, adds: “We’re glad to be partnering with the GCB’s innovation alliance to define how participants will engage with future meeting design. Education is key to success for our industry and this research projects tackles an issue that will shape our industry today and for the future.”