Insider Events – The Canadian Surgery Forum

Basic details of the event:

Title: The Canadian Surgery Forum
Date: September 14-16, 2017
City, Country: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Host Venue: The Fairmont Empress & The Victoria Convention Centre

Organizing Team:

• Karen Norris – Conference Manager
• Karen Wright – Conference Intern

Number of Attendees: 905

Who was the target audience?

General surgeons and community surgeons across Canada.

What was the main objective of your event?

The Canadian Surgery Forum is the largest surgical meeting in Canada. The objective of the Forum is to foster communication among surgical sub-specialties and to advance continuing professional development, clinical practice, education and public advocacy while providing members of the Canadian surgical community an opportunity to meet and network in a collegial fashion.

What was unique/different about this particular event for you/your organization?

As it was my first year planning the Forum (I was hired on the first day of the 2016 Forum and shadowed the outgoing Conference Manager on site), the particular logistics of planning the Forum were new to me. Any Conference Manager can tell you that it takes at least one full year to become familiar with a conference. Therefore, executing your first conference is always the most stressful and generally brings the most surprises and opportunities for learning. 

What was the biggest obstacle you/your team had to overcome?

I had a lot I had to overcome in my first year. However, the most difficult obstacles stemmed from my outgoing President who was so passionate about the association and had big ideas for his legacy. 

Specifically, he wanted to launch our Association’s brand new magazine at the Forum. The magazine launch ended up being its own stand-alone event at an offsite venue with a cocktail hour, food stations, speeches, a live band and a front cover ‘reveal’ ceremony.

Our association was also celebrating its 40^th anniversary in 2017 so, on top of the magazine launch party, my President wanted to host a “birthday” party on the first evening of the Forum, after our welcome reception. This second special stand-alone event, hosted at an offsite venue required a DJ, caricature artist, photo-booth, live games on the patio and an air-band competition. We faced the same issues planning both of these events, giving them the attention they deserved and managing multiple offsite vendors over months while trying not to lose focus on planning the important academic events associated with the Forum.

Not surprisingly, my President was asked to host many large-scale events on site and, as a trauma surgeon, had not slept in days. On the last day of the Forum, we had our AGM at 7:30 a.m., he was scheduled to chair the meeting and was nowhere to be found. I finally reached him by calling the landline in his hotel room and woke him up!!! Our AGM was 20 minutes late to begin which delayed the rest of our programming by 20 minutes until the lunch hour. 

What was your biggest triumph?

The fact that I survived my 2017 conference with my sanity intact. ;)

Did you do anything new or innovative? If so, how did it go?

We introduced e-posters for this conference. We had seven e-posters available for three days. Five screens were designated as displays for specific poster presentations for five different surgical societies. The other two were always available as kiosks for delegates to peruse the library of e-posters at any time.

The e-posters were very well received by everyone: presenters, delegates and judges. We rented them through FMAV (our AV provider).  The screens displayed what was on the connected iPad and presenters were able to insert videos, zoom in and out on graphs/charts and allowed them to present off to the side of their poster and not directly in front of it. Delegates were able to email the poster presenter directly from the iPad to continue discussions offline about their research. Using the e-posters not only reduced the need for meeting space requirements (a large ballroom was not needed), it was also an environmentally friendly choice. All poster presenters uploaded their posters online and no printing was required.

What challenges did you have putting the features together?

We were concerned that the seven screens would not provide the visibility that 150 traditional poster boards in a ballroom would provide. To combat this, we ensured that all e-posters on site and online were searchable by title, author(s), surgical subspecialty and keywords.

Given the layout of the venue, we were also concerned with space. We did not have the meeting space available to display every screen in a separate room for three days. We also needed to keep the screens together to make it easier for delegates to find them. Ultimately, we displayed them in a large hallway outside the exhibit hall. It was a high traffic area so delegates could easily find them and there was no additional cost to use this crush lobby space.   

What were some things that you improved on this year over last year?

The 2017 Forum was my first conference with this association so I worked on addressing any complaints that were received from the 2016 conference. Specifically, 2016 exhibitors decried the lack of traffic in the exhibit hall. Although we use the exhibit hall for all meals, there was no seating available in 2016 and delegates took their lunch and left or went offsite to eat. In 2017, I included seating (rounds of 10) for 200 people. The exhibit hall became the hub for people to network, eat or host small impromptu meetings. Exhibitors were incredibly happy and all of them purchased exhibit space for the 2018 conference.

 Article compiled by Jill Garner, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

Article edited by Darlene Kelly-Stewart, Stonehouse Sales & Marketing Services