Motion #05
Introduction
Conferences Committee is not a political committee like most others within the party - our role is much more of a practical one: planning and running all aspects of our events alongside volunteers and our hard-working and dedicated national staff. The committee has continued with existing members Cameron Bairstow (Scarborough & Whitby GP), David Newman (Oxfordshire GP) and Paul Weaver (South East Dorset GP). TJ Milburn (Exeter GP) was re-elected to the committee having been co-opted last year following a term as Convener. Ruby Tucker (Hackney GP) also joined as an elected committee member, having previously been the Conference Officer as a member of staff. The committee voted unanimously to thank Ruby for her staff work over the years.
Autumn 2021 - hybrid (Birmingham & online)
The last time Conference had been in a venue was Autumn Conference 2019 in Newport. Back then, online participation was an experimental idea being led by a small team of volunteers including David Newman, who was not a member of the Committee at that time. Over the lockdown between then and now, the Standing Orders for the Conduct of Conference (SOCC) have been updated to account for online inclusion, and Conference has been held fully online several times. The Reform Conference Voting Working Group’s ballot of the membership in January 2021 returned a result with a preference for hybrid conferences as the way forward. As Covid was still with us then (as it is now), we had the added challenge of keeping the venue Covid-safe as well as making the online experience as inclusive as possible. i) Keeping the venue safe The Eastside Rooms in Birmingham was a new building that was completed during lockdown. This came with the advantage that the venue itself had a state-of-the-art ventilation system built in. The venue staff were extremely cooperative with our requests that they continue to wear face coverings and use hand sanitiser throughout the conference. Guidance was issued to all members advising that they also test themselves and attend the venue wearing face coverings. We invested in high-grade FFP2 masks which we were able to offer to members. We also invested in infrared thermometers and had spare lateral flow tests at the front desk. After the event, there was no outbreak of Covid, so the Conferences Committee would like to thank all the members who attended the venue for sticking to the guidance and keeping us all safe.
ii) The online experience We ran the breakout sessions ourselves with a small team of technicians from the Conferences Committee and staff. The set-up was that the online participants would join a Zoom meeting. The technician would get to the room 15 minutes early with a laptop, a webcam on a tripod and a snowball microphone. The technician would then start the Zoom meeting so the whole room in the venue joined as one participant. The rooms had large screens to display the Zoom meeting. This allowed the members in the room to see either the gallery view on Zoom, or the speaker if someone online made a contribution to the session. The feedback following Conference had some minor suggestions for improving this set-up, but for a first attempt this was very well received. The plenaries were a different set-up because of the number of attendees and the added feature of online voting. The voting was conducted the same way it always has been when in a venue - the members hold a voting card up in the air for or against the proposal and the Chair uses their judgement if the outcome is obvious and there are no calls from the floor for further counting. We used paid technicians to facilitate the online aspect of plenaries. The online attendees voted using the same system we used previously, called Election Buddy. The Chair checked the online votes for and against and then saw if that followed the same outcome in the room. There were only a couple of instances where the votes in the room were counted by clickers to confirm the final numbers. The Zoom set-up was a webinar to allow for a greater audience, and members attending online were promoted to the webinar’s panel to be able to speak, then moved back into the webinar’s audience to watch the rest of the proceedings. We ran the workshops online in the weeknights running up to Conference Weekend, which is a procedure we adopted when Conference moved online. This seems to be the preferred way of doing workshops moving forward and allows more time in the timetable for the weekend. Finally, it was really great to be back in a venue. The committee has missed carrying out the physical tasks of stuffing folders, being on the front desk, and collecting back lanyards and we look forward to doing so again in Autumn 2022.
