‘A diamond is only a piece of coal that did well under extreme pressure’
It started with Mobile World Congress. The annual behemoth where the mobile industry comes together for networking, thought leadership and tapas each February. This was cancelled at the relatively last moments, due to major sponsors coming from China and the threat of coronavirus as part of this. At the time I remember feeling a lot of empathy with old colleagues and acquaintances; that would have been at least 6 months if not a year’s work, gone. However, I also naively thought that was something unique to them due to the global attendance of the show. How wrong I was. Since then, and this was a relatively short time ago, the world and the events industry has changed completely. Pan-European B2B exhibitions, conferences and networking events happening in the next few months have now all been cancelled or postponed. Including for us the very exciting launch into new territories that was FinTech Connect Toronto.
Out of difficult times though tends to come innovation, reinvention and opportunity. I consider it ironic that I have spent the past 10+ years writing or curating live content about the digital transformation of other people’s industries, without considering the potential for my own. Now though the transformation in the events industry is in full swing; and it is rather exciting. The future, at least for the short to medium term it virtual. It has the potential to change the way you network, change the way you learn, and severely diminish your lanyard collection.
For our part we already try to give to you an incredibly strong digital offering; if you have not listened to our recent webinar on interoperability, which we ran in partnership with R3, you really should; it’s ace! This wonderful content will only increase as we try to engage with your community of avid FinTechers on a 365-day basis. In the coming months you can expect us to provide you with virtual roundtables and webinars on questions which are at the centre of the industry currently including; ‘how should financial institutions drive innovation in an age of compliance?’ & ‘is the b2b payments market undergoing a revolution?’ We will also be offering you the 2020 edition of our annual FinTech Connect State of the Industry Reports, as well as a number of curated specific industry reports and whitepapers. Lastly, we will be working with the global thought leaders we were intending to host in Toronto to try to display as much of that content as possible digitally.
We hope you like it.
With our flagship London event it is full steam ahead, taking place at the London ExCeL Centre December 2nd and 3rd. We will be hosting our advisory board meetings, virtually of course, next week. This will help shape the agendas, which will be out and online by early summer. We will bring the global ecosystem all under one roof, and run an event the old school way, in the real world.
