PCMA to build Asian presence after Bangkok event

The event, which took place in Bangkok from August 28-31, gathered 60 delegates from professional associations, the Association Management Companies (AMC) and meeting planners. 
Deborah Sexton, PCMA's president and CEO, said Thailand has always been at the very top of its Asia focus, adding that its members are interested in pursuing business opportunities in the country.
She said the event was “a wonderful opportunity for us to bring this group together”. 
“PCMA is truly about education to inspire, connect and innovate the business events community with senior level networking and educational opportunities,” Sexton said. 
"There are big demands on business events today. People have many choices where they may be getting their education so our members have to deliver the best and the most exciting education to drive their member organisation.
“It is a very competitive environment today which we all know. Our job is to make sure precisely what our members are able to do and they are also able to connect with all of you when they come to this region. So that they have ability to be connected in this region at a very high level, which I think it is terribly important.”
When asking about any possible gap in cultural understandings, she said: “Participants needed to come to the region to understand the region and together with the region build on how best to deliver the cultural norms that are happening in the specific region and how best to incorporate that in any meeting that they might take.”
Participants needed to think about how Thailand bring that type of education that precisely why they are looking at various Asian cultures and how best to make sure that those are shared, respected and understood before they came into a specific region.Mary Pat Helftman, PCMA chairwoman of the board of directors, said: “When we look back on PCMA membership 10 years ago, about 40 per cent of our members did business internationally and now it is almost 80 per cent. The importance of both is North American players and event strategists learning about where there are opportunities to bring meetings and collaborate with the industry.”

Acquisition in Singapore 
Sexton said the recent acquisition of Singapore-based ICESAP (the Incentive, Conference and Event Society Asia Pacific) is exposing PCMA to a much larger corporate market in Asia. She believed that both associations and the corporate market could learn from one another at a high level
“ So PCMA wanted to bring both of the communities together as related to education and relationship building to learn from one another today in delivering quality business events,” she said.
Deborah also mentioned that the recent acquisition of Singapore-based ICESAP (the Incentive, Conference and Event Society Asia Pacific) is exposing PCMA to a much larger corporate market in Asia. She believed that both associations and corporate market could learn from one another at a high level. So PCMA wanted to bring both of the communities together as related to education and relationship building to learn from one another today in delivering quality business events.In addition, she commented on digital meeting trends that probably began around six years ago when hybrid meetings and digital meetings surfaced. “Everyone was convinced it would destroy face-to-face events and that there would be no more face-to-face events and everything would be online,” she said. 
“However, we should understand it better if indeed that was going to happen. We had better get our arms around what we were going to do if that was true and if it was not, we needed to understand it so that we could work with it.”
In January, the PCMA created a live broadcast of a face-to-face event for its flagship event “Convening Leaders” from Austin, Texas, to Asian business event professionals. 
Asian business event professionals not attending in person were able to watch and take part in a special broadcast of two Convening Leaders sessions.
"This year alone, we have 1,900 people online, of which 1,600 are online for more than six to eight hours, which is a long time,” she said.
“What really happened was we have been tracking for six years and we see two things. 
“We see many people coming to our face-to-face events once they experienced as a non-member the type of education being shared. 
That is number one. More importantly, we also are watching how they engage |with our organization. Some 68 per cent of people that come online are non-members.”
 This is our opportunity to say this is what PCMA is about and we want to share that".Meanwhile, Chiruit Isarangkun Na Ayuthaya, president of Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau, a host of the event, said that convention industry was very important. Last year, Thailand improved its ranking from 27 to 24 in the world rankings by the International Congress and Convention Association in a category of country rankings for international meetings. 
The bureau expected that the convention sector this year would generate Bt30 billion in revenue for the country.