2020 IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica

February 16, 2021 by ekurzawa
Filed in: Virtual & Hybrid Event Case Studies Tag: Case Studies

Read about 2020 IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica’s journey to going virtual shared by Humphrey Muhindi, General Co-Chair, IEEE PowerAfrica 2020.

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About 2020 IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica

PowerAfrica 2020 is a premier conference providing a forum for research scientists, engineers, and practitioners to present and discuss the latest research findings, ideas, and emerging technologies and applications in the area of power systems integrations, business models, technological advances, policies and regulatory frameworks for the African continent. The conference usually features keynote addresses and invited presentations by distinguished scientists and engineers.

The Seventh Annual IEEE PES/IAS PowerAfrica Conference (PAC 2020) was held virtually from August 25 to August 28, 2020 and was co-sponsored by the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) and Industrial Applications Society (IAS) under the theme “Sustainable and Smart Energy Revolutions for Powering Africa”. The onsite edition will be held in 2021 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Previous editions of the conference have been held in Johannesburg, South Africa (’07 and ’12), Livingston, Zambia (’16), Accra, Ghana (‘2017), Cape Town, South Africa (’18), Abuja, Nigeria (’19).

Pivoting to Virtual

With the rising Covid-19 cases it was clear that in-person gatherings and international travel would be prohibited but we wanted to continue having the event hence looked at available options including postponing it but due to the uncertainty we saw going virtual as the most applicable. The PowerAfrica steering committee held a number of meetings to monitor the situation and make the decision.

Challenges

  • PowerAfrica has been a purely in-person event with parallel sessions and a lot of human interaction. Our main challenges were;
    • How do we bring this human interaction to the virtual conference?
    • What platform do we choose to run the conference?
    • How do we accommodate the different timezones to ensure the majority can attend live?
    • How do we share the resources that are usually shared physically e.g. conference proceedings?
    • How do we ensure that the recordings were of good quality?
    • How do we convince sponsors to support a virtual conference?

Partnering with MCE

MCE gave us peace of mind when it came to the virtual platform 🙂 They assisted us in selecting the ON24 platform. Before that, they shared their experiences with other virtual conferences and this information guided us in our planning. They were able to provide us with a dedicated team who fully managed the setup of the ON24 platform and assisted with the creation of Zoom accounts for the live interactions. Bearing in mind the nature of systems development, they were pretty accommodating of our requests to make some uploads and changes during the event so as to enable us to achieve what we desired. They supported us well and were available throughout the event despite being in a different time zone.

Successes

Our successes included that:

  • We had the largest number of registrations for the PowerAfrica conference.
  • We had the highest number of presented technical papers.
  • We were able to pivot from an in-person to a virtual conference within 3 months with no prior experience of organizing a virtual conference.
  • We had a good financial surplus due to the high number of registrations.
  • We integrated a mobile conference app for the first time and it proved popular.

Lessons Learned

Virtual conferences are popular and future conferences can look at adding a virtual component. Start planning early and stick to deadlines. Be flexible to explore new ideas on how to hold an event. Test, test, and test some more 🙂 You can never have enough system testing before launching the event.

Advice to Fellow Organizers

Make the decision early to give yourself adequate time for preparations. Check the pricing to ensure it is reasonable to attract more participants. Work with experts who are used to the virtual platform of choice to guide you and ensure you get the best out of the system. Test the virtual platform thoroughly before launching the event. This will ensure you have a feel of what the event will be like when it goes live. Consider including a virtual component even for in-person events. This will definitely attract those who cannot travel.

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