My earliest experiences of conferencing were, as a trainee careers officer in the early 1970s, attending the annual residential "get-together" for Careers Service staff. We assembled for a week-long event at Avoncroft, a converted country mansion in the Worcestershire countryside, an area best known as the setting for BBC Radio 4 programme "The Archers".

The format of the event was not dissimilar to what might be experienced today: plenary sessions with some visiting speakers, syndicate work with reports back, an educational visit to a local employer. The pleasures of the event included basic bedrooms which, of course, were not en-suite, had no TV, and entailed sharing with someone you barely knew. Audio-visual technology meant the proverbial OHP and flipchart plus, if you were really lucky, the occasional 8mm slide presentation.

Before the dawn of IT
Back in the 1970s there was no concept of a conference ‘industry’ and certainly I had no inkling that I would later develop my own career within it. Caroline Roney, recently retired as a professional conference organiser, recalls her own experiences of setting up in business in 1973, when “there were no training schemes, computers were in their infancy, fax machines had not been born and the Internet was still an apple in someone’s eye. Delegate registrations were filed on a card index system and delegate lists were run off on Roneo machines – the most precious asset was the golf ball… the typewriter variety!”

How things have changed 30 years later. Fundamentally, we can now see that the industry is at last achieving some recognition for the good it can do - not only in providing major financial and employment benefits for local and national economies, but also in promoting international peace and understanding. An overstated claim? I think not. More than 9,000 major international conventions are held annually - these are events with a minimum of 300 participants, with delegates from at least five different countries, who stay for at least three days. And the UK receives approximately 750,000 international conference delegates every year. That's a whole lot of hand-shakes and meetings, cross-cultural exchanges, and opportunities for increased international understanding.

And the industry is now maturing. In the UK well over 3,000 venues are promoting themselves as conference and meetings venues. The Avoncrofts of the 1970s have been replaced by purpose-designed conference and training centres (of the likes of Initial Style, Hayley and Conference Centres of Excellence), projected to grow in number by a further 20% over the next four to five years. At an international level, more than 200 countries are competing aggressively for their share of the lucrative congress and conventions market.

Choice is the name of the game
Investment in facilities continues apace and at record high levels, measured in billions of pounds. Hotel chains have developed their dedicated conference brands; most major UK cities have built (or are planning to build) glistening, high-tech convention centres; many universities have developed year-round availability in decent quality accommodation; and there is a plethora of unique venues (sports stadia, castles, tourist attractions, theatres, et al) targeting the conference market as an additional revenue stream.

Technology is revolutionising the ways in which conferences are marketed and staged: e-marketing and "e-blasts", webcasting and virtual conferences, virtual "tours" of venues, data projectors commonplace even in syndicate rooms; all these and many more are everyday features of conferencing in 2004.

We now regularly read of the conference "industry", an established sector of the UK economy, worth almost £8 billion a year in direct revenue to conference and meeting venues, plus several billion pounds more in expenditure by delegates and organisers to cover travel costs, entertainment and related items. More and more colleges and universities are today running courses in conference and event management, at NVQ, undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The PA is in the frame
The industry has established databases of buyers and suppliers, and the key roles that secretaries and PAs have long played, not only in booking venues but also in the wider aspects of conference and meetings management, are now being recognised. Most publications and websites aimed at PAs and secretaries will include substantial articles and advertising from conference destinations and venues. Familiarisation visits are organised, specifically targeting these same buyers and influencers. Stands at trade exhibitions are frequently designed to attract visitors from the PA sector.

Market segmentation of this kind is crucial for those promoting their facilities and services within the meetings sector. Understanding clients’ needs and expectations is essential if another of the twenty-first century’s priorities, ROI (or measuring return on investment), is to be achieved. There’s little point in promoting your 50-seater conference venue to someone who only organises events for 200 delegates-plus!

Much has indeed changed over the past 30 years but the essence of what the conference industry is all about remains unchanging and immutable. We are still a people industry dealing in live events on a face-to-face basis. We can achieve a lot through our electronic communications and virtual meetings, but the lasting benefits offered by conferences, such as inspiration, education, building new business relationships and friendships, can only be fully experienced through the interpersonal chemistry of face-to-face meetings. If we lose that, our humanity will be demeaned, perhaps forever.