Now that the line-up of world-class speakers and panellists for this annual event has been confirmed, a total of over sixty speakers will be speaking or participating as panellists at the 2012 Asia Pacific Golf Summit (APGS) to be staged in the oil-rich state of Brunei Darussalam on 11-13 December.
“This is an achievement on an Olympian scale and we are delighted to have hit this record for Brunei in this, the year of the London Olympics,” declared Mike Sebastian, chief executive officer of the Asia Pacific Golf Group, the owner and producer of APGS.
The sixty-odd speakers will be involved in the programme of three major international events that will be staged at the prestigious and luxurious Empire Hotel and Country Club. The conferences include:
- 2012 Asia Pacific GolfSummit
- Campus On The Greens
- Intellectual Property Rights in Golf Symposium
APGS, the lead event, will feature about forty speakers and panelists over its three-day programme. “The Summit has been programmed to address critical issues confronting the growth and development of golf and it will place special emphasis on matters relating to golf and the environment, growing the game, improving the club experience and stepping up the drive to make golf more relevant to Asia’s young,” revealed Sebastian.
“Golf in Asia is going through an interesting phase, a sort of evolution so to speak and as such, there are so many important issues to address and we will endeavour to see how we can get the job done effectively,” he said.
According to Sebastian, the primary objective of the APGS is to identify trends and to see how best the various players in the different sectors of the golf industry can come together to help address future needs. “The needs are complex and as in any evolution, we must strive to get ourselves focused and to place our resources in those areas where we have the best chance for success,” he pointed out.
The speakers and panelists assembled for APGS are drawn from a wide spectrum of international experts that includes government leaders, industry thought-leaders, golf course designers and architects, senior club managers, academics and business consultants.
“We have put together the most comprehensive team of experts who possess the knowledge and experience to guide Asian golf into the future in fields such as improving the club and playing experience, golf tourism, the proper care and maintenance of golf courses and protecting the industry in Asia from the growing threat of intellectual property rights,” Sebastian explained.
One of the highpoints of the APGS will be the launch of Asia’s first ever environmental award appropriately labeled as the “Custodians of the Environment” Award. This award will be presented by the Brunei Darussalam Minister of Industry and Primary Resources, Pehin Dato Yahya. In announcing this annual award, he said, “As a nation, we are very conscious about the preservation of our environment and we think that it would be timely for us to play a role in the promotion of golf as a responsible partner in the protection and sustainability of the world’s environment.”
This award will be presented annually during the Summit and it will go to a golf course that upholds all of the identified criteria stipulated for the award.
“The Summit in Brunei will most definitely blaze a new trail of change an innovations and this will manifest itself in steps taken to shine a new light on helping the game to grow, on encouraging more definitive and concrete steps towards junior golf development and measures to try and minimize the scourge of intellectual property rights by pirates,” declared Sebastian.
The full programmes for the Summit and the other conferences will be made available by the end of July on its web site at http://www.golfconference.org
The Empire Hotel & Country Club www.theempirehotel.com