Attracting more than 9,200 visitors and hosted buyers to Barcelona in early December, EIBTM marked an attendance increase of 10 percent over 2010. The three days of the show encompassed education and networking, including nearly 65,000 pre-scheduled appointments between hosted buyers and exhibitors.

In addition to the traditional exhibit booths, EIBTM this year launched the Future Events Experience, an area of the show floor that featured both presentations on the future of meetings as well as tabletop demonstrations of products from 15 technology companies who came together to create the space, which was sponsored by Newtonstrand and SyncPartners. The idea for the space comes from a theory of education called “the learning cone,” says Adi Ben-Nesher of SyncPartners, which posits that “the more you are involved in activities, the more you learn.” The goals of the Future Events Experience was to move from the traditional passive meeting experience to a model based on Apple stores, where you play with the products.

Presentations from the Future Events Experience, including Maarten Vanneste on Meeting Architecture, Shull Golovinski on attendee-generated content, Ruud Janssen on disruptive creativity, and many more are available online. 

Many other resources, including presentation materials, photos, videos, and reports are available at the EIBTM Web site. 

EIBTM 2012 is set for November 27–29. Other events in the “IBTM” portfolio in the coming year are:

AIME: Melbourne, Australia; February 21–22
GIBTM: Abu Dhabi, UAE; March 26–28
AIBTM: Baltimore, Md.; June 19–21
CIBTM: Beijing, China; September 12–14