Taking the reins of PCMA in January 2018 after serving as COO, Sherrif Karamat can leverage more than 14 years with the association to both recognize why and what it was and also propel it to where it needs to be in the future.
A key part of the strategy will be to expand PCMA’s reach, both digitally and geographically.
“With digital we have the ability to grow to a much larger audience and much further afield,” he said, using the Super Bowl as an analogy of both the importance of face-to-face experiences and the ability to reach an exponentially larger audience outside of the “stadium.”
“There’s more people that are involved in the business events industry that do not identify with the business events industry,” he said of audience expansion opportunities, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. “There’s a huge audience out there that doesn’t really know that the business events world even exists.”
Key strategies PCMA will pursue include the following:
- Providing tools for its audience to further their careers through its new Ascent initiative.
- Placing a bigger emphasis on youth, such as ramping up its “20 in Their Twenties” program.
- Keeping former leaders at the national and regional levels involved in the association.
- Making sure that the content PCMA delivers focuses on what its members and non-members need; not just what the association believes they need.
“We need to be an organization that listens and learns; an organization that is not just results oriented but purpose driven,” Karamat said. “It certainly helps that I’ve been with the organization for a long time, but looking forward to where need to grow from here, we have to be able to change our structure.”
