In 1982 Vanneste founded ABBIT in Belgium. The company grew as an audiovisual supplier doing 66% export and almost 50% for US based clients. In 1999 Maarten became member of MPI (Meeting Professionals International), he was president of the Belgian chapter in ‘02-’03 and attained his CMM in 2004 (Global certification in Meetings Management). He is also involved in many other associations as a speaker and author including the CMP manual.

In 2006 Maarten founded the Meeting Support Institute, based on his CMM business plan. This not for profit institute groups meeting support companies and educates, informs and motivates meeting planners about the Meeting Support side of their meetings. The open source knowledge base published on meetingsupport.org provides a unique collection of articles, books, speakers and scientific research. The faceted search engine allows for collecting relevant and specific information around learning, networking and motivation at meetings.

In 2008 his book ‘Meeting Architecture, a manifesto’ was published and was reprinted twice in its first year. Meeting Architecture is becoming a global movement around the content side of meetings. It has universities and schools using it in courses and several industry educational programmes based on its framework. Maarten Vanneste won the IMEX Academy award 2005 and was voted 17 on the UK power50 list in 2009.