Future proofing the industry
Park World editor, Becci Knowles talks to Jakob Wahl, executive director and vice president, IAAPA EMEA about what recent events have taught us.
There is no doubt that as an industry, we have all missed meeting up at IAAPA Expos over the last 12 months, but I think we all agree that IAAPA has done a fantastic job of keeping members connected. For Jakob this means working on safety, government relations, education, industry data and obviously, events. “On this day in early March 12 months ago, we noticed the potential impact of Covid and had to work around it,” he says. “Initially, we had a spring/summer event in May in Italy and then the Expo later that year…one after another we had to cancel and that was the moment for us to shift our priorities. It took some time to organise everything, from walking away from London and having to deal with all the consequences for exhibitors, but also for us as an Association. It was a question of what we needed to do now to help our members. We asked ourselves, how we can shift away from organising events as a platform to create alternatives where people can exchange ideas, information and learn from each other, so we very quickly introduced the Community on Workplace platform where we have, I think 808 members right now.”
