ICCA Congress main event gets creative to engage global audience remotely

With the members of International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) convening this year remotely in their home base through an online/offline hybrid congress, the hosts have devised ways that will enable the beauty of host city Kaohsiung to be conveyed through screens and facilitate online human connection.

Jason Yeh, ICCA Board Member and CEO of GIS Group in Taiwan, told TTGassociations that “greater effort” was needed to put together the 59th ICCA Congress, which will be conducted across a six-week-long Global Hybrid Congress Experience at seven regional hubs in the lead up to the main event in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung city.

Kaohsiung sights will be conveyed through online social programmes during the congress

Prior to the pandemic, the 2020 congress was slated to be held in Kaohsiung.

“With this new format of meeting, we needed unique ways to engage our members and participants,” Yeh said.

One of the highlights, according to Yeh, is a special performance on November 1, a day before the official opening of the Congress.

“We will also pay a visit to GIS Kaohsiung Asia’s New Bay Area Convention Center where we will mix a temple fair concept with heavy metal music. The whole activity will be presented like a TV programme; it will be very exciting,” shared Yeh.

To ensure members attending the main event remotely are able to feel connected with their peers, a “global connection” activity will be conducted on the opening day.

“We will get every participant online to come together to create a song, by contributing a few key words or a melody, which we will then combine to produce what could be a Kaohsiung anthem. It functions as an online teambuilding, and I cannot wait to see how it turns out,” added Yeh.

With barely two weeks to the main event, the 59th ICCA Congress has so far attracted more than 700 registrations for both the regional and main events, with even more expected to stream in before the show opens.

According to an ICCA spokesperson, the most popular sessions during the six-week lead-up were the virtual congress launch; the Global economic trends to master recovery session with IFC Global Macro’s Jean Pierre Lacombe; and the Introducing the Kaohsiung Protocol session led by Talley Management Group’s Gregg Talley and MMGY NextFactor’s Paul Ouimet. All three sessions were conducted on September 22.