Business Diplomat: Meeting to Meeting

An event programme is more than a list of dates. In this part of its interview series, Business Diplomat presents Prof. Dr. Mehmet Emin Erendor’s idea of how events should be connected.

First observation: the critical point
“The most critical point is that small meetings should not be organised independently of the large summit.” What emerges from them, discussions, proposals and relationships, “should be accumulated and carried to the agenda of the large summit at year’s end.” The summit then stops being a stand-alone event and becomes “the result of a year-long intellectual and relational process.”

Second observation: an annual theme
Erendor gives an example. The platform might have one main theme each year. Closed roundtables examine different dimensions of it. The findings become a policy note or report. At year’s end, the international summit discusses the results with a wider audience.

Third observation: the answer and the measure
His answer to the question is: “small meetings increase the platform’s real impact, while the large summit increases the visibility of this impact. The strongest model is a continuous event architecture linking the two.” Success should be measured “not only by how many people attend the summit, but by what one meeting produces for another.” What builds a strong platform over time is “the knowledge produced, the relationships established and the conversion of these relationships into concrete cooperation.”

The logic of the assessment
Events are connected by a theme. Closed meetings produce findings, findings become a report, and the report feeds the summit. The measure of success is output and cooperation, not attendance.

The role of Business Diplomat
The platform’s mission is to give young people experience, bring a diplomatic order to the business world, and benefit states by revitalising the economy. Erendor’s chain gives young members real tasks in each stage: preparing roundtables, drafting notes, helping with reports. Business Diplomat can structure its year this way.

Conclusion
A platform’s value lies in how its meetings build on each other and in the cooperation they produce. Business Diplomat aims to organise its work in that way.