PCMA’S Convening EMEA holds a record edition in Barcelona and gets ready for Rotterdam

Connecting with the local environment is now a must in conferences, which must venture out of the conference centre. So, on Monday afternoon, delegates could discover the America’s Cup experience and activities, understand the promising blue economy, a priority for Barcelona, or participate in an activity to clean the beaches (CSR still high on the agenda). A great way to start networking but also to open people’s minds to local assets of Barcelona.

Monday night, the opening party took place at the Hilton’s Puro Beach, where loads of re-encounters took place in this relaxed environment, including Catalonia’s human towers (“castellers”). A great way to reconnect.

At the CCIB conference centre, these 600+ meeting professionals engaged in a newly designed programme architecture which brought to life themes across future, trust and strategy allowing participants to build their own learning journey. Examples? A session on how to manage young talent (hint: we can do better) which ended with Sherrif Karamat suggesting a pledge to make our industry a highly most appealing for young talents to flourish. All tables included a young talent challenging our current ways of working. Other sessions dealt with a congress legacy (EASL’s wonderful programme to improve liver health in the destination of their congresses), a session with local startups and tech entities to learn how to learn from their dynamic way of managing their business and creating opportunities), a session on strategic partnerships in collaboration with EMA, and sessions on cybersecurity, or data to drive your sustainability strategy. As you can see, the focus of PCMA’s education was not on the usual “purely meetings” topics, but strived to open delegates’ minds, reaching out to other industries.

Monday started with a yoga activity on the beach for the early birds, a way to help feel good and focus for the rest of the day.

A big party took place on Monday night at the famous MNAC museum, whose large oval hall is a classical venue of the Catalan capital. Just check out the photos, it was fun.

Sherrif Karamat, PCMA and CEMA President and CEO, announced Rotterdam as the host city for Convening EMEA 2025. The annual conference will be held 15th – 17th October 2025 at the Postillion Hotel & Convention Centre WTC in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The city avoided the classical video to announce itself, in favour of an artist expressing what her city is in a highly inspired and inspiring way. Maybe we can still innovate in destination presentations?

So… that was a great event, definitely!