EHFA 3rd Fitness Forum, Madrid 2010

The third European Fitness Forum was held in Madrid on 10 and 11 May 2010, on the campus of the European University of Madrid. It was the third in a series that had met in Hilversum in 2008 and Prague in 2009, and that moved to a different part of Europe each time.

The working sessions took current trends in the sector as their subject and asked what could be done to improve the business of the operators in the room. The programme was not confined to the conference hall: participants visited the Real Madrid stadium and dined there, with a speech from an official of the stadium. The proceedings and presentations were collected on a CD-ROM and sent to every registered participant on 8 June 2010.

The association collected the reactions of those who attended and kept them on the record. The comments that survive are specific. Participants rated the organisation of the two days and the level of the debate, and several singled out the same thing: meeting people from other markets and other parts of the sector, with different points of view, was the most valuable part of the event. The stadium dinner was remembered as the occasion for it, and the interpreting provided for delegates was noted as having made the sessions easy to follow.

The criticisms were as concrete as the praise. One participant wanted the programme widened to take in education and the relationship between suppliers, trainers and educational institutes, and to give more room to cooperation between national markets. Another argued for inviting the health sector to the table, on the grounds that its presence would help the sector communicate the importance of physical activity for health and social well-being. A third suggested streaming some of the presentations, so that more people could follow them without travelling.

The awkward comments were kept alongside the favourable ones, which is worth noting: a record holding only praise would have been of no use in planning the next forum. The suggestions about the health sector and about streaming both came from the sector's own members, and both pointed at the same limit - a two-day meeting in one city reaches only the people who can travel to it.

Madrid was the point at which the series could draw on participants from more than one region at once: operators, national associations, training providers and exercise professionals, in a programme run by the association alongside its register. The subject matter - how the sector improves what it delivers - was the argument the association was making to the European institutions, put to the people who would have to act on it.

The series as a whole is described on the fitness forums page. The notice advertising the forum is in the news archive, and the association's own account of it is among the press releases.