Outgoing UFI managing director Paul Woodward bids farewell after five years leading the association.
This will be my last column for EW as UFI managing director and, as you might imagine, it’s set me thinking. After 51⁄2 years running our industry’s leading global association, there have been a lot of air miles, a lot of presentations and a lot of issues to grapple with. It’s been hugely exciting, and I will be delighted to hand over a strong association representing a robust industry to my successor, Kai Hattendorf.
During my time leading the UFI team in Paris, Hong Kong, and Sharjah, I have written 15 of these columns and it was interesting to look back at what has engaged us during that time. Six key themes emerge: globalisation, the blurring of boundaries between different event disciplines, a focus on quality and professionalism, a concern for the next generation of employees and customers, the need for better promotion and communication of our industry and,
of course, the impact of the digital revolution on our business. All still represent key challenges for everyone doing business in the exhibitions industry.
When I came to the UFI HQ in 2010, many parts of the world were still in the throes of the global economic downturn. Although you wouldn’t believe it listening to all the politicians, we’re largely out of that now. Our industry has once again proven itself to be very resilient and, although not everybody is thriving, the exhibitions business is healthy. The last edition of our important Global Barometer research showed all parts of the world including, finally, Europe showing good growth.
During my time in the job, I have been privileged to meet UFI members and other key industry players in 40 countries. That means, I fear, that I leave the carbon footprint of a yeti and have witnessed the impact of global warming first hand in many places, perhaps, most memorably, watching the snow melting for the first time in living memory on the peak of Cotopaxi in Ecuador.
Sustainability remains a key challenge for our industry and I am proud of the work that has been done in that area by our UFI Sustainable Development Committee, dragging the issues from the fringes of discussion to a much more appropriate key place on the industry’s agenda.
There are no doubt exciting times ahead for the exhibition world. Exciting opportunity will be balanced with multiple challenges including the harnessing of technology, slower world growth and the disruption caused by political upheavals in several parts of the world. Security concerns, sadly, will remain on our members’ agendas.
But, overall, the picture is positive. We know events are hugely effective for our customers. We know that people, young and old, want to come to events and we know that those events are likely to look different to the ones we have organised in the past. I am very confident that UFI will remain at the centre of helping the industry to understand and define that new future.
