Scientific congresses are crucial fixtures for almost every professional community: they offer opportunities to keep up to date and to learn, they build and strengthen the networks that matter for a community’s advancement, and they lay the ground for development and progress.
But precisely because they recur regularly and continuously, they often risk becoming places of ritual and liturgy that reduce engagement and participation rather than increasing them, as audiences now expect.
How do you avoid that?
By working so that the congress stands out not only for its content but for the quality of the whole experience, combining learning, interaction and involvement.
And how do you get there?
With an approach that takes the three basic elements of any event — venue, programme and social occasions — and turns them around, taking them a little outside the usual patterns.
A distinctive venue and an immersive setting
Clothes make the man, and anyone who says otherwise is fibbing. And a congress’s clothes, needless to say, are the venue hosting it. Which is why choosing one venue over another is not merely practical but highly strategic — not only for what the space is, but for what it can become once dressed in the event’s colours.
Technology can be an excellent resource here, thanks in part to its ability to overcome the limits of space and time.
Using the real and the virtual together (where “real” is increasingly a convention, since virtual experiences are by now no less real than any other) can widen not just the space but everything that space makes possible, going as far as creating whole worlds of meaning that are unique and unrepeatable.
Innovative formats for the scientific programme
We can take it as read by now that, special cases aside, a conference programme is no longer only on paper but has an electronic version too — which is not just greener but more useful, because it can be updated in real time and so absorb any change or addition. Agreed?
If so, why stop at the basics rather than turn that tool into a lever for the event’s success?
You can do it, with relative ease, by creating a personalisation system through which each attendee builds their own agenda and so gets the most out of what the event offers. Then you can enrich it with a system of real-time notifications that act as reminders for the most important sessions, give updates on activities and news, or extend the experience with suggestions tailored — and tailorable — to individual tastes and needs.
Networking and social occasions to strengthen connections
We know: many people go to events primarily to network and to widen or strengthen their social circle, personal and professional alike. That is why an important part of any conference or congress has always been given over to convivial activities — dinners, recreation, cultural tours and moments for relaxation and wellbeing.
But can it be done better, and more? Yes: not only by paying closer attention to these activities and to how they are organised and run, but also by providing further tools to enrich what is on offer.
Think of systems for thematic matching and for arranging targeted meetings, or of gamification, which encourages participation at modest cost and promotes connections between people through interaction.
Congresses, scientific ones above all, are among the events with the longest and most established history. More than others, then, they can afford to capitalise on their solidity, their long history and their authority in order to experiment and explore new paths. That lets them keep their offer strong as expectations rise, and to do so without losing sight of the primary objectives of any event but rather enriching them and projecting them into the future. A complex challenge? Certainly — and one where the right, reliable tools can be an important resource for planning that is not only careful and meticulous but imaginative and willing to try the new.