Decoding Tomorrow:
Futurism and Foresights Today

Meetings International - the global magazine for the meetings and events industry - interviewed me in their cover story on the Future of Events and what I call the Transformation Economy. Given COVID19, the conference industry is under massive pressure to transform, virtualise and at speed needs to figure out how to connect with analogue hearts and digital minds. Having said that, we forecast in this 2017 interview that the industry would be transitioning from just creating 'experiences' to truly disseminating ideas in a 'transformational' and 'transformative' fashion. The time to change is now. Corona-induced lockdowns and prevention of travel is the clearest signal from the future that event professionals, meeting planners, and the industry needs to adapt and pivot. Today. 

Here are a few excerpts on the transformation of events interview (by Robert Cotter):

"In whatever form the future materialises, what is certain is that technology is driving major transformation, including the forging of a transformation economy. Whilst futurists are doing the analytical work for us, signalling what are the key drivers of change and what they will mean for us, the job of a meeting planner will be to learn and adapt to them, which will in turn mean shaping a very different meetings and event industry with very different events for a successful path into the future... Future delegates expecting to be ’transformed’ by events they have carefully chosen to dedicate their time to will clearly have to be served with transformed events, compared to the events of today, for them to achieve these goals. One of the tools at the forefront of how such transformation may be molded is the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) alongside the widespread use of apps within and behind events...“

“While the experience economy still matters we’re moving into a ’transformation economy’, where people want to deal with brands or organisations that are going to help them self-actualise in some way, shape or form, such [as Nike]“ ... "We can be nudged in a smaller or bigger fashion into making smarter decisions that will see us transform as humans and I think that’s a really important development in terms of running events and wanting people to be changed in a bigger or a smaller way,” says Anders Sörman-Nilsson.

“I think we can learn from companies that have moved into that transformation economy, and look at how we design experiences, but also content that’s going to both inspire avant-garde ideas for rational minds and also lead to a change of heart, which then opens us all up for learning that can be more seamless. The convention industry is already in the transformation economy – it’s just that some conventions do it better than others.”

My final reflection in 2020 is: will the analogue continue to be great for transformation and digital great for information, or can we innovate virtual events that are truly transformational? The future of events is likely to be a hybrid - #Digilogue - blend of both the digital and the analogue.

What do you think? Where is the events and conference industry headed? Feel free to comment below, or download the full Meetings International article here. 

OVER THE YEARS I HAVE BEEN WORKING AS A TREND ANALYST AND FUTURIST FOR BRANDS LIKE FACEBOOK, JAGUAR LAND ROVER, APPLE, MCKINSEY, MICROSOFT, KERASTASE, MINI, LEGO AND MERCEDES. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A CUSTOM TREND REPORT AND VIRTUAL DEBRIEF FOR YOUR ORGANISATION PLEASE LET US KNOW BELOW.