Tens of thousands of shipping professionals around the world will be looking at blank spaces in their diaries for the next week.
Whether it’s cancelled meetings logged in Outlook or pen lines drawn through physical diary pages, the message is the same: for the first time in more than 50 years, there will be no Posidonia.
Late October was always going to be a strange time to hold shipping’s totemic event. Yet it made sense to delay it until then, after the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic ruled out its traditional early June dates.
Posidonia’s managing director, Theodore Vokos, then made a second difficult and wise call in July to cancel this year’s physical event entirely.
Even then, there was hope that the worst of the pandemic was passing, although it was likely that normality would not have returned. Events since then have shown those hopes were badly misplaced.
New lockdowns
Europe is suffering a renewed round of lockdown measures as a second wave of the virus spreads, and global air travel remains largely frozen.
So for 2020, there will indeed be no parties at the Athens Yacht Club under the bright Aegean sun, and no late-night drinks amid fireworks on the terraces of the refurbished Astir Palace.
The story has been the same for SMM in Germany. What Hamburg lacks in romantic glamour and domestically owned tonnage compared with Athens, its huge technology exhibition makes up for in scale. But it too had to be postponed from its regular September slot to the first week of February next year.
Claus Ulrich Selbach, maritime and technology trade fair boss for SMM’s organiser, Hamburg Messe und Congress, admitted he was sad to announce the cancellation.
“But increasingly, this regret is giving way to a sense of anticipation of a rather unique SMM in February 2021,” he said.
Whether SMM is able to go ahead next year remains in the balance today. There are less than four months to go and the health situation is far from under control.
And then, of course, there is Nor-Shipping, due to take place in early June next year. While that may still feel like a long way off, in these very strange times who would dare predict the state of the world at that time.
Perhaps more important than whether any individual event takes place is the question of whether these major shows can reinvent and reimagine themselves for the post-coronavirus world.
Everyone’s professional habits have been refashioned by the necessity of remote working over the past seven months, which triggered a cascade of critical and creative thinking about entrenched processes and habits, and whether they are right for the new normal.
Video meetings have replaced face-to-face interactions with colleagues and clients. It would be rare to come across a company that is not reviewing its physical office needs and how such space should be used.
And when the opportunity comes to take to the skies again, will the traditional exhibition and conference format fit the new norms of work?
Sipping a drink with a contact in a Hamburg bar, a glass of wine in Vouliagmeni, or a beer at Aker Brygge will always hold its appeal. But most people would admit the reality of exhibition attendance is rather more mundane.
Whether it involves being up early to prepare stands, or wearing out shoe leather to find potential clients in hidden corners of vast exhibition halls, no one would call it glamorous.
Posidonia, SMM and Nor-Shipping are all committed to making their events work for their clients. In recent years, all three have been innovative and introduced seminars and networking programmes.
Relationships
But what more will the post-Covid-19 world demand?
As Selbach said: “After the coronavirus pandemic, trade fairs will never again be the way they used to be. Even when people are able to travel without restrictions again, we will make use of the wide-ranging options of the digital age.”
Nor-Shipping’s Karen Algaard said, for its part, the organiser could deploy a hybrid event, migrating much of the activity online, with conferences broadcast from its new state-of-the-art studios in Lillestrom.
Ultimately, perhaps it does come back to the personal networking and relationships that remain at the heart of the shipping business.
As Vokos said: “One of the unique characteristics of Posidonia [is] the opportunities it provides to meet, interact and socialise in and around the exhibition and enjoy the hospitality, energy and fun that surround our event.”
