Industry prosperity, people and the planet: the heart of IMEX America’s learning program

i By September 29, 2021 No Comments

“Now is the time to rethink everything,” says Carina Bauer, CEO of the IMEX Group. “We’ve always believed that event design is a fundamental skill for professionals in our industry. Now it’s incumbent on us all to strengthen our sector’s recovery, and the wider world in a way that’s regenerative and sustainable for all by putting these skills to the test. We’ve created an education program delivering fresh thinking around the future of meeting and event design along with sessions dedicated to true sustainability, diversity, humanity and technology among other topics.”

The free learning program at IMEX America, taking place November 9-11 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, launches with Smart Monday, powered by MPI, on November 8 and continues with a series of workshops, hot topic tables and seminars during the three days of the show. As always, the show will also feature daily MPI keynotes.  Click HERE for full details.

The IMEX team has rethought its education tracks this year, introducing five streams that reflect current industry challenges and priorities.

  • Professional Development and Upskilling
  • Creativity in Communication
  • Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
  • Innovation and Tech
  • Purposeful Recovery

Event design to power people & the planet

In Intentional design for a purposeful recovery, Mariela McIlwraith, vice-president, Sustainability and Industry Advancement at EIC, details how the organization’s Principles for Recovery and Sustainable Events can help to activate the power of events to drive recovery based on people, planet and prosperity.

Collaboration in event design sits front and center of #EventCanvas: Your map to extraordinary meetings. Roel Frissen and Ruud Janssen, inventors of #EventCanvas and co-founders of the Event Design Collective, want to help teams look at their “big picture goals” and bring a broader range of stakeholders into the design process.

How can we create meaningful experiences that move audiences? this is one of the challenges tackled in EventMB’s Event Innovation Lab™. The team will share real-life examples of event design used to drive engagement as well as best practices in budgeting and securing revenue from sponsorships.

Sustainability must be included from the very start of any event design process. That’s according to Courtney Lohmann, director of Corporate Social Responsibility at PRA. Her session—Sustainability is key to your event design—argues a strong case for integrated sustainability when setting goals and objectives.

Using event design to deliver a “regenerative revolution” and learning from nature to help attendees have a healthier, happier and more meaningful event experience is covered in The future we want: Catalyzing a regenerative revolution. Aaron Dorsey, senior director, Product Management and Amy Kramer, market and product innovation leader, share their organization’s learning from the pandemic, the challenges they faced, and new disruptors they uncovered in this fireside chat.

AI is a technology that can drive audience engagement explains Michael Campanelli, co-founder CEO of Chillwall AI. “Whether you want to be a better marketer, offer a superior visitor experience, or boost revenues, understanding emotion cues is essential. AI can help… massively.” He will deliver the session Decoding decision-making and the power of human-centric AI.

Backstage tours & desert trips

Alongside the education on the show floor, attendees can also explore IMEX America’s new venue, Mandalay Bay, in a series of tours. Meeting centric tours with MGM Resorts offer an exclusive look into the behind-the-scenes operation of the resort and convention center. The MGM team along with MeetGreen, EIC and GES, will also take participants out into Nevada’s desert to visit MGM Resort’s Mega Solar Array as part of the “Measuring and managing event carbon footprints & Solar Array tour.

In the video below, IMEX’s Knowledge & Events Director, Dale Hudson, and Senior Advocacy & Industry Relations Advisor, Natasha Richards discuss the show’s extensive speaker program, new tracks and new show initiatives.