Demand Surges For Creative Business Events — Meetings Innovation Report

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The Future of Meetings & Events

Earlier this year, the Skift crew convened inside a gracious brownstone home in Gramercy Park for our annual SkiftOne day to discuss our core values and collective vision. Getting out of the office to get out of our heads and think beyond the daily deadlines was fundamental to the success of that day.

It’s getting easier to find creative venues for internal corporate events thanks to the sharing economy. Companies like Spacebase in Europe are developing online peer-to-peer platforms that offer creative, independently owned venues for rent ranging from photography studios to hipster cafes. These types of spaces have always been available for group bookings, but they’ve never been this easy to search for by location, capacity, and price.

Patric Weiler, deputy market head for American Express Meetings & Events in Germany, told me there’s growing demand for unique venues coming from all industries and age groups. “The meetings industry is changing, and the classic silos are breaking up about how to plan a meeting,” he said. “I think all of these silos should be deleted.” Read the full story here.

— Greg Oates, Senior Editor

Social Quote of the Day

“Don’t miss Miguel Neves, digital content & community manager at IMEX, discuss how event organizers can enhance exhibitor exposure with social media, but still maintain the value of face-to-face connections. Live on August 11, 2016 at 11 AM EST”

— IMEX on Facebook

Hospitality & Tourism

Companies Look Beyond Hotels to the Sharing Economy For Cool Meeting Venues: The ease and availability of booking creative meeting venues online is shifting how and where companies host their internal meetings. Spacebase in Europe has partnerships with more than 1,700 unique spaces ranging from house boats to advertising agencies. Read more at Skift

Las Vegas Will Get Its First Non-Stop Flights to China in December: The new Hainan Airlines service arriving three times weekly from Beijing will help drive higher convention attendance from Asia into Las Vegas. Securing the new direct service has been in the works for a decade. Read more at Skift

3 Key Quotes That Will Shape The Future of Meetings and Conventions: PCMA CEO Deborah Sexton says, “An association used to be the place you went for knowledge. Now, you go wherever the knowledge is best presented and where you can meet up with thought leaders.” What does that mean for association events and how destinations host them? Read more at PCMA

Next Generation Event UX

Samsung to Publish Some Rio Olympics Programming in Virtual Reality: The Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games gives Samsung a huge worldwide audience and tons of excellent content opportunities to expand exposure around VR tech at large-scale events. Read more at Skift

The Olympics May Give Virtual Reality Its Long-Anticipated Close-Up: How NBC and Samsung’s virtual reality partnership plays out during the Olympics could easily end up being one the most interesting things — to tech observers, at least — to emerge during the Summer Games over the next two weeks. Read more at AdWeek

Oracle Reimagines Oracle OpenWorld For a New Era: This year, Oracle OpenWorld is being organized as a collective learning experience — “an audience-centric approach to event design,” says Tania Weidick, VP of event marketing at Oracle. “Our core values for Oracle OpenWorld 2016 are to foster community, foster learning, promote innovation, and celebrate our customers and partners’ successes.” Read more at Forbes

8 Reasons Facebook Live May Be the Next Big Thing for Events: Facebook Live engages event audiences in real time with two-way communication via the Live Reaction feature. It also allows events to be saved on your channel indefinitely until you decide to delete them. Read more at Eventbrite

Event Spotlight: Matter

Meet Matter: Pure’s First Collaborative Un-conference: According to Pure: “We consistently underestimate the talent of those around us, preferring to place our trust in the outdated idea of the ‘sage on a stage.’ With the advent of social media and the shared economy, we think it’s time to inject a little energy into this faded formula by putting our community center stage.” Love the event promo video below. Read more at Pure Life Experiences

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The Skift Meetings Innovation Report is curated by Skift senior editor Greg Oates [[email protected]]. The newsletter is emailed every Wednesday.

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