The 15th annual meeting of the Slovenian Convention Bureau (SCB), hosted by company Postojnska Jama (Postojna Cave), took place on Tuesday, 12th March, at the Hotel Jama in Postojna in the beautiful scenery of the Karst plateau Nanos. The main theme of the meeting attended by an enviable number of hundred participants was the opportunities and threats in the meeting industry. Welcome addresses were given by Marjan Batagelj, CEO of company Postojnska Jama that owns also Hotel Jama, Karmen Novarlič, Head of Business Communication Department at the Slovenian Tourist Board, and Matjaž Žnidaršič, President of the Advisory Board of SCB.
After the welcome notes, the keynote speakers, Jurriaen Sleijster, president and COO of MCI Group from Switzerland, and Patrick Delaney, managing partner of SoolNua from Ireland, impressed the attendees with separate lectures on trends in business industry. Sleijster focused on macro trends with a lecture titled Headwinds or tailwinds? 5 big trends that will re-define how the business world evolves over the next 5 years, while Delaney’s focal point of the lecture 5 trends impacting Business events now were micro trends in business industry. The interesting thematic section was perfectly rounded by an interactive workshop, where each of the formed 10 groups had to find one opportunity in the selected trend which was presented and evaluated by the competing groups.
Workshop was followed by a formal part with election of the new SCB Board Member. Miha Kovačič, director of SCB, announced the winner of the voting, Natalija Bah Čad, project manager at Toleranca Marketing, as the new board member of Slovenian Convention Bureau. Bah Čad has more than twenty years of experience as PCO and was one of the founding organizers of Conventa and an indispensable part of the organizing team ever since.
Kovačič later presented the successes of 2018 and introduced the SCB’s Strategy for Business events 2019 – 2021. After Q&A the SCB certificates, standards of SCB in the meetings industry, have been handed out to various meetings providers. At this point, the meeting was formally concluded, while some of the participants attended the evening gathering that provided networking among the stakeholders as well as the time for welcome celebration for the SCB0’s new advisory member. We congratulate Natalija Bah Čad for her new position, as well as to SCB for excellent organisation, and to Postojnska Jama for spotless hosting of the whole event.
