Number of guests increased by three thousand despite Covid-19

The Advania Autumn Conference has been held for 25 years and is interwoven with the history of Advania and its predecessors. It is one of the oldest of its kind in Europe and one of the largest technology events in Iceland. “This spring it became clear that we would not be able to hold the 26th conference in the traditional way. We knew it would be difficult to welcome a thousand guests to Harpa, as in previous years,” says Hrafnhildur Sif Sverrisdóttir, Director of Web Solutions at Advania, who says it was with mixed feelings that they abandoned the conference format they had developed and moved to a digital solution. This is a situation that many companies worldwide are facing, which is why IÐAN, the Education and Training Centre, asked Hrafnhildur Sif to describe the process. The main characteristic of the process was that many more people were involved in the project than before, and she believes that this proved to be a stroke of luck.

Experts from across the company at the table

“Until now, Advania's marketing department and a steering group of 5-7 people have handled the main tasks of organising the conference. After we decided to hold the conference online and build a special solution to handle that task, the company's web department came to the table. Designers, programmers, project managers and various kinds of innovators joined the group, and the result was a project handled by numerous experts from across the company.”

Companies with exhibition areas at the conference

What did you want to achieve at the conference in terms of guest experience?

“We wanted the conference to be a strong experience for participants and to offer interactivity. We wanted to create a visual world that participants could step into and watch live-streamed lectures. As before, we wanted to offer companies exhibition areas to present technological innovations, and we wanted to have the option of dividing the programme, having several presentations running at the same time, and offering videos and various kinds of supplementary material. After an unsuccessful search for a solution that could do all this for us, we decided to build it ourselves. The result was a versatile solution that met all our needs and received a fantastic reception from participants.”

In the spirit of streaming services

What is new about this conference format?

“The conference lasted for two days, with 28 lectures streamed live from Harpa and 14 others from other locations around the world. The programme was set up in the spirit of streaming services, which guests could easily browse. Recordings of the lectures were then available for a week, and after that, the content had been watched 6,500 times. Until 2020, each Advania Autumn Conference had around 1,000 guests. In the digital world, there are no seating restrictions, and the number of registered guests for the online conference rose to 4,658! This resulted in a huge number of new participants. Digital conferences can therefore accommodate many more guests, and they offer the possibility that both speakers and participants can be anywhere in the world. In the digital world, there is also plenty of space to present supplementary material and disseminate content in all possible ways.”

No guide

What were the challenges?

“The challenges were numerous. There is no guide on how best to hold conferences in the digital world. We had to decide on the technology, create an interface that we found comfortable, and develop the idea almost from scratch.”

The conferences of the future will be a hybrid model

How do you think things will develop in the future?

What will be possible in this regard? “In any case, we are convinced that even if the pandemic subsides and people can start gathering again, this conference format is here to stay. There are almost no limits to what can be done in the digital world. That's why we believe it's likely that the conferences of the future will be a hybrid model, where you can attend in person or follow along online.”