Predictions for the future of event

Predictions for the future of events
In 2000 a conference was held in Sydney Australia, entitled ‘Events beyond 2000 – setting the agenda’ which brought together most of the leading academics authors on events at that time. One of the keynote addresses was given by Joe Jeff Goldblatt, and in his talk entitled ‘A future for event management: the analysis of major trends impacting the emerging profession’ he predicted the major trends that would impact on the event profession over the next 25 years. Now that we are half-way through his timescale of predictions it is prudent to see which have come true. He split his predictions into 3 categories of environmental, technological and human resource and gave five-year period changes. By 2015 he believed that for human resource issues, more women would enter management roles within the events business (a verifiable trend), there would be a shorter working week (not in the event fields) and a proliferation of funeral events as the population expands yet people request life celebrations as opposed to more traditional religious ceremonies (not conclusive). In relation to technology, he predicted we would capitalize on e-commerce (advancements evolve daily in the 21st century), broadband offering real-time live (virtual events) and 24-hour complete system integration whereby event attendance is a full participation event over a long time period from before, during and after (beginning to emerge). With regard to environmental issues the big change is state intervention in setting environmental management standards, especially in relation to global warming (true, with BS 8901 the industry standard in the UK).
What, however, are his future predictions for the industry? Regarding environmental issues he believes water shortages will result in more recycling and purification systems at events and advances in medical care will see a wider age span of people involved with and enjoying events. Considering human resource issues, the future predictions include machines replacing some and the ageing population remaining mentally active for longer. Finally, from the technology standpoint, he predicts that by 2025 we will see interplanetary events and robots being involved in event production – an interesting and exciting prediction.
Whether you believe in these predictions or not, the truth is that many of his forecasts from 2000 to 2015 have come fruition. What is clear is the role that technology and social media will have within the event management industry (and the earlier section on social media confirms this).