Filed in: Virtual & Hybrid Event Case Studies Tag: Case Studies
Read about 2020 IEEE International Symposium on EMC + SIPI’s journey to going virtual shared by Alistair Duffy, IEEE EMC Society President.
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About 2020 IEEE International Symposium on EMC + SIPI
Our annual International Symposium is a medium-sized conference of about 1000 attendees with about 100 exhibitors. Despite being planned for the end of July 2020, the daily news in early March made uncomfortable listening. Hindsight might be perfect but then, we were conflicted: “surely, it will burn itself out in the better weather and be no worse than the flu” and “this is bad, we need to shift the conference from in-person to online, now!” As the next few weeks progressed it became clear that the probability of holding an event in Reno, NV, where our truly international audience could all meet, was getting smaller. So, on-line we went.
Partnering with MCE
Given that we had no blueprint or prior experience of doing such a thing, it seemed appropriate to assemble a small, agile, core team. In parallel with this, we had many conversations with the MCE EERT about transitioning, contracts, and planning. Fortunately, we had started running some webinars with MCE, so were familiar with the platform used and we had built up a good working relationship with David Stankiewicz and his colleagues so discussing how we could build the look and feel of our technical program site was easy and a good example of co-creation. MCE took some of the weight off our shoulders later in the transition period in negotiating the final stages of some of the contracts which was a blessing, given the amount of work that needed to be done in the space of just a few weeks.
Pivoting to Virtual
The conference ran during the month of August, with the usual mix of tutorials, technical papers, experiments, and panel sessions. With both our Technical Activities and Standards committees, we had more than 20 collateral meetings. Our Awards Ceremony was very well attended, as were our Women in Engineering Summit and Young Professionals meeting.
Challenges
A key challenge was how we could deliver value to our exhibitors without an exhibition. For us, it was about creating sponsorship levels and looking to recognize the desire for companies to expand their reach and enhance their technical reputations. Our higher-tier sponsors presented technical seminars as part of the symposium program, and these were very well received by the attendees. Sponsors also had a virtual booth with the opportunity to provide material and meet with attendees.
Successes
So, what went well? The support of, and positive relationship with, colleagues in MCE was absolutely key to being able to deliver the conference. For such a short turnaround, having a small core team who were prepared to make decisions quickly, was a positive factor. Including the sponsors (exhibitors) within the program provided a really valuable enhancement to the technical content. Pre-recorded talks enabled the conference to keep to time and not worry about connection difficulties; it also allowed authors for whom the symposium was in an inconvenient time zone to be able to contribute. Finally, having the material on-demand for a month afterward was clearly helpful to the attendees (and we did have one or two full registrations during the on-demand period simply to be able to watch the recordings).
Lessons Learned
And, what would we have done differently? We had three weeks of technical talks. This was to allow attendees to balance home/work and conference attendance. While we had many positive comments about this, it was generally felt that the technical program itself was too elongated. A week shorter would have been good. The technical sessions could have been enhanced with live session moderation and live Q&A (where possible). Necessity caused us to use one system for the virtual exhibition area and another for the program delivery but time was not on our side for integrating them: having a seamless connection between all parts of the virtual presences is important.
At the time of writing, we have just taken the decision that our 2021 symposium will be virtual. We are just starting the process of converting our in-person plans to on-line. However, we have more time and knowledge to plan and execute this time. Such a relief!