Maarten Vanneste started his first company, ABBIT VIDEO, in 1982 in Belgium at the age of 18. Soon the company grew towards an audiovisual company and later focused on professional meeting and conference support. In 1998 Abbit Meeting Support was born. In 1999 Maarten became member of MPI (Meeting Professionals International) and in 2004 he attained his CMM (Management Certification in the Meeting industry) from MPI. In 2005 he won the IMEX Academy award.

Maarten Vanneste is member, speaker, sponsor and participant in a number of international associations (ICCA, SITE, AC-Forum, EFCT, Eventia) and tradeshows (EIBTM, IMEX, BTC, EMIF), which indicates his dedication to the industry.

As the initiator of the concept Meeting Support, Maarten founded the Meeting Support Institute in January 2006 based on his CMM business plan. This institute aims to gather all meeting support know-how, tools, services and companies in order to educate, inform and motivate meeting organisers to improve the content side of meetings. As a speaker for many international conferences around the world, Maarten is valued as an expert on explaining technical and technology issues to an audience of international meeting planners.

His first book “Meeting Architecture”, which was launched in April 2008, investigates the objectives of a meeting, designs it based on objectives, executes it based on the designs and assesses the result compared to the set objectives.

As an author in many international magazines, Maarten gives concise opinions and shares his knowledge. He is author and co-author of two chapters in the CMP International study book.

As senior meeting support consultant he facilitates a gap-analysis for existing meetings and advising on improvement in education, networking and motivation for participants.