The winners of this year’s Global Exhibitions Day (GED) Awards have been decided by a panel of senior staff from UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, based on entries registered via the GED Online Reporting Tool. The full list of winners is below.
- Talent Promotion Award
Winner = Accademia Fiera Milano (Italy)
Accademia Fiera Milano produced an online campaign to show the community how passionate many young talents are about exhibitions and how they want to be part of the industry, engaging in particular with the Millennial and Gen Z audience by communicating on Instagram with GIFs and stories.
Activities included pictures and messages from students, pictures and GIFs of students with the GED19 sign during their main activities, a video with works of art made by the students entitled ‘What are exhibitions?’, and an always-growing GED tag cloud.
- Highest Profile Online Activity Award
Winner = IELA (Switzerland)
IELA launched four initiatives with a special focus on promoting career opportunities in the exhibition industry. The first is the Event Logistics Horizon Project, a campaign for active data collection that demonstrates how data sharing and teamwork works towards one common goal.
The second is their Voices of the Exhibition Industry initiative that highlights the job opportunities within the exhibition industry.
The third initiative is an Instagram Voices of the Exhibition Industry Panel, sharing the experiences of people working in events along with pictures of onsite teams.
The fourth initiative is Career Opportunities in the Exhibition Logistics Industry where IELA staff members explain why they recommend a career in the exhibitions industry.
- Biggest Scale Physical Activity Award
Winner = IEIA (India)
IEIA initiated a campaign to celebrate GED19 with the involvement of its members across the country. GED19-branded T-shirts and caps were sent to all member organisations and celebrations were held across 200 member offices in India, with the combined involvement of more than 4,000 exhibition industry individuals.
Joint celebrations were also held in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Jaipur at venue members and public locations with the involvement of industry stakeholders along with meaningful activities, and a special webinar for exhibition industry professionals at a talent promotion initiative.
The GED19 Awards were organised to promote and motivate the members for proactive promotion of the industry and IEIA representatives met government officials to advocate the support and development of the exhibitions sector.
- Most Creative Activity Award
Winner = Belgrade Fair (Serbia)
Belgrade Fair printed an exclusive and limited postage stamp in order to commemorate GED19. The stamp was designed by the Post of Serbia with the GED19 logo incorporated. They also designed a special GED19 post card.
On 5 June, the Fair opened the Design Exhibition by students of the Belgrade University, Faculty of Architecture. The main topic was Affordable city – an integral design of urban regeneration of the Belgrade Fair ambient environment.
Great numbers of dignitaries from both the public and private sectors, academic community, City of Belgrade and Chamber of commerce participated.
- Industry Impact Award
Winner = Zagreb Fair Ltd. (Croatia)
Zagreb Fair organised an international conference entitled ‘Exhibition Industry’ - disruptor or disruptee?’ Zagreb Fair organised this conference on its 110th anniversary. The goals of the conference included revealing the impact of tradefairs and events in the new business reality of interconnected economies and exploiting the potential of the exhibition industry as an export, investment and communication platform in the real and virtual arena, and sharing new knowledge and insights into the industry transformation in the era of digitalisation
During the conference, the Mayor of Zagreb publicly gave his backing for the Fair to build a new multi-purpose exhibition and congress facility on the property, and the Fair is seeking support from the government and authorities to back this investment.