Spring 2022 - online (Whova)
Due to the Omicron variant of Covid, the governance bodies decided to hold Spring Conference fully online. Global Greens had used a platform provider called Whova and had received good feedback from their attendees. The advantage of Whova was that once a member logged onto their website, the whole conference platform was available in that space. This meant that rather than send members to different Zoom meetings and different websites for the agenda and so on, everything was embedded on the one website. Whova also has a mobile app version of the same content so members could choose whichever option they found easier. We ran multiple “check your tech” sessions to double check how things worked in practice. What we discovered was that having everything in one place doesn’t suit everyone. For example, a number of members have their devices set up to be very suspicious of things such as embedded video streams. Most of these members were able to fix the problem at the “check your tech” sessions by following live instructions. Nevertheless, other members found that the embedding generated too much bandwidth use for them. This meant that rather than try to get everyone to adjust their devices, the path of least resistance was to offer the option of opening a separate Zoom window for those who prefer to do it that way. Whova offered other features, such as: discussion boards, one-on-one private messaging and networking. They allowed members to add tags to their profiles based on common interests, and frames on their profile pictures to identify themselves as first timers, elected councillors and more. Initially, it came with a gamification feature that neither the committee or staff had access to turn off. We had to contact Whova tech support and ask them to disable it for us. The needs of GPEW appear to be more about streamlining the online experience while keeping it accessible and inclusive, rather than widening it out to a multi-featured mass experience. We used Election Buddy again for the voting. Whova did have its own polling feature but it was very limited. Our polling needs as per the SOCCs mean that the polling system we use has to meet multiple requirements simultaneously. Once again, workshops were conducted in the evenings leading up to the Conference Weekend. These were run through Whova’s timetable feature, whereas last time we ran them ourselves and moved onto the platform just for the weekend.
Accessibility at Conference Accessibility at Conference is under constant review, taking into account the feedback from the previous conference and requests we receive for the upcoming one. We want our conferences to be accessible and inclusive for all. A specific problem we had this year was in Birmingham. We booked with an agency to provide a British Sign Language interpreter. The specific person fell ill on the weekend and the agency was unable to provide another, even after attempting to contact other agencies in the area to help. This meant we unfortunately had no choice but to continue the conference without this facility. There were a couple of anecdotes of individual experiences raised with us regarding the lifts at Birmingham, although the feedback about the venue was overall more favourable than some other venues we have held conferences in previously. An improvement which has been well received involves the Agenda. This is really to the credit of Ash Routh (SOC, Sheffield GP) but should be noted in this report. Ash has built an agenda website and an archive of her work from Spring Conference can be found at https://greencoordinate.co.uk/agenda/spring2022/.
As regards accessibility and inclusion more generally, the lockdown restrictions have meant that there have been moving goalposts over the year. With hybrid conferencing, there are different adjustments needed when someone is attending online compared to the kind of things needed in the venue, although there is overlap as well, for example with providing a transcript. Our approach to venue accessibility involves visiting the venue in advance. This year, Dzaier Neil (Lambeth GP, Chair of the Disability Group) came to visit Eastside Rooms in advance of the event for preliminary thoughts and feedback. Online accessibility also includes a layer of tech support, which is often difficult to troubleshoot if the problem cannot be replicated at our end. Finally, making it to the plenary floor is a journey for us all. The starting pool of who is able to attend Conference dissipates for all sorts of reasons each step of the way. Where this is for an accessibility reason, and the member contacts us about it, we can work around it. We have the Access Fund to help members with financial support. Persuading and motivating members to become active members, and then to become active members who attend Conference, is a task for us all to play a part.
Hopes for the future We are heading towards a hybrid conference using CrowdComms, who are designing a platform for us which will have a bespoke voting system for us built in. If that works well, then hopefully we can reuse it in future, taking minor tweaks and adjustments into account along the way. Whether we have an onlineonly conference again or not is unknown, but hopefully it would be through choice rather than through lockdown.
Conclusion Thanks to all the staff and volunteers who keep our conferences running. Particular thanks to Anne Gayfer (GPRC, South Lincolnshire GP) who has remained our GPRC Friend throughout the ‘pandemic years’. Final thanks to the Conference Manager, Louisa Greenbaum for the incredible work she does all year round.