On 2nd November, The German Department for event technology had organized the forum event industry in Baden-Baden. “Visitor Safety 2011 - Lesson Learned?” This issue was addressed by eight top-class speakers who spoke before some 200 interested visitors from all over Germany and neighbouring countries. There were operator representatives, event organizers, the authorities and technical planners as well as association representatives present.

The conference (hosted by Peter Blach, stagereport,) was a real innovation in the event technology indus-try as the concept of an interdisciplinary work was consistently executed for the first time.
Recognized experts from event-related but also completely new areas enabled an insight into their views and work and could provide food for thought. Under this premise, the forum has been created as a dialogue event - it should not tout ready-made solutions or concepts (which are barely realizable in a highly specialized and individualized market anyway).

As a surprising introduction for the participants the conference started with a short film, which had been specially produced for the event by the HAW and the dramatic school Hamburg based on an idea by Christian Buschhof, Harald Scherer and Sven Kubin. This video short showed the normal event reality, where one small thing, in combination with other factors, can result in a near disaster.

The participants were thoroughly convinced by the concept of the event and its contents, while sugges-tions were happily accepted by the organizing team. True to the motto “Better is the enemy of good” the next year will again see an edition of the forum event industry, which was confirmed by the members of the DPVT following the congress. To follow up, all participants will be sent a conference transcript. A review of this conference, which includes the response of the DPVT and its supporting partners (the associations DTHG, VPLT, EVVC and FAMAB) toward the paradigm shift in visitor safety, will remain avail-able online at www.forum-veranstaltungswirtschaft.de. There, the organizers will also publish details about the next edition of the Forum next year.