DIGITAL EVENTS
Sheila Edwards, chief executive of The British Thoracic Society , outlines the challenge of organising an annual event for respiratory specialists during a pandemic and demonstrates the importance of relationships in helping it to move the event successfully online. CASE STUDY Breathing lessons
A ttempting to reschedule live events to a more suitable date when lockdowns, restrictions and uncertainty about when they will be lifted has felt like an impossibility, while transferring them online has been an intense challenge that many of us never expected to face. As chief executive of The British Thoracic Society (BTS) which organises one of the biggest respiratory conferences in Europe each year, I have encountered that pressure. This is my last year in the role before I retire, and it has arguably been the most challenging 12 months of the last 21 years I’ve held the position. The BTS holds its largest conference – The Winter Meeting – in December each year. The three-day event at the QEII Centre in London attracts up to 2,500 delegates and is an important meeting for respiratory specialists. Although we had booked the QEII Centre for our December 2020 event well in advance and were hopeful it would be able to go ahead, as the year progressed it was apparent that this would be impossible – not only because
of restrictions and lockdowns, but also because those who come to the conference are respiratory teams – doctors, nurses and technicians – who were working on the frontline to treat patients with Covid-19. The decision was therefore made to move the Winter Meeting to a virtual event in February 2021. It was the first time we had hosted our event virtually, so we were very much learning as we went and realised we had little time to re-engineer it. Swiftly, we found a good platform from which to host it and, although the QEII Centre was no longer hosting the conference, the team we usually work with was a huge support – advising us on how to upload content and in related technical matters, as well as helping us use the backdrop of the venue’s foyer for our online event. Our online Winter Meeting, I’m proud to say, was a success with 1,880 delegates attending from around the globe. We had speakers dialling in from all over the world – from Australia, America and Europe. Some of the event was live with some speakers even staying
48 MAY 2021 mitmagazine.co.uk
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