The large trade show for the technical rail industry, RailTech Europe, will continue next year, despite corona. On the 30th and 31st of March and the 1st of April the ProMedia studios in Rotterdam will be the epicenter of the international rail industry. During this three-day online event, just as with the physical event, gathering knowledge and networking are the key elements.
“Because of COVID-19 it is now impossible to meet each other on a large scale. All events have been canceled, but on the other hand, investments in the railways are going ahead. Parties are focusing on the growth of rail traffic and prevention of the economic downturn”, says Arie van Dijk, publisher at organizer ProMedia.
Continue at all costs
“Governments want to honor the commitments they made in the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal will also mean a lot for railways. So many opportunities will arise for the industry, but there are not many options left to discuss this and to meet each other. The opportunities to do so continue to diminish “, says Van Dijk. “We therefore wanted RailTech Europe 2021 to continue at all costs. In fact, instead of a biennial event, the online event will be continued in 2022 in the form of the physical exhibition that visitors were used to over the past fifteen editions.”
RailTech Europe 2021 is therefore going digital. For three days, presentations, interviews and video reports will be broadcast from the two studios in Rotterdam, but also from locations on the track or at parties working in the sector. “As ProMedia we have gained a lot of experience in organizing online meetings. We already had a studio and web applications in use, well before the outbreak of corona. Since then we have further professionalized the deployment. We now provide several online events every day and news broadcasts for different industries.”
Low-barrier networking
According to Van Dijk, online events offer new opportunities to reach large groups more easily than with a physical event. “We have various applications with which we can increase the interaction between speakers and participants, but also participants among themselves. By leaving a number of data and preferences, we can link participants to each other based on their profile. For example, buyers and suppliers. they can schedule appointments during the event for one-on-one conversations. To lower the barrier, the system matches people and sends out the invitations.”
RailTech Europe has three main topics this edition: Digital Railways, European Year of the Rail and Smart Infrastructures. Within these themes, ERTMS, ATO, asset monitoring, the European Green Deal, international train connections and leading rail construction projects are discussed. A lot of hard work is currently underway on the program, but it is already clear that participants will be presented with a choice of approximately 150 different sessions. This spread over three days.
Railway timetable
Where a regular RailTech attracts around 10,000 visitors, as in 2019, the organization is counting on an at least as large interest from all over Europe for this digital edition. Tickets are available from January 4 and will apply to the entire programme. Via a timetable, every visitor can compile his own program from the wide range of presentations, workshops, interviews, O&A sessions and videoreports from location.
Want to stay informed about the progress of the programme? click here. Would you like to participate as an exhibitor or partner up? click here.
View the images of RailTech Europe 2019 here: