IABM Regional Members’ Councils
Regional Members’ Councils play a vital role in the IABM’s international ecosystem. Directly elected by all the member companies in each region, they ensure that the widest range of regional interests are represented, and make authoritative contributions to central as well as regional IABM initiatives. The Councils also bring often-competing companies together to share ideas, challenges and solutions – a manifestation of the way the whole MediaTech industry is moving towards a more collaborative approach.
In addition to being a strong regional voice within IABM, Members’ Councils also get involved with regional events, representing their members’ views and interests. For example, the APAC Council organizes a reception at BroadcastAsia and is involved with the conference program at MetExpo, Sydney.
The EMEA Council takes the platform during the Cabsat conference, and the DACH Council is organizing a thought-leading panel on the future direction of the Broadcast and Media industry, while the UK Council is in the process of organizing face-to-face events between members and their customers, the first of which will dive into the Capex v Opex question.
The influential IABM 2110 Group came about as a result of members of the Americas Council pooling their concerns over solving AMWA interoperability issues their customers have when employing SMPTE 2110. In all these activities, Regional Members’ Councils are also providing a valuable bridge for the customer community – a role that IABM is increasingly adopting.
In all these ways, Regional Members’ Councils play an active role in supporting members and the wider industry, speaking with authority on key matters in their region as well as contributing a wealth of knowledge and experience to IABM’s global activities. Here’s what Paul Stechly, Chair of the America’s Council and Alain Polgar, Chair of the DACH Council told us about the role they see their councils playing.
Paul Stechly:
The Americas Council is a very good cross section of companies large and small as well as representing different facets of the business. We have representation from legacy RF to cloud software. So the councils are a representative survey sample of the IABM membership as a whole, especially when you add in the regional diversity. We seek, and get, consensus on issues that affect our members as well as being able to gauge industry trends. For example, in the last Americas call, the value of large trade shows was a recurring topic but also that industry purchases this year will be “flat” and that the largest area of growth is in the corporate communications sector. This in turn helps the IABM plan events like UpStream which cater to the emerging market discussed in the Council.
Alain Polgar:
In my mind the Regional Councils are a bidirectional interface between their respective markets and the overall IABM organization. One size does not fit all. The councils aim to provide more granular views on their market dynamics and regional industry events and are more representative of local vendor or local entities of global vendors. In the other direction they are able to represent the IABM on the ground. The DACH Council is a good example: it includes representatives of regional companies and participates in the local Hamburg Open show with a panel.
