SAGES Magazine

THE SOUTH AFRICAN GASTROENTEROLOGY REVIEW 2021 | VOLUME 19 | ISSUE 2 | 31 OPINION show booth sales. Whether virtual or hybrid, people are looking at your event and they’re judging it partly on price. They’re looking at the value proposition, so market and promote your virtual or hybrid event to the maximum. Anybody who says that virtual is easy has certainly not done a full-scale virtual event. Make no mistake with the hybrid format, you’re basically planning two events which have twice the logistics including pricing. What if there are only 50 people in a room, will they pay 10 times more than the 500 joining on line? The economics of virtual and hybrid meetings will be different and are likely not to be as profitable as associations are used to historically. Considering these factors I think marketing and attendee attraction efforts will play a key role in helping organizations grow their virtual attendance at a hybrid conference, and ultimately their ROI. The focus for association conferences has always been to provide high-quality scientific, medical content. It is vital that conferences are part of an association’s overall strategy. It is predicted that associations will (re)discover their strongest asset: the communities they bring together at their events but should remember they now have all the tools to keep these communities engaged all year-round. Industry experts foresee that hybrid experiences will have a smaller percentage of attendees in person compared to those online, and obviously the incentive to attend in person needs to be something unique. Large events will be possible, but not how the industry is used to planning them. A new breed of destinations will create more contained experiences. Despite being smaller, they will be more palatable and less risky than larger events in large cities and large venues. On site the delegates can experience cool stuff together. Obviously, this will rely on new business models. But if I pay, if I travel, if I come, don’t bore me to death with PowerPoint presentations that I can watch from anywhere in the world With virtual and hybrid platforms powering event experiences, attendees are able to discover people to meet and break into private video meetings with people all over the globe. At last, it will allow people at all stages in their careers and from any country to attend professional events. As the world labours slowly back towards a return to face- to-face engagement and human interaction, the HCP survey was unambiguous in its findings “HCPs do crave the live conference environment”. When asked to ‘think ahead’, 55% prefer, and plan to attend in person, with 16% stating an overt preference for virtual and 26% stating their desire to attend both live and virtual in equal measure. The last factor is ongoing engagement. Conference content can be reused throughout the year, which also makes for a better investment than only having an experience on the day of the event. Having been exposed to all these benefits makes audiences very critical when choosing whether to come back to physical events. Investing equally in both the live and virtual elements of a hybrid event is the best way to prove its value to all delegates. This way, if organizers do eventually transition back to live events exclusively or have to rely on virtual events again in the future, all attendees will be encouraged to return regardless of how they previously consumed the association’s conferences. Ensure that planning is carried out with a focus on having fewer physical delegates. It will be key for event organizers to manage their budgets, implement COVID safety measures and provide a quality experience for all attendees. We are likely to see a huge rise in hybrid events in the coming months as people continue to favour a mix of in-person and virtual interaction. By carefully planning all aspects of these events, both physical and virtual, taking advantage of hybrid events technology and knowing the mistakes to avoid, organizers can ensure they get their events off to a strong start. In closing, it’s not going to be easy, but in the end we will have a newly invented face-to-face meeting industry, in virtual and hybrid events, will remain a strong component. Xander Hamilton and Helen Chamberlain From the industry point of view the current situation regarding congresses and medical education events is no different to the pre COVID situations and is based around two key pillars: the mission statement and the policy or guidelines of the company. The values within the company’s mission statement. are generally based on how a company can best serve the patient, the doctors and other health care practitioners in this changing environment. This “customer” centric approach is considered the key which many companies and Boston in, particular, are increasingly focused upon. Boston Scientific still adheres to all the prior policies in terms of approval for HCP Interactions and remains compliant to Medtech codes of conduct and the local country regulations detailed by the South African Medical Technology Industry Association. The business unit managers in the various companies base their decisions taking into account the policies of codes of practice as well as company protocols. The most common approach is that they need to continue to support the activities of the societies and educational institutions in relationship to congresses and other educational offerings across a broader base. The trade realises that the Societies/Associations and University are the entities which will drive and innovate in the medical education arena and that it is essential to support their endeavours. Quality content is key and optimizing the interaction to create a better customer centered experience will attract the registration of HCPs. The many virtual offerings that are now flooding the market place means that the industry must have their eye on quality and relevant content to be successful. Networking remains a very important aspect of what the trade wants. Face-to-face meetings with key opinion leaders and congress chairman are the best way to discuss educational activities and initiatives and it is increasingly evident that these cannot be confined annual congresses. The local situation regarding national and company policy will dictate if this interaction needs to be conducted virtually. One such initiative is Boston Scientific partnership with The African Consortium for oesophageal cancer (AfrECC)where self- expanding stents have been provided linked to a training system for the delivery in resource limited settings with a high incidence of the disease. The approach of the major trade partners is seeing the bigger picture regarding the interaction with all educational endeavours including congresses. This means that our interaction has shifted away from a purely marketing exercise at educational events to that of a social responsibility approach to participate and improve the educational content relevant to the speciality involved. This means more of a continuum and the uses of virtual and hybrid methods to sustain endeavours to maintain links not just in South Africa but in other Sub Saharan countries. As the technology improves there are exciting initiatives to telementor procedural training in surgery and endoscopic skills. Includes research from Meeting Professionals International, International Association of Professional Conference Organisers and Professional Convention Management Association, as well as the results of a survey received from 700 European Healthcare Professionals.