WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA) announced the launch of the ECA Advocacy Network, a one-stop digital platform.
According to Tommy Goodwin, FASAE, CAE, PMP, CMP, ECA’s Vice President, this will help a wider-range of events professionals participate in their advocacy efforts.
“It’s great when people can come to Washington D.C. for Legislative Action Day and take that time, and that expense … but not everybody can do that,” Goodwin said. “It’s really just about bringing people into the work of ECA and trying to marry that up with what people are able to do … [and] from a geographic perspective, it’s going to allow us to reach more people wherever they are.”
The resource includes the ECA Action Center, which professionals can use to contact elected officials about important topics such as Music Licensing Transparency, Visitor Visa Processing Reform and Workforce Development Expansion. It quickly connects professionals with relevant representatives and even includes drafted letters.
The network’s Social Influencer Program encourages people to share and engage with ECA’s posts on social media, provides guidance and sample posts, and can help establish professionals as industry experts and thought leaders.
“If you’ve got constituents … telling you about what’s going on and how you can help, I think that opens doors and kind of allows us to reach more policymakers about some of the things that we’re interested in,” Goodwin said. “Everybody in the industry has a story to share. Everybody has an experience that they have, a career trajectory. Maybe they’ve bumped into something, like not being able to bring back an international attendee or an exhibitor because they can’t get them a visa. Everybody’s got one of those stories, and all we want to do is give people a platform to tell those stories.”
Lastly, the network’s Show Floor Program brings policymakers to business events across the U.S. to display their benefits firsthand and spread awareness of important issues. ECA collaborates with show organizers to help them successfully host lawmakers, assisting with invitation and logistics, post-meeting feedback and troubleshooting.
Goodwin recalled congressional staff visiting the Javits Center soon after the COVID-19 pandemic during an event’s setup and seeing its economic impact, small business representation and job creation firsthand.
“We’ve just found, time and time again, that when you bring somebody to the floor, walk them around [and] show them what goes on … the lightbulbs start to go off, and then they see how some of the things that we talk about directly impact their community … that’s when the magic happens.”
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Goodwin anticipates more resources being added to the network in the future.
“We want to get, obviously, as many people in that conversation as possible, but particularly reaching the ones who aren’t necessarily in Washington, D.C. [and] who don’t have relationships with their policymakers already. This is kind of the front door to hopefully building those relationships and being able, over time, to tell those folks the story of the industry,” Goodwin said. “When this industry does come together, I think we’ve got examples, over the last couple years, that we really do make an impact. So, we just want to bring more people into that, so that we can create even more impact going forward.”
You can learn more about the ECA Advocacy Network here.
