Light Middle East 2024 – A Review

The Vibrant VLDC Booth

Light Middle East 2024 in Dubai has come and gone…it was an action-packed couple of days where the lighting community from around the globe met and interacted through events, talks and just bumping into each other at the various manufacturers booths or as can be seen above the VLDC stand just outside the Think Light Arena.

As one of the founders of the Virtual Lighting Design Community, this was my “hang-out” spot where we would meet and interview many of the lighting industry’s leading lights. Compared to last year, this year was of a much higher quality in terms of exhibitors and talks. The Think Light and InSpotLight programs were again top notch with many familiar and new names on the speaking rostrum.

My involvement started already on the Monday when as part of an elite group of international lighting designers we judged the entries of this year’s lighting design awards. As a novelty the lighting designers of the submitted entries had been invited to pitch their design to the “grand jury”. Probably quite a daunting experience being faced by some of your expert peers in the industry…But it gave us as judges an extra insight of what had been at the heart of the lighting design, I found that a very valuable experience that made me review some of my earlier (remotely executed) scoring. The winners were announced at the awards night, the ultimate closing event of the 3-day show.

I was also a speaker and panellist at the session about Enlighted Futures; Smart, Intelligent and Integrated, which saw Tapio Rosenius deliver a keynote on Ambient Communications. My topic was about being smart from the Start, emphasizing the need to change our attitude towards lighting design by embracing the smart world as part of our scope of responsibilities. We had a lively discussion. Later in the day I moderated the closing session- partner summit where participating partners were given a 5 min window to pitch their story. VLDC was one of them…😊

Overall VLDC’s partnership with Messe Frankfurt Middle East was very successful, our booth was a continuous point for meeting and networking, many of our industry peers choosing to drop in, have a chat and catch up. This is how events like this should work, high quality content, great opportunities to meet and interact with industry leaders, business partners and just friends! Looking forward to see some of you again at Light & Build in Frankfurt later in March!