Our AIMEbassador Program is an opportunity for passionate, like-minded business events professionals to come together, support AIME and help shape the future of our industry.

Silke Calder, AIME Event Director, met with three of our AIMEbassadors who shared three lessons they’ve learnt on their business events journey…

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Lesson 1: Sustainability is multi-faceted

So much more than reducing waste, true sustainability means applying this lens across all aspects of your business or event. For AIMEbassador and Founder of The Business Events Network, Paula Rowntree, this involves tackling sustainability across three areas: financial, social and environmental.

Financial: where possible investing in areas of sustainability and using social enterprise and First Nation organisations. AIME is a great opportunity to speak to venues and suppliers directly about their sustainability measures to help up-level your events.

Social: Looking at the legacy we leave. As an example, we [Australian Psychological Society, where Paula is Head of Events] will be running free workshops for small business owners in Wellington around creating mentally healthy workplaces that lead to increased productivity. This ensures we’re raising the profile of psychologists while also leaving a lasting positive impact.

Environmental: Environmentally, we’ve moved to green in everything we do from collateral and merchandise to ensuring venues we use source local produce to minimize our transport carbon footprint.

Lesson 2: Make events immersive, experiential and transformative

I hate to bring up the P-word, but the pandemic changed our industry drastically. As events professionals we’ve mastered the pivot and have proven that we can deliver successful in-person, hybrid and online events. While the return of in-person events is all the buzz, when the novelty fades event planners will need to ensure every moment spent away from the desk is incredibly worthwhile. By the same token, now that digital is not the only way, virtual events will have the bar raised too.

Chief Commercial Officer of The Venues Collection and AIMEbassador El Kwang predicts that using psychology to design transformative events and experiences will be one way to tackle this conundrum.

According to Paula Rowntree, immersive technologies such as VR and AR will be especially relevant for educational conferences. In her mind, our industry is set to become more experiential than ever.

Lesson 3: Use Incentive travel for more than just hitting sales targets

Traditionally used to motivate employees to reach KPIs, our AIMEbassadors see incentive travel as a valuable tool for a multitude of benefits beyond the bottom line.

According to AIMEbassador and Director of The Conference Room Colette Baini, incentive travel is being used with great success as a means of developing company culture, resulting in increased loyalty and satisfaction of employees.

El Kwang is even seeing it as a means of attracting new talent before they’re even onboarded!

Just like the theme of AIME’s 2023 Knowledge Program: Your Industry. Your Opportunity. What is the opportunity for the events industry now? These lessons are just three examples of how we as events professionals can seize the moment, inspire change and build connections to propel the business events industry forward.

A huge thank you to each of our 2023 AIMEbassadors – we are thrilled and grateful to have your support. You can ‘meet’ our AIMEbassadors here