My good friend, Elizabeth Rich, chief executive of the Business Events Council of Australia (BECA), does what she does because she sincerely believes in the power of face-to-face meetings to change the world.

She admits this to me in an almost sheepish fashion because she thinks it’s a foolish, romantic notion.

I think though if she had been in Singapore this past week, she would have felt, for a moment, that what she believes in holds a modicum of truth.

US President Obama’s visit to Singapore for the APEC meetings was, to me, a momentous moment in the elevation of Asia in the wider American consciousness.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said it well at a press conference when he was asked by the media what significant matters were discussed at the meeting between Obama and ASEAN governments. He said “the fact that it happened” was significant enough.

It’s the first time an American head of state has sat at the table with ASEAN governments, including Myanmar, talking face-to-face. That alone is a breakthrough.

President Obama walking on the Great Wall of China – again a powerful symbolism that hints of the change to come.

The power of these face-to-face meetings at that level, recorded in the world’s media, at this crucial point in the world’s history cannot be underestimated.

At WIT-Web In Travel last month, chief executives of travel companies talked of “green shoots of a new order” that would see the emergence of Asia as a force to be reckoned with.

“You think we will not see more American companies want to engage with Asia after this?” asked a Canadian business woman over drinks the other evening.

Long live face to face. – Yeoh Siew Hoon