 Hey friends, it's Leanne and recently I had the great pleasure of sitting down with one of my good industry friends Isabella Bachmanek who is the event planner for the Dietitians of Canada. You may recall seeing Isabella on another video I did with her last summer where she talked about implementing brain dates into her conferences and you can find a link to that video here. Well, today Isabella is talking about pivoting her in-person live scheduled conference that was supposed to take place in June into a virtual library of education. Yes, she turned her live event into nine weeks of programming for the Dietitians members. I want you to hear her story. She has some incredible best practices for you event planners out there. And as she looks ahead to 2021 she's got some nuggets of wisdom as well. So stick around and let's hear from Isabella with Dietitians. Hey Isabella, thank you so much for joining us today. Hi Leanne, it's great to see you and I'm happy to chat today about my virtual conference experience. And I'm so thankful that you're able to do that and I know a lot of Canadian associations had to cancel their in-person events and of course Dietitians of Canada was no different and you made the difficult decision to cancel your June event. So at what point did you guys decide to go virtual? I think pretty much from the beginning when we were talking about cancellation we were talking about canceling the in-person but what could we do with all of this fantastic content that had been curated by our program committee and what could we offer our members during this difficult time to help them stay connected to each other and moving forward with their careers and learning and just feel supported by us in general during this time? Yeah, no and we appreciate associations staying on top of these things and staying connected with their members because you're right they needed that support. So but your event looks a little bit different than other virtual events that I've seen out there. What can you tell us in particular about the Dietitians event? Well what we decided to do was break the two and a half days up into a weekly program over nine weeks and the reason that we did that is we knew that as healthcare workers Dietitians would not have a whole day to sit in front of a computer and at that time we weren't sure about you know all of the research has come out now about you know how long you can actually make virtual events we were just kind of going off of what we thought our particular group could handle. So we had two sessions and one research presentation every Wednesday afternoon starting at the end of May. We had to use go to webinar because some of the health authorities that employ Dietitians had blocked Zoom at that time because Zoom was relatively new and had some security issues that people were worried about. We made sure that we still offered our brain dates except you know we offered those virtually because we knew that it was important for our delegates to not just get the content and the learning but also to be able to connect with one another. So we did four brain dates over the course of the nine week program. We had a really good response from our supporters and exhibitors. We had about 25% who stayed on for the virtual program because they saw the value in that. And we decided to offer it free to members to show them the value of being part of our association during hard times. We did lose you know revenue. We didn't make any money on this conference certainly. We lost some money but we felt that we needed to give our community something special when they needed it during this difficult time. And that is so generous of you and the rest of your leadership team. So how did your members react to this virtual event and to the generous offer of it being complimentary to them as members? Well we were amazed you know. We were forecasting that maybe about 500 would be able to you know connect with us during the program but we actually got over 2,000 people that attended a session or brain dated or interacted in some way with the program. Many of them were repeat customers. They were coming back week after week participating in multiple brain date sessions. They were very appreciative. We had about 500 to 800 attendees live at each session and then another 500 or so that would watch the recordings afterwards. So that was really fantastic. And we had over 25% of our attendees participate in brain dates. And over 50% of those attended more than one brain date. And this was great for them and for us because we were able to see the topics that people were most interested in talking about. Which is very helpful for us as we plan the future of our professional development and also DC's activities. Yeah, that's an incredibly high participation rate. And you are hearing that from other associations as well. They're seeing a lot more people participate because it's more convenient to do it virtually than obviously to make all the logistics of an in-person event happen. But 2,000 people, that's incredible. Congratulations. That's such an accomplishment and an achievement both for you and for dietitians. But talking more about you, and we've chatted about this in the past, you had a lot of great virtual event experience even before this all happened. How did you lean on your skill set as a virtual event strategist to make this happen? Well, I've always been very interested in event technology and the AV production and all those kinds of things. So I focused a lot on that in my career. And I've also worked in the technology sector before. So worked with a lot of tech people. And so I always have my eye on what technology is doing in general as well as in events. So when I started with Dietitians of Canada, one of the first things I implemented was broadcasting the plenary room and the AGM at conference. Because we already had all of the AV equipment in there. We already had a camera in there. You know, doing the the camera work in there. So I thought, why don't we just plug in our go to webinar system into that and broadcast out what's happening in the plenary room? So we've been doing that for two years. So our audience was already accustomed to that. And so was our staff. And then we had also just the fall prior to COVID-19 hitting. We had actually transitioned our coast to coast seminar series that we do every fall and winter to completely virtual as well. Because we found that the in-person numbers were dropping off and the connecting virtually numbers were picking up because it was a hybrid event previously. And so we said, why don't we just pivot this completely to virtual to help people attend this easier and not have to leave their office for a half day event sort of thing. And so we had that experience under our belts, you know, when this crisis hit. And that's why I think when we looked at cancelling the live event, it was really easy for us to picture how to move it to a virtual program immediately. Yeah, easy for easy for you to say. But I do think dieticians has a great asset in you as their planner. Because a lot of the planners now are playing a bit of a catch up game. And you were right there knowing exactly what needed to happen. But having said that, surely you had some new learnings or things that were new to you as a virtual event strategist through creating this weekly library of sessions. What did you learn new? Well, just like you said, I think experience makes the difference. Even for me, as someone who had been doing virtual events for dieticians of Canada for a couple of years, doing a full program like that with fully virtual event production and everything, that was certainly a learning for me too. So for anyone who's doing some of the great digital strategist or digital producer courses out there online and stuff, I think it's important to get the practical under your belt as well before you tackle anything too big. The other thing is pre-recording sessions