Massimo Perucca –
The technical and scientific sector has been forerunner in benefitting from, and in promoting, the sharing of information on a world scale, we should just think of the scientific ‘Solvay’ congresses in which the most distinguished scientists of that age, Einstein among the youngest, took part in the first edition of 1911. Also technology, in advance, experimented its “agora”: the Universal Exhibition inParisin 1889, famous but not the first of the series, which started in 1851 in London and, through numerous editions, will lead us to Milan in 2015. For the “homo sapiens sapiens” species and, more recently, for the “homo technologicus” it is not new the practice of meeting and dialoguing about themes with various specialization degrees for several purposes. In the contemporaneousness of the information era, however, we can witness a peculiar phenomenon: the number, the frequency and the variety of contemporaneous congress and exhibition events are unprecedented. It is not enough. The opportunities for specialized meetings expand beyond the borders of time and space to land in the cyberspace: social networks, interest groups, webinars… But in this proliferation of meeting opportunities, in person or virtual, in these thunderstorms of bits, what and how many relevant contents do we communicate? What and how many useful information can we transmit and receive to increase our knowledge, our know-how and to give effective opportunities to our business? Considering that the quantity of scientific publications produced yearly in the world is impressive, millions of papers per discipline, is it not likely to notice the iterated proposal of the same themes? In the numerous marketing events, B2B sale meetings, don’t we risk of just talking about business instead of doing business? When we take part in exhibitions as exhibitors or as simple visitors, it often happens that we can experience interesting contacts: the trade fair event generates a state of excitation or of increased general interest. When we go back to our daily corporate tasks, however, it often happens that we do not fully exploit such opportunities. The contacts mediated by telematics can prove even more critical for the coherence among declarations, expectations and the realization of the expected events, often due to the impossibility of perceiving through expressions, attitudes and gestures derived from deficient communication channels, as a matter of fact, there is no “broader band” than that used by the interaction in person.
Certainly, we cannot help observing, communicating and sharing problems and solutions, being informed and updated. Formulating a universal law to quantify the value of the meeting opportunities and to maximise their efficacy is today more complex than ever. The general concept consists in screening the evanescent aspects and in basing the information flows on substantial contents. As a matter of fact, relying on high-quality technical-scientific solutions and making use of high specialized knowledge, we can exchange authentic contents with industrially capitalized value; we will be also able to recognize and to appreciate the quality offered by our partners. Concreteness of contents and measurability of the value, first of all. With these preliminary conditions, exhibitions, congresses, workshops and tele-meetings … will be a real investment to improve our expertise and the market knowledge, thus increasing the likelihood of consolidating profitable professional and commercial relationships.
See you soon then at the next congress!
