Reflections from PCMA Convening Leaders 2025

Date: 23/01/2025

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This year’s PCMA Convening Leaders, held in Houston, Texas, once again delivered an exceptional experience, offering a wealth of inspiring content, invaluable networking opportunities, and innovative ideas to elevate our industry. Our CEO, Sven Bossu, attended this leading event and shared his personal highlights, insights, and takeaways. From thought-provoking keynotes to impactful sessions, here’s Sven’s reflection on the moments that stood out to him and how they connect to the broader mission of building communities and driving innovation. 

This year’s edition took place in Houston, Texas and offered – like always – a wide variety in terms of content and networking, pushing the delegates out of orbit. 

My 3 personal highlights were the opening keynote by Scott Galloway, a session on overcoming cultural differences in business and the closing keynote by Amal Clooney. 

Professor Galloway’s speech was a data driven look into the future, brought at high speed with a great sense of humour. You can find numerous podcast and videos of him online, but I think that next to the predictions (the rise of nuclear energy and YouTube as the most important media channel), his message on the lack of male role models was very strong and related very strongly to me, as a father of a 22-year-old son. If you want to know more, please listen to this podcast: Scott Galloway | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #547 

The session on overcoming cultural differences was another one which I loved out of personal interest. I hold a degree in anthropology and therefore find interactions between cultures, especially when it comes to doing business, extremely interesting. The session was interesting because – being in Houston – it brought space industry experts together, so a very different industry. The space industry is a rapidly expanding one, expecting to be worth 1,8 trillion USD by 2035. Throughout the session, speakers stressed the important of community building to foster lasting international relationships in the space community, considered crucial for overcoming differences and driving innovation, which resonates perfectly with the core mission of the events industry: grow communities by bringing them together.  

Finally, there was the closing session with Amal Clooney. Being the daughter of refugees, who re-established themselves in the UK, she can perfectly relate to some of the humanitarian dramas happening throughout the world. In a very down-to-earth way, she explained the impact she has via the foundation she created with her spouse, but also stressed the impact each of us can have when it comes to make a difference with regards to human rights. The examples she gave did not exactly give a rosy picture of humanity at this moment, but this was offset by her belief that we can push the curve the right way, both as individuals and communities. The standing applause at the end was deserved. 

Next to these 3 personal highlight, there were many other things happening (too much to be honest), so I took a lot of “food for thought” back home.  

Thank you PCMA. 

Sven Bossu 
AIPC CEO 

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