The Meeting Support Institute, a nonprofit association that supports a new discipline in the meetings industry coined Meeting Architecture, is organizing the FRESH Conference, January 15–17, 2012 at the new Bella Sky Comwell hotel in Copenhagen. Maarten Vanneste, CMM, president of the Meeting Support Institute, announced the new conference at the IMEX Frankfurt trade show in late May. He published a book, Meeting Architecture, a Manifesto, in 2008, which defined meeting architecture as a discipline concerned with objective-based design, execution, and measurement of content and format of meetings and events.

The design committee behind the FRESH conference includes those on the steering committee of Project Meeting Architecture, the volunteer group moving the new discipline forward, as well as representatives of VisitDenmark and Wonderful Copenhagen Convention & Visitors Bureau, who are lending support to the meeting. It is expected to attract 100 to 150 professional planners, designers, facilitators, and suppliers working on the content side of meetings and conferences, all of whom can expect “fresh tools, formats, science, technology, experimentation, and innovation, which are purely practical and applicable for designing meetings,” according to Vanneste. “There will not be any personal development or general business topics,” he adds.

While the attendees will be largely from Europe, Vanneste says there will likely be a significant North American contingent as well.

More information will be available on the Meetings Support Institute Web site and Meeting Architecture LinkedIn group. Interested participants can take a five-minute survey about the FRESH Conference.