WEM prepares for a bigger and better second year

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, March, 2001

In preparing for the second year of its World Education Market (WEM) global education trade show, Reed Midem Organisation (Paris, France) is building on the strengths of last year's successful debut and planning for improvements that strengthen the show's business-to-business focus and further expand its global reach.

According to Elaine Legault, program director, WEM will continue to be differentiated by its clear focus on creating and supporting opportunities to buy, sell, trade, partner and inform. She expects WEM, scheduled for May 21-24, 2001 in Vancouver Canada, to provide attendees even better access to the newest and best of the international educational technology market.

Global Audience

Legault says that WEM 2000 delivered on its goals of delivering an international audience of the highest quality. WEM 2000 attracted over 2000 attendees from 63 countries including 467 exhibitors from 33 counties. The audience was fairly evenly divided between the public and private sector, including the full range of suppliers and key decision makers in education and government.

As they did last year, Legault and her team are meeting with key decision makers to encourage participation in WEM. Ministries of education worldwide are a specific target. Legault believes that they more than succeeded last year and anticipates even broader representation this year. The presence of high-level government and ministry of education participants assures companies that partnerships can actually move forward following the meeting.

Exhibitors

Legault points to an explosion of work focused on the Internet in Europe over the past year, and she expects that to be reflected in this year's exhibitors. Specifically, the show is expanding their focus on corporate e-learning. Last year's show also had a strong representation of companies involved in distance and online learning, with higher education activity outweighing companies with K-12 offerings.

To date, 110 companies have committed to exhibit, representing 21 countries throughout the world, "many of whom," says Legault, "are returning based on their positive experience at the inaugural WEM last year." There are confirmed National Pavilions from France (Agence EduFrance, CFME-ACTIM), Finland (FINPRO - The Finnish Foreign Trade Association), the Netherlands (NUFFIC - Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education), Sweden (Swedish Agency for Distance Education - DISTUM) and Germany (Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung - BMBF). Other confirmed National Pavilions include British Columbia Government and Canada, with more from Asia and Latin America in development.

WEM is being promoted through a variety of channels. WEM staff is working with partner organizations to advertise the event via local radio spots, in print media and through association meetings and forums. A number of press exchanges have been worked out to provide coverage in major media outlets internationally.

Promoting Networking

WEM is also about networking, offering the opportunity to meet the leaders, the decision-makers and the chief executive officers from a myriad of industries, with education as their common purpose.

WEM has partnered with several organizations to help promote networking and make it easier for people with common interests to meet one another. The Heller Reports will co-host a special interest group to facilitate dialogue and address partnerships among organizations interested in educational technology markets for primary and secondary schools.

There will also be a special focus at this WEM on Chief Learning Officers (CLO). A panel of CLOs will outline the development of their training initiatives and the opportunities they see for collaboration with the wider education community, as partners and suppliers. A special networking event will also focus on the CLO audience.

The conference program is being planned to complement the trade show. Legault says that last year's attendees were often in conflict between the conference program and the exhibit floor. This year, there will be one full day of Conference activity on May 21, prior to the opening of the Exhibit. The Conference program will feature a selection of panel sessions in the morning followed by more practical and interactive afternoon workshops on a wide variety of topics, Morning keynotes are planned for each of the three subsequent Exhibit days, supplemented by late afternoon activities that will focus on special interests and networking.

Support for Vendors

WEM will provide a number of tools to facilitate contact making among attendees. The WEM web site will once again feature a fully searchable database that will include profiles of all participants. Profiles will include complete contact information, a description of the organization's activities and products, and objectives for attending WEM. The database is searchable by the name of the organization, the name of a participant, by country and by activity, as well as having a full text search capabilities. Legault says that many WEM 2000 participants used the database to prepare for the event, with participants arriving with half or more of their time already booked. WEM also publishes a guide, based on the database that serves as a Who's Who of international education.