Maarten Vanneste, CMM has been active in the meeting and conference industry since 1982. His background is Meeting Design, Production and Technology. He started his company ABBIT at the age of 18 and soon started giving back with speaking, training, and publishing. He is the author of "Meeting Architecture, a manifesto" (2008), "Multi-Hub Meetings" (2017), The meeting architecture workbook (2019) The perfect Stranger (Editing in 2026) and several other publications on meeting design. He coined the term ‘Meeting Architecture’, ‘Multi-Hub meetings’, the ‘Session as a filter’ and ‘The Perfect Stranger’ and he invented the ‘Interactivation Ratio’ for measuring participant engagement in meetings. He developed the comprehensive Meeting Architecture Matrix and a 5 day training in meeting design. A new 2 day masterclass based on ‘The Perfect Stranger’ was introduced in South Africa, in 2025 for captains of industry.

He was the founder of a movement and a conference around meeting design aiming to advance the effectiveness of meetings and conferences.

He was the recipient of the ‘IMEX Academy award’ in 2005 and ‘the MPI Rise Award’ for Industry Leadership in 2011. In 2022 he was appointed by MPI members as one of the 50 most influential people in the global meetings industry.

Born in Belgium in 1963, lives in Belgium, speaks Dutch, English, French and German formally retired in 2025.