2012, Brisbane, Australia
Client: International Union of Geological Sciences, Australian Geological Society and the Australia Academy of Science.

 

Attended by over 6000 delegates and with a program featuring more than 3200 oral presentations, the IGC remains the largest, highest attended and most complex scientific conference ever staged in Queensland.

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The IGC is the longest continually running scientific conference in the world, having been held every four years since the first edition in Paris, in 1878.  The 2012 edition of the IGC, managed by CCM, achieved records for financial outcome and attendances that have not been equalled before or since.

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• The IGC won Best Conference in Australia at the 2013 Australian Event Awards; 

• 6012 delegates attended, representing 139 countries;

• The associated exhibition, the GeoExpo, also managed by CCM, filled three exhibition halls and was fully sold-out months in advance;

• IGC’s program involved 5 days of sessions including over 280 Symposia, 44 concurrent sessions, 3250 oral presentations, and 2300 poster presentations.  It is to this day (February, 2025) the largest and most complex conference program ever presented in Queensland;

• IGC occupied every meeting room at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre and three of the four exhibition halls available at the venue;

• CCM was appointed to the congress in 2007 and launched the event at the preceding IGC in Oslo, Norway in 2008;

• The 2008 Global Financial Crisis threatened to significantly reduce attendances at the 2012 event as IGC had traditionally attracted delegates from academic and government sectors in the Northern Hemisphere, all of whom faced drastic expenditure cuts.  Even worse, their buying power was vastly reduced as the Australian Dollar climbed, peaking at USD $1.04. Working with the congress committee, CCM implemented a marketing plan aimed at resource-based economies that had not been adversely affected by the GFC and amended content to be more attractive to industry and not just academia and government as before. This resulted in record attendances and a new awareness of the IGC in non-traditional markets;

• IGC 2012 in Brisbane broke all previous records of sponsorship engagement (over $AUD 2 Million), surplus achieved/return to stakeholders (in excess of $AUD2.6 Million), exhibitors (over 200), number of countries represented, number of oral presentations and number of poster presenters.