Approaching the end of august, the autumn conference season accelerates. When the education sector starts and the holiday season is definitely over, hordes of lawyers and judges from all the Nordic countries swarm into the Norwegian capital for a three day long conference.
The Nordic Lawyer Meeting attracts around 1200 participants.While mayor Fabian Stang greets the Nordic judicial elite in the Oslo Town Hall, the cleantech sector opens their Urban Energy conference in Lillestrøm. And on it goes.
Meeting hot spot
Oslo has become a meeting hot spot for businesses. As the curtains rise for the first conferences, organizers of major events throughout autumn are busy concentrating on their respective events. One of the major conferences, the annual Oslo Innovation Week, will be the biggest ever this year. More than 40 separate meetings are going to be held under the OIW umbrella the third week of October. According to its organizer, Oslo Business Region, OIW is the biggest event of its kind in Europe.
The conference universe has become an cornerstone of the travel industry, and Norway Convention Bureau even plans its own conference to explore the growing conference market in Oslo. Frode Åsheim, CEO at Norway Convention Bureau, calls for potential of organizers of international conferences in different competence fields, attracting even more meeting activity to the Norwegian capital, as well as to venues in other parts of the country.
– We want to get in touch with key people in different business and academic fields who can be potential hosts for international world conferences, Åsheim says.
In nine years, Oslo Innovation Week has become a significant meeting place for discussions about opportunities and practices for growth and innovation. OIW is aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, developers and visionaries across an extensive variety of sectors, such as tech, cultural industries, marketing and communication, health, energy, media and public institutions. According to the organizer, the schedule reaches a level of innovation relevance, supports the selected topics of 2014, is future oriented and sustainable, and demonstrates sufficient quality. Each organizer is responsible for their own event, while Oslo Innovation Week coordinates and markets the overall program.
The Oslo region has several business and industry clusters, such as the rapidly growing Subsea Valley Cluster, Oslo Cancer Cluster, Oslo Medtech and the marine innovation network MarLife. MarLife recently opened a business center in Oslo Science Park (story on page 16), the network organize the annual Marine Innovation Day at North Atlantic Seafood Forum in Bergen. In 2016 the international BioMarine Business Convention also will take place in Oslo, in collaboration with MarLife. Every second year the global maritime sector gathers in Oslo for NorShipping. More secretive, though, is the annual Oslo Energy Forum – a conference for oil & gas sector VIPs only.
Business clusters
The business clusters make a good foundation for high quality conferences, One is the annual Subsea Valley Conference. To compose a top notch meeting is one of Subsea Valley CEO, Preben Strøm’s, main tasks.
Attraction No 1 is excellent keynote speakers. In 2014 Norwegian PM Erna Solberg and several of her ministers have been among the most sought after keynoters. At the Subsea Valley Conference 2014, Preben Strøm managed to secure both PM Solberg, minister of Education and Research Torbjørn Røe Isaksen as well as the French ambassador to Norway, Jean-Marc Rives to deliver addresses to the 300-strong audience gathered at Telenor Arena in April.The prominences fronted a row of national and international speakers, from various companies and various industries, in a conference program covering in-depth knowledge into technology, competence and competitiveness. The conference explored the new connections between the Norwegian Subsea Valley and the French Aerospace Valley.
The next generation
The most exciting part of the conference, though, occurred when more than 400 school children filled the conference room to receive lectures from the “minister of schools” Røe Isaksen and NASA director Pascal Lee, Chairman of the Mars Institute.
It was silence in the enormous “classroom” when Pascal Lee guided the kids in the planning of this century’s greatest space adventure, Mission Mars, probably a more spectacular lecture than any held in a regular Norwegian classroom.
– It is a good example on how one can connect science and mathematics with something that’s exciting and adventurous, said minister Røe Isaksen. Hopefully Mission Mars inspires more youths to choose higher education, and subsequently contributes to the recruitment of new talent to the subsea sector.
– The conference has in five years grown into one of the largest arenas and meeting places for the global subsea industry, says Preben Strøm, now busy preparing for next year’s conference April 15-16, 2015.