Future Congress

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Stuttgart/Singen. We’re interested in topics of the future! So, let’s head straight to the modern town hall in Singen to take part in mice lab: 2015, thought the Stuttgart-based event agency what when why.
The theme: “Congress of the Future” was well suited to the modern town hall in Singen, and in exciting, interactive stages, the topics that the interdisciplinary group of experts had developed over the past year were presented, discussed, expanded upon and summarised.

In the search for the “big thing”, the jack-of-all-trades of the successful congress of the future, the focus was primarily on the new perspectives and supposed necessities arising from drastically changed reception habits and the drive for greater interactivity. This gave rise to fundamental questions that are of crucial importance for the modern reform of the largely extremely conservative conference industry, both today and in the future:

• How should conferences be designed in future so that knowledge can be effectively learned, generated, developed, networked and experienced there?
• What is needed to transform the same old disastrous one-way presentations into inspiring and lasting events?
• What are the values, attitudes and requirements for insightful conferences where experience, interaction, encounter and open exchange take centre stage?
• What are the dramaturgies, methods and formats of the conference of the future?
• How can the fresh impetus of new design ideas for future conferences be conveyed to those in charge?
• What people, methods and training formats are needed to implement innovation permanently into conference operations?
• Exciting questions to which concrete answers have been found in some cases, but which have also remained in their experimental stage.

Conclusion: It is good to see that the vanguard of innovative thinkers is reflecting on the very essence of the conference and placing targeted human interaction at the centre of their considerations. The “Internet of Things” sets the pace for today’s knowledge transfer and is the defining factor in human communication and reception habits. Conferences and other formats of face-to-face interaction can and must learn from this. They will only retain their irreplaceable raison d’être if organisers succeed in channelling the power of personal encounters into enriching direct exchange, participation and interaction.