Industry Calendar

The industry calendar collected the trade shows, congresses and policy meetings that made up the sector's year, so that members could see what was coming and where the association itself would be. The archive holds the 2008 listing, running from April to the start of November.

• April 2008
  14 April: Physical Activity Congress, Amsterdam
  23 April: EU Platform on Diet and Physical Activity, Brussels
• May 2008
  7-8 May: EHFA-EREPS Fitness Forum, Hilversum, NL
  21-22 May: SIBEC, Belfry, UK
• June 2008
  10 June: European Summit organised by CCPR/UK, London
• September 2008
  23-25 September: Leisure Industry Week, Birmingham, UK
• October 2008
  18-20 October: WFWF Fitness Tribune, Switzerland
  23-26 October: IHRSA European Congress, Portugal
  31 October - 2 November: Fitness Vakdagen, Utrecht, the Netherlands

The list mixes the sector's commercial calendar with the European policy calendar, and the mixture is the record of where the industry stood in 2008. April held both the Physical Activity Congress in Amsterdam and a meeting of the EU Platform on Diet and Physical Activity in Brussels; May put the association's own forum at Hilversum two weeks before SIBEC at the Belfry. The autumn belonged to the trade, from Leisure Industry Week in Birmingham through the WFWF Fitness Tribune in Switzerland and the IHRSA European Congress in Portugal to Fitness Vakdagen in Utrecht at the end of October.

A calendar of this kind was how a small association with members in many countries showed where the sector gathered and which meetings were worth the journey. The policy entries were the ones the association itself worked on: the EU Platform on Diet and Physical Activity was where the public health argument was made at European level, and the association's European affairs work sat in that company. The trade entries were where its operator and supplier members met each other, and where the standards message reached an audience that had not come to hear it.

For members spread across different countries and different parts of the sector, the practical question was which events were worth sending someone to, and where the association itself could be found. A published list answered both, and it did something quieter as well: on the page, a sector whose national trades were organised separately read as one market with a shared year.

The shape of that year is informative in itself. The policy meetings fall in the spring, while the European institutions were in session and the year's consultations were running. The trade's own events cluster from September onwards. A sector that wanted to be heard in policy had to be in Amsterdam and Brussels early in the year; one that wanted to sell had to be in Birmingham, Switzerland, Portugal and Utrecht later on.

The archive holds the 2008 list and no later year of it, so the calendar here is a snapshot rather than a series. The association's own events are recorded elsewhere: the fitness forums series, and the events channel of the news archive, which holds the assembly notices, the summits and the leadership forums through to 2011.