Summary

The Alberta Digestive Disease Summit (ADDS) is the premier gathering of the province’s gastroenterology and hepatology communities. Hosted by the Alberta Society of Gastroenterology, to whom we provide association management services, the event is a staple in the healthcare community. We’ve worked on this project for many years, and this year we had the challenge of transitioning the in-person conference that is normally very social and family focused to a virtual format.

Our Role

BUKSA was engaged to provide full project management services for ADDS 2021. This included facilitating planning meetings; providing financial administration, including budget management, financial reporting, and reporting to the Canada Revenue Agency; speaker and program management; accreditation process management; marketing support, including e-blasts, branding elements, and website management; registration management; exhibit and sponsorship management; virtual platform management and development; participant evaluations; and day-of virtual conference support. 

Value Add

Pivot to Virtual:

ADDS is normally a family-oriented weekend getaway in Lake Louise. Since we couldn’t rely on that gorgeous location and its natural networking opportunities due to COVID-19 restrictions, we knew that the program design was key. With such a great reputation, it was more vital than ever before to ensure the program and experience in a virtual world still held up that reputation. We focused our strategy on a user-friendly platform, accessible experience, program targeted at all user groups, and emphasis on the key educational needs of the attendees.

Accreditation Made Easy: 

BUKSA handled the entire accreditation process, one of our client’s biggest paint points.

The conference’s accreditation status makes the program much more attractive and encourages interaction online, as it allows attendees to receive credits. Our ability to handle the entire accreditation process took an enormous amount of time spent on paperwork and regulations off the desk of our client and helped to make their event a huge success. Of course, navigating the accreditation requirements is different in the virtual world - we put effort into making sure the platform fulfilled the requirements regarding sponsor logos, distinguishing accredited activities from un-accredited ones, and more. 

We were extra excited to receive no edits from the accrediting body on our application – for those who have done an accreditation application before, you know how hard this is!

Sponsorship in the Virtual World: 

We worked directly with potential sponsors during the pivot to virtual to ensure their ROI from sponsorship. Having conversations with our key sponsors, tailoring the offerings, and creating custom options meant they were engaged and seeing value in their contribution. We were able to beat the sponsorship target and received incredible feedback about the benefits, platform accessibility, and exhibit hall!