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Making Hybrid Meetings a success, MICE bouncing back in Taipei!
The MICE community in Taipei is considering the present challenges as a catalyst for positive change in all segments of their E & C industries.
New options are aggressively initiated to replace the traditional event format, which used to involve face-to-face meetings where many people converge at a single location. Although the present disruption will not mean the end of traditional meetings, their limitations are becoming all the more evident in the current situation.
Over the past few years, an explosion of new technologies took place in Taiwan which have given rise to exciting opportunities for its business event industry. Organizers and planners now have the means to develop alternative meeting formats that allow participants to meet and interact remotely.
Virtual and/or Hybrid Conference & Exhibition Events have clearly emerged as excellent options to consider in the face of disruption.
Taipei City Government has been hosting the Smart City Mayors Summit for years, and this year the summit was held as planned regardless of the pandemic, although transformed into an online meeting, in the month of August with delegates from different cities. Three forums featured a total of 20 mayors from 17 countries who shared their experience. As Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-Je stated, “The Smart City Mayors Summit has become the top communication platform of its kind internationally”, thus it adopted a high-scale design structure that integrated visual and audio technology, setting a new benchmark for future online conferences.
Recently an impressive number of meetings and conferences in Taipei were rescheduled as virtual events. By their very nature, virtual events allow attendance irrespective of travel restrictions and facilitate the delivery of vanguard information and reach an even wider audience than traditional live events.
To enhance MICE industry service quality and assist with its transformation in the post-pandemic period, Taipei City Government queried professionals from different industries. For digital technology, Mr. Joseph Wang, CEO and founder of OSENSE shared that former exhibition plans were disrupted by the pandemic, then turned into an online format. He observed that, whether online or offline, the value of the MICE industry lies in communication and the future; future business matchings and exhibitions will combine both physical and virtual modes. For an exhibitioner to stand apart from other companies, the key is to provide perfect system services and a smooth process design. By doing so, exhibitors and attendees will have a good experience, thus increase their engagement and business matching rates. A smart exhibition can optimize the exhibition strategy without increasing cost.
For the years to come the Taipei stakeholders now offer hybrid events, a mix of live and virtual components with a number of people present at a physical location, while the “ audience at large“ attends the event remotely.
And although the logistics involved in this type of event are more complex, as they require two kinds of infrastructure, physical and digital, they have become the top consideration for associations and organizations that have events lined up in the future.
Last but not least, the erstwhile component of the MICE Industry, Exhibitions, has now warped into virtual trade fair, as the name explains-are the online versions of such events that allow exhibitors and attendees to interact in the virtual space.
Issues like difficult event planning, poor audience engagement, limited reach and inclusivity, and the high cost of physical events were the main reasons for switching to virtual events.
The concepts offered by the Event  Management Companies (EMC) remain similar to the trade fairs buyers & sellers were all used to for so long.
Online Exhibitions, each theme or online expo is subdivided in areas and e-Halls.

• Halls, the e-Halls give e-visitors an overview of manufacturers      and service providers to cover their needs.
• Stands, the e-Stands offer detailed company presentations with integrated videos and product illustrations.
• Such online exhibitions for both B2B and B2C audiences offer a quick market overview, including major manufacturers and suppliers from the comfort of the visitor’s office.

Despite the global pandemic, Asia's leading biotech industry event—BIO Asia-Taiwan 2020 International Conference and Exhibition—was held during July 23–26 at Taipei Nangang Exhibition center Hall 2. It was the world's first combined onsite plus online biotechnology conference. As one of the event organizers, Mr. Tiger Lin, General Manager of Chan Chao Int’l Co.  states : “Hybrid meetings are a future trend and will no doubt become the new normal after the pandemic. The deployment of virtual and physical elements in exhibitions and their results should be observed. Facing the high uncertainty of the future regarding the pandemic, I suggest we continue to be flexible by learning and trying. This is the optimal response for the current situation. “.
In the future more and more organizations, associations, INGOs and governments will meet while broadcasting from multiple locations with multiple audience interactions, thus reducing many event’s carbon footprint by cutting energy requirements, food and beverages, lodging and ground and air travel.
The combination of Taiwan’s expertise in developing IT hardware and being MICE event facilitators offers MICE planners worldwide the perfect “ bridge”  to Asia’s North, North East and South East based audiences.
Simon Wang, Managing Director of the 2020 Taipei City MICE Enhancement Plan and Executive Vice President of TAITRA,  concludes: “Thanks to Taiwan having a high level of technological talent throughout its academia and manufacturing sector, the transition to digital formats and events that combine both live and digital formats has come naturally.
The importance of a physical and digital combination for events will soon be when the 59th ICCA Congress, their first hybrid event, will be held during November 1-4. Planned as a physical event set in Taiwan, its content, networking sessions and sponsor messages will be beamed internationally online”.
In other words, all Taipei’s MICE stakeholders are ready for the “next normal” in the MICE industry competitive arena, having rethought how to connect with and attract people to events.
The experience of the service providers augmented by the skills and competence from the IT & MICE professionalism of the destination, multiplied by the awareness that is presently created by the 59^th ICCA Congress, will bring the Taiwanese MICE stakeholder in the foreground of APAC’s MICE industries and make Hybrid Meetings a success for now and for years to come.
For more information please visit www.expopark.taipei or  www.anticovid19tw.org


2020 Smart City Summit group photo. (Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-Je, Taipei Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-Shan, Prague City Mayor, Midvaal Mayor, Grenoble - Alpes Métropole President, Izmir Mayor, Budapest Deputy Mayor, Gdynia Deputy Mayor and Moscow Innovation Agency CEO (Source: Department of Information Technology, Taipei City Government)
The 2020 Smart City Summit concluded successfully on August 19. A total of twenty mayors and delegates from seventeen countries participated for three days of sessions (8/13, 8/18, 8/19). Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-Je, Taipei Deputy Mayor Huang Shan-Shan, and the Mayor's Office External Affairs Commissioner Tom Chou were in attendance. This year, the Summit's format was changed to an online meeting. Attendees from 27 countries signed up and the total number of online viewers was over 3,800. Taipei City Government developed a new diplomatic mode after holding this summit.
 

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen attended opening ceremony for BIO Asia-Taiwan 2020 International Conference and Exhibition. (Source: Chan Chao International Co., Ltd.)
BIO Asia-Taiwan 2020 International Conference and Exhibition, the world's first combined onsite plus online biotechnology conference, was held in Taipei from July 22 to 26. The event attracted over 5,000 viewers for its online conference, of which foreign participants accounted for 30 percent. With this new format, members of Taiwan's burgeoning biotechnology industry were able to successfully step out from the shadow of the global pandemic and develop a new wave of business opportunities with the world's biomedical community.