The Challenge
The continued impact of COVID 19, in restricting physical meetings, meant one of Canada’s largest medical societies opted to run a virtual event in 2020.
“William’s advice at the early stages of the pivot to digital was invaluable. His continued support throughout the process ensured our event was a success. William was focussed on not only guiding the team but making sure they were learning the skills which they could use for our future events”
Melissa Keown
The Process
Our major success was encouraging the CCS to maintain a revenue-generating objective while supporting them to retain a significant amount of pre spent commercial income.
As soon as we were engaged we undertook a structured process of educating the events team on virtual events. Initially, we covered:
Throughout four months, Gallus Events helped the CCS to design their multi-stage, multi-format event for a digital audience.
We advised the Conference Committee to run their virtual event on a similar timeline as their previous physical event. This was to ease the transition for stakeholders already engaged (and booked to attend and exhibit) in the physical event.
We quickly shortlisted and stress-tested several virtual event platforms, while supporting the redesign of all of the content. We advised the CCS events team to shorten sessions, use a host and offer more variety in the way content was delivered.
Conclusion
Across four days in October, over 2000 attendees engaged and interacted across two specifically designed virtual event platforms.
With only a few months notice the Candian Cardiovascular Society Congress delivered a highly successful event and raised significant income from commercial supporters.
The event was a great success and CCS look forward to a fully digital event in 2021.
As a way for Gallus Events to provide ongoing support over 2021, two members of the CCS team have joined the Creating High Impact Virtual Events course provided by our training and development partner the Virtual Event Campus.