FESPA welcomed delegates from around the globe to the heart of the London at the on the 22-23 January for its fifth thought leadership event, The Global Summit. 

A destination event for print service providers (PSPs) in the digital wide format community, the FESPA Global Summit addresses key topics, challenges, opportunities and threats that exist across the majority of print businesses today.

With a strong international delegate representation from 21 countries, over 130 people descended into London all with the same motivation - to be inspired with new ideas on how to grow their business bottom line. 92% of visitors said that the Summit was of value for their business and 100% of delegates stated that they would attend another FESPA event in the future.

Visitors travelled to the event from across the UK and from another 20 countries further afield. The top ten geographies were Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, UK and the United States of America.

The delegate feedback on the seminar content and breakout sessions were extremely positive with the individual speakers attaining positive scores ranging from76%-100%. The most popular seminars for attending delegates were the presentations on sustainability, Near Field Communication (NFC), augmented reality and outdoor advertising, highlighting printers' enthusiasm to learn about new technology and innovations that affect the business of print.

Delegate comments received during the Summit included:

"Fantastic, fascinating - a really interesting range of speakers. It's encouraging that there is consistency across the range from very different aspects of the industry - all echoing the same themes, insights and predictions as to where the future is going. It's been a fantastic event." Mark Fallows, EVP Creative Technology, McCann.

"This was my first time at FESPA and it was very interesting. The future of printing has weighted on my mind as a print producer. It is nice to see the innovative ways it is changing!" Cindy Bohm, Director of Project Management, Saatchi & Saatchi .

"The FESPA Global Summit has provided fantastic insight - the last couple of days have filled my brain with all sorts of wonderful ideas." Paul Noble, Operations Director, Banner Box.

Visitors also took to social media platforms to express their views and to take the FESPA Global Summit conversation online, using the hashtag #FGS2013. Twitter recorded 1,025 tweets over the two-day event with 96 unique users expressing their views and opinions about the topics being discussed. Delegates also shared their own experiences using social media platforms, posting images and sharing video content.

The Global Summit is part of FESPA's ongoing commitment to connect and support its global community. Founded through its Profit for Purpose reinvestment programme it represents FESPA's three guiding beliefs - sharing knowledge, education and best practice. FESPA reinvests back into the print community through seminars around the world, events such as the Global Summit, publications and collateral to support the print industry.

FESPA Head of Events and New Media, Duncan MacOwan comments: "The positive feedback we've received so far from this year's Global Summit has been fantastic and it is heartening to see that so many of the delegates found the content beneficial to their businesses. The sheer number of geographies represented also bodes well for FESPA 2013 in London. This just illustrates just how well connected and easy it is to travel to the destination - London.

Duncan continues, "The quality of the speakers and seminars this year was phenomenal, which has provided us with a great platform for the main show in June this year. The fact that the seminars and workshops have received high praise from visitors will help us to develop the show programmes for the Creative Corner and Jet Set Conference at FESPA 2013. PSPs will also be able to view examples of what print can do incorporating the new technologies that have been on show at Summit in the Print Inspiration Runway in June 2013."

The next future FESPA event destination heralded by printers will be FESPA 2013 in London (ExCeL London, 25th to 29th June 2013, the organisation's flagship event.

The next instalment of the FESPA World newsletter will provide readers with exclusive content from the event. If you'd like to view this content then sign up for free here. More highlights of the FESPA Global Summit 2013 can also be seen here: http://bit.ly/FGS2013