As a new decade dawned, IAPH’s flagship conference underwent arguably the most significant set of changes since its inception: rebranded as the World Ports Conference from 2020, it would henceforth be organised by an events company working with IAPH, rather than by the host port – now the host sponsor. The conference also moved from a biennial to annual schedule. Although there had been mid-term conferences since the 1960s, the new frequency and commercial arrangement was intended to create a consistent high-level content-based networking experience for delegates. The new IAPH World Ports Conference was due to be held in March 2020 in Antwerp, Belgium and it attracted 450 registrants. Yet, with only weeks to go, it had to be cancelled due to the pandemic lockdown in the country. Undeterred, the association reimagined the conference as a five-day television broadcast for a remote audience, and rescheduled it to June 2021. It was trailed by an innovative programme of webinars exploring the impact of the pandemic on ports and supply chains; this series set the standard for IAPH’s present series of Harbor Cafe events and pre-conference sustainability webinars. The association worked to convene and connect industry expertise for the greater good, by means of a taskforce of members across the globe, which met online to tackle the pandemic and its impact on port operations and the global supply chain. This period also saw the creation of the Port Economic Impact Barometer Report – the precursor to the IAPH World Ports Tracker – with the involvement of Professors Thanos Pallis and Theo Notteboom. The revised digital edition of the World Ports Conference combined live events from the Antwerp Port House, with scheduled and recorded C-level keynotes, debates, demonstrations and one-on-one interviews to great success, attracting 600 participants. Even in the face of a pandemic, IAPH pledged that the show must go on.
Held during the pandemic lockdown, the rescheduled Antwerp edition of the World Ports Conference was reimagined as a digital event combining live and recorded content
