2022 for SYMVOLI was a year of high standards international projects and a bloom of cultural activities!
It was a year we moved from organizing a spectacular concert of Andrea Bocelli at Sani Festival to designing the awarding of Daniel Barenboim with the Theophano Prize.
FROM BOCELLI TO BARENBOIM
Let’s start this retrospective with a mention of our cultural events, an important aspect of SYMVOLI’s new activity sector in the past years.
Our summer was dedicated for a tenth consequent year to the production of SANI FESTIVAL’s 30th celebratory edition, where we were honored to host and coordinate the concerts of true music legends: Chucho Valdes, Paquito de Rivera, Al Di Meola, Jack Savoretti, Bob Geldof and of course the icon of the greatest Italian vocal tradition, Andrea Bocelli, in a magnificent concert that marked the festival’s history.
From the world’s most beloved tenor in August, we moved to the leading Pianist and Maestro Daniel Barenboim in November! SYMVOLI has proudly undertaken once more the design and organization of the Empress Theophano Prize, acting as a managing partner of Theophano Foundation since 2019. The third Empress Theophano Prize was dedicated to the power of Art as a common ground for mutual understanding between people, and was awarded to Daniel Barenboim, one of the most influential figures in the international music scene.
And a year full of cultural events ended with a Christmas sparkle in Thessaloniki’s most emblematic landmark, Agora Modiano, which opened again its gates to locals and tourists. SYMVOLI was in charge of the concept, design, and implementation of two photo exhibitions in Agora Modiano: The Making of Agora Modiano & The Great Cuisine of Asia Minor. On top of this, our team undertook the design and production of the Agora Modiano Christmas Events. A series of events, where music, tastes, theatre, fairy tales, and history created an unforgettable festive extravaganza.
Lastly, it is worth mentioning one more project we coordinate for the past three years, and aims to showcase Greek artists: MATAROA project, the Greek platform for artists and contemporary art, and MATAROA AWARDS, an initiative to present young talented Greek artists and their work during the Art Thessaloniki Fair in November. This project is part of our overall collaboration with the Cultural Society of Entrepreneurs and our annual management collaboration.
We love to fill our calendar with these kinds of events, but we equally take care of the conference sector that we have been serving successfully for almost 30 years.
OUR CONFERENCES TAKE US TO NEW PLACES
2022 was a very productive and international conference year indeed: we traveled to Ljubljana, Slovenia for the EFTA conference, one of our most long-lasting collaborations that have also travelled us to Athens, Naples and who knows which next destination! A challenging experience, a big-scale event, was the bigger onsite conference we organized since the start of the pandemic. It certainly showed us what we already knew that people were eager to return to onsite conferences meet their friends and colleagues and rejoin their conference communities.
The 28th WFTC World Conference 2022 was another proof of that. Participants traveled to the distant New Delhi, India to join the WFTC 2022 conference, which was a great success. This collaboration was closely connected to another very successful cooperation we had in 2019 with the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities (EFTC) for the 17th EFTC Conference, which was hosted in Thessaloniki.
Talking about flourishing partnerships, BIOTECHNOLOGIA 2022 took place in Thessaloniki in May 2022. The meeting that gathers global leaders of the biopharmaceutical sector put under the microscope major topics concerning the industry, science, and society and is one of SYMVOLI’s older ongoing collaborations since 2003. Returning to Thessaloniki after 2012, it has been a chance to showcase the multicultural identity of our city and create unique experiences for touring in the city and tasting local gastronomy.
But we have also enjoyed planning some new projects, with older and new partners! Heinrich Böll Stiftung Thessaloniki celebrated 10 years of presence in Greece with a two-day event rich in ideas, discussions, and actions. SYMVOLI has undertaken the organization of the first day entitled “Re-think” in the Thessaloniki Concert Hall of which you can take a glimpse here. The 3rd Panhellenic Conference of School Psychology, was another conference full of color, with hundreds of participants and a full scientific program. A pleasure to organize and work for was also the 2nd International Conference on Energy Transition in the Mediterranean Area, focused on topics of interest to the Energy Challenges in the Mediterranean area.
Last year’s retrospective was filled with hybrid or online conferences and events. In 2022 the dynamic shifted in favor of the onsite conferences, limited our online projects to one, without losing at all from the quality of SYMVOLI’s services: the 20th International Symposium on Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics (ISEM) 2022.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The year that’s behind us was one of the most productive years for SYMVOLI. Full of creative projects, long-term partnerships, and large-scale onsite conferences, that surely were missed during the pandemic period.
And it has all been teamwork: Vicky, Maria, Anneta, Angelika, our returning member, Elena, and our newcomers, ranging from a long-experienced event manager to a talented energetic young professional. Anna & Irene welcome on board!
Our goal for 2023 is to keep up this tempo, engage in more cultural events, establish our presence in Thessaloniki as a leading event and conference management company and broaden our presence abroad as an international PCO.
After all, we need to maintain our reputation as the 6th Most Influential Meeting Agency Representatives 2021, part of the selection of New Europe’s influencers organized by the Kongres Magazine and announced in January 2022! It was a good year indeed!
