This week organizers for the annual IBC Show offered a preview of its plans for the upcoming annual event, Sept. 11-14 at the RAI Amsterdam.
IBC President Mike Crimp said the show will increase its emphasis on networking opportunities both at the show and online.
To that end, the show is launching the “Brain Date Lounge” an initiative that will help attendees prepare in advance of the show.
Brain Date Lounge will enable attendees to form their own peer groups online prior to the show and will be seeded with expert discussions from IBC consultants and from the show’s conference program around key topics, according to Crimp.
“People can go on there and form their own key topics and gather a group of people around them to do that,” he said. “I suppose the power of IBC is, in a way, is the power to convene, so all of those people will be able to take their meetings online to create an actual meeting between them on site in the Brain Date Lounge, and they will be able to sit down, discuss their topics, discuss what they've seen, create their own knowledge networks.”
The show’s “Future Tech” zone, in Hall 14, will increase its focus on startups with the launch of “Future Tech Ignite,” dedicated to startups, emerging tech, future talent, and the creative community, according to Joe.
“We're also extending our partnership with EIT Culture and Creativity, and they are going to become the Future Tech Ignite innovation partner, which will really help strengthen IBC links with Europe's creative innovation communities,” said Jo Meyer, head of marketing for IBC.
Expanded from a single day to all four days of the show, “Ignite Stage”in the Future Tech area, will feature startup pitches, future-focused sessions, and talent/skills content across all four days of the show, Meyer added.
Key themes for this year’s show are: the transformation of sport, trust and authenticity, and new commercial models, which tie into the show’s three guiding pillars of shifting business models, transformative tech, and increasingly, people and purpose, according to Crimp.
“Those pillars are a consistent framework for the conversations that matter most to the industry,” he said.
Exhibition space itself should exceed 45,000 square meters this year with more than 1,200 exhibitors across 14 halls, according to Steve Connolly, IBC’s director of sales.
Last year, the show had 46,000 square meters of exhibition space and an estimated 1,300 exhibitors.
“Some key areas of the show are performing particularly strongly,” Connolly said. “Future Tech in Hall 14 and Content Everywhere in Hall 5 are both significantly ahead of last year in terms of bookings.”
Crimp said that they’re confident that attendance will be strong and that they'll be able to weather some of the issues that plagued the NAB Show in April, where attendance was softer than previous years.
“I think at the moment we are tracking really strongly against last year,” Crimp said. “We're an international show and a very welcoming show. Who knows what’s going to happen in the Middle East, if that's going to get worse, but I at the moment we're very confident that we will deliver numbers sort of in line with last year."
To register for the show, visit https://show.ibc.org.