is a really great tool for your speakers who may be presenting from areas where their internet is unreliable. So you can pre-record their actual session and then still have them joined for Q&A or any discussions that might be scheduled to happen throughout the session. At least they can be there for that. But you don't have to worry about their internet cutting out in the middle of their presentation or something like that. We, in order to get people to really engage with the live event and with the chats and the questions and everything that were happening at the live event, we made sure that people understood that we were offering a recording of the session after it was done, but only for a limited time, so only until the end of the summer. So we wanted to make sure that they were actively engaging in the content as much as possible during the program. Attendees really like to see the questions and have a discussion with each other while they're attending live. Unfortunately, GoToWebinar doesn't allow the attendees to see each other's questions or to really have a chat with each other. So we'll definitely move to a platform that would allow for that. And making sure you have a structured networking opportunity. It's just as important as the content. It's not enough just to have some random networking area or a meeting feature in your platform. I think you need to give people a time slot and options to connect on topics of their choice in groups or as one-on-one because the introverts are going to really want to do one-on-one stuff. So you need to give people an opportunity to talk in a group if they feel more comfortable with that. So I think that's a really important thing. So don't forget about structured networking. Don't just leave it to people to do themselves. And then I guess the last thing is the three hour maximum. That's the longest you can ask people to sit in front of a computer. Like I said before, we based our programming times on what we thought dietitians could handle as health care workers. But now all this research has come out in the last few months that actually backs that up and says, don't try to do eight hours a day for two days. You're going to get people's brains are going to explode or their butts are going to go numb or the other things just or they're just going to log off and disconnect because they just can't commit that amount of time. Some of us just need to get another cup of tea. That's really all it goes down to for some of us. Oh, my goodness. I took so many great notes, Isabella, because I really do want to capture some of these best practice tips that you have maybe for other planners who are starting to even now just look at their format. So I appreciate you sharing all this for those planners who are looking ahead. And thank you also for commenting on some things that you've learned or even some things that you would do differently next time. Is there anything else that you would change or do differently if you had to do a completely virtual event again? Well, definitely for the future, we'll be looking at using a virtual event platform like on air, for example, to manage all of the content and sessions and everything involved with the conference in one place. You know, a tool like that offers the option to have question upvoting, chats available for attendees, an exhibitor marketplace, e-poster sessions for researchers. And it's just like a one-stop shop. As opposed to this year, we just didn't have time to source anything like that. So we just used GoToWebinar. And so I was sending links out every week to everybody and then I'd have to send the link to the recording out separately and the survey out separately. So there was a lot of emails and a lot of links flying around. So definitely next year, we're gonna use an event platform where all of that can live in one place and people can just log in to one place for all of their conference needs. I love it, I love it. But you know what? You had such a successful event with the GoToWebinar platform. I mean, with 2,000 people continuing to log in week after week, you obviously did something really special and really unique to the dietitians. And I'm hopeful that other planners can pull some of these best practices. And you're looking ahead, but I'm curious to know, what do you think your 2020 event one, your 2021 event would look like if you had to predict it right now? Well, I'm the eternal optimist. So I'm really hoping that we can do a hybrid event where we have a live group and a virtual group. We certainly understand that by the end of May next year, people may not be able to travel as freely as they could a year ago, but we're hoping our event is in Quebec. We're hoping that people from Quebec and Eastern Ontario and maybe the Maritimes will come in and we'll have a few hundred people at the Sheraton Montreal and then have another few hundred people online. So we plan to expand our online option to include all concurrent sessions rather than just what's happening in the plenary room. So that's gonna be a more robust program for our virtual attendees. And of course, we'll have to make the call about whether we can have the live event based on what's happening about 90 days prior. We'll look at what's happening, what the provincial guidelines are and decide from there if we need to pull the plug on the live event and just go completely virtual. But I'm really hoping we can have a hybrid event. Yes, fingers crossed and you aren't alone. I think a lot of associations are thinking along the same lines that there's the great hope that we can do hybrid and in-person for 2021. But to your point, you're right, it's gonna come down to 90 days prior, which is so unfair for you planners. All that work that you put in and then have three months to make those decisions. Isabella, I cannot thank you enough for sharing about your event today, sharing these best practices that we can give to other planners. Where can people go to learn more either about you or about dietitians virtual events? So dietitians of Canada's website is dietitians.ca and under our events tab there, you can see all of the virtual events we're gonna be doing over the fall. And then you'll see the conference link there as well to see what's happening with conference 2021. And I'm on LinkedIn. So if anybody has any questions or wants to reach out and have a chat about hybrid events or virtual events, I'd love to do that. I certainly am going to be paying a lot of attention to hybrid event conversations over the next few months and see what I can learn and what I can pick up in terms of best practices for creating a good experience for a live and a virtual group at the same time. That's gonna be a new challenge in itself. It's the new learning curve, isn't it? Right, to pivot now to hybrid. Friends, I'm going to have these links also in the description for this video. So please go on over and say hi to Isabella on LinkedIn and visit the dietitians.ca website to learn more about their events. Isabella, thank you so much again. I always learn from you. You have so much great information here that I can't wait to get into the hands of other planners. Thank you so much for your time and I wish you nothing but the best as you plan for Q4 and into 2021. Thank you so much, Leanne. I really appreciate the opportunity to share. I've learned from so many people over my career so I'm delighted to be able to give back and also to recognize all the hard work that the program committee did at Dietitians of Canada and all the staff and all the volunteers. They really did a wonderful job at pulling all this together this year and creating this awesome virtual conference. So kudos to them. Agreed, so many volunteers behind the scenes that are supporting us, great planners. So thank you for recognizing them. You are always welcome to do a video with me anytime. You just name it. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Isabella. Okay, bye.