90 events professionals attended the fourth annual Meetings Industry Forum at London's Marriott Grosvenor Square Hotel on Friday 1 July.

Hosted by the Meetings, Events and Communications division of Grass Roots, the Meetings Industry Forum (MIF) is designed to promote and share best practice and this year's theme, 'Inspiring elite performance', provided a thought-provoking topic for delegates.

Nick Bender, Global Head of Events at Grass Roots, kick-started the event, saying: "This is our fourth annual Meetings Industry Forum and this year we are raising the bar. In today's world of social networking, this special event enables us to create our own network in which we can engage around topical, relevant and practical issues affecting today's meetings and events industry."

Grass Roots' Chairman and CEO, David Evans also addressed attendees before the programme began with six inspiring presentations throughout the day led by senior professionals from high profile brands including, SAP, Microsoft, HSBC, Red Bull, Allianz and Exclusive Hotels Group. The first presentation topic looked at how to implement a solid event strategy to deliver outstanding event performance, with SAP's Senior Manager, Global Events, talking through how their brand strategy 'The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP' was brought to life at the company's SAPPHIRENow! user event. A ground-breaking event that brought together delegates from six different continents – two physically and four virtually – so they could hear about and experience SAP's products. This new event strategy led to substantial pipeline closure.

Other presentations included how to utilise the power of data to maximise event performance. Here Alex Reeve, until recently Director of the Mobile Business Group at Microsoft Corporation, looked at a fail-safe analysis tool to effectively stack rank a business' best targets and quantified how valuable events are in the marketing mix at strengthening client relationships.

Throughout the one-day programme, parallels were drawn between high performances in professional sports and how this can be applied to the world of business to instill high performance and achieve results. Grass Roots' Managing Director, Event Production, Charles Moyle, and Red Bull's High Performance Manager, Andy Walshe, jointly presented on engaging people to perform at their best and discussed how the methodology used to attain elite performance for athletes can be successfully implemented in an employee and channel partner context through events, kick starting and sustaining engagement, motivation and training.

HSBC chief economist, Dennis Turner returned for his third year to enlighten delegates with his animated presentation on the economic, political and social climate.

Events technology also played a central role in the day, with a technology showcase designed to introduce delegates to the latest in event technology, including face tracking, touchless screen control, ROI modeling, 3D video technology and the latest developments in augmented reality.

Delegates were encouraged to interact with speakers at the end of each session by posting questions and comments via tablet notebooks, which were posed to speakers by an independent facilitator, Chris Elmitt from Crystal Interactive.

Closing the event, Nick Bender remarked: "This event is about building a community based on networking, as well as sharing knowledge and best practice. Today's event has shown how parallels can be drawn between business and elite performance in sport, with our speakers providing specific examples of how sporting techniques can be implemented in order to enhance performances within the workplace.

"In its fourth year, the Grass Roots Meetings Industry Forum has now firmly established a reputation for provoking thought and encouraging debate in the events arena. I would like to thank all of today's speakers for taking the time to prepare and deliver excellent presentations, as well as thank all of the meetings professionals who have gathered today, for taking part and continuing to make this event so worthwhile."

Some event feedback statistics:

• 89% rated the content as very good or excellent
• 83% rated the provision of information as very good or excellent
• 76% rated the effectiveness of information as very good or excellent
• 88% said they have learned something from the event to a good or great extent
• 61% said they would use this knowledge to change their practice to a good or great extent
• 97% said the event organisation was very good or excellent

Content from the Meetings Industry Forum will be available on-demand from 18th July.