The 2021 UFI Digital Innovation Award looked for digital innovations that would help the exhibition industry manage and recover from the crisis.
There were a record number of entries this year – 32 from 14 countries – which together represent an impressive collection of best-practice examples of digital innovation from within the industry.
Congratulations to the Winner Shanghai DLG Exhibitions and Events for their work on the 2020 World AI Conference (WAIC) which with only 2 months preparation successfully hosted a conference and online on a truly impressive scale.
View the Winning Award
“I was very impressed by the application of Shanghai DLG Exhibitions and Events as it demonstrated the agility of the company to react to the new situation our industry faced last year, but never losing focus of the customer’s benefits – which was greatly demonstrated by the projects’ results. Congratulations to our first winner from China, and thanks to the entire Shanghai DLG team for sharing this industry best practice case with us.” Matthias “Tesi” Baur, Chairman of the UFI Digital Innovation Working Group
“We are honoured to be chosen as the winners of the UFI Digital Innovation Award. In the case of COVID-19 last year, like many organizers we were forced to take our event online in only 2 months, and we were very happy to succeed on the scale that we did –over 2 million visitors attended our online exhibition and 253 million listened to the conference programme. We thank the judges and look forward to presenting our online platform at the UFI Global Congress in Rotterdam in November.” Chen Huifeng, President, DLG Exhibitions & Events Co., Ltd.
Watch a video about WAIC 2020 event
The Winner will present their case-study live at the 88th UFI Global Congress in Rotterdam in November, together with the Winners of the other annual UFI Awards, which together showcase industry best-practice from around the world in the areas of exhibition sustainability, marketing, ops & services, HR, Industry Partners and digital innovation.
The two Runners Up for the 2021 Award were:
| Expoplatform |  |
View entry |
| ADITUS |  |
View entry |
And the following entries (in alphabetical order) were highlighted by the judges in the first round of voting and are commended for the excellent work also:
Adventics – Scan2lead (Germany) View entry
Chongqing International Expo Center (China) View entry
Fisa – Expomin Virtuakl (Chile) View entry
Informa Markets (Brazil) View entry
Messe Frankfurt – Automechanika Shanghai (Hong Kong) View entry
RAI Amsterdam (Netherlands) View entry
Reed Exhibitions – IFTM Top Resa (France) View entry
Shenzhen World (China) View entry
Swapcard (France) View entry
Thank you to the judges of this years’ Award – aka the UFI Digitial Innovation Working Group:
Matthias Baur, MBB (UK) – Chair
Gunnar Heinrich, adventics (Germany) – Vice-Chair
Stephan Forseilles, easyfairs (Belgium) – Vice-Chair
Jo-Anne Kelleway, Freeman (Australia)
Jaruwan (Rose) Suwannasat (Thailand)
Ade Allenby, Reed Exhibitions (UK)
Regis-Emmanuel Crouzet, REC (France)
Anthony Faure, UNIMEV (France)
Peter Tubak, Messe Munich (Germany)
David Oldfield, Koelnmesse (Germany)
Enrico Gallorini, GRS, (UAE)
Look out for an UFI connects session later this year, where the judges – members of the UFI Digital Innovation Working Group will look at some of the individual entries, and discuss what themes or trends have emerged from this years’ Award entries. Don’t miss is it!
