What’s it like presenting virtually at BAPS Congress?

Why hybrid?

• Perhaps you can’t fund coming to Europe because you’re based in a Lower/ Middle Income Country (LMIC).
• Or you can’t get a visa or it’s not been processed in time.
• Or you can’t get the time off to attend the full Congress but you’ve been invited to present.
• Or you’ve planned to present face-to-face but your plans have been derailed at the last moment by illness at home or at work which you now need to cover.
• In the UK we’ve seen strikes causing major disruption so contingency planning has become essential.

We’ve seen all of these scenarios and more in the last year. The feedback we’ve received from our members and previous delegates is that virtual is a great way to participate as well as a fantastic back-up if in-person plans fall through.

How do we deliver hybrid @BAPSCongress?

We partner with MedAll.org who’ve delivered over 6,000 events with over 100,000 participants. Their focus is delivering educational meetings for the healthcare community and they actively champion educational access to LMIC participants. Their team are exceptional and include a surgeon, so they understand how important your presentation is. Sue Gibson from MedAll onboards our virtual presenters. We love working with Sue as she is calm, kind and ensures presenters are ready virtually. Over to Sue:

Hybrid allows delegates to join from anywhere and means that colleagues in some of the most remote and challenging settings can join the BAPS Congress: making it radically accessible. Before the live conference MedAll will work closely with the BAPS team ensuring that the virtual aspect of the conference is set up with their schedule, breakout sessions, networking sessions, virtual poster hall, speakers information, sponsors etc. At MedAll we love the Hybrid option of Conferencing and we want to offer those attending virtually an experience that is better than ‘just viewing’: we want to actively involve them.

I will email the virtual speakers and ensure we have a copy of their slides (in case the internet in their location – bearing in mind colleagues join from remote and challenging circumstances too- is weak on the day and we can share their slides for them) and that they are happy for their talk to be recorded and shared afterwards. We will ask all virtual speakers to come along about 30mins earlier into the virtual green room where we will go through slide sharing, ensure their mic and cam is working and explain what will happen next – putting the speaker at ease and ensuring that they have the best virtual experience. We have access to the call they are presenting in so we can message them if we need to, and they will know that we are right beside them all the way. We also encourage the speaker, if they have the time, to check the virtual chat for any questions that weren’t able to be answered by them whilst they were on stage.

 

So what does virtually presenting @BAPSCongress look like?

We’ve uploaded a full abstract delivered virtually from Ludhiana, India by presenter Maria Thomas, in a session chaired by our Trustees, Dhanya Mullassery and Clare Rees. Click the picture below to see Maria present and interact with our Chairs.

Another example which our President Ian Sugarman often cites, is Amtuulalem Alqalisi’s presentation from Yemen from our#68thBAPS. Unable to join in person, Amtuulalem was still able present to her peers internationally,  highlighting the challenges of practicing paediatric surgery in Yemen at a session chaired by our past Presidents Munther Haddad and Richard Stewart. You can watch Amtuulalem’s presentation by clicking the picture below.

In an uncertain world, we will ensure you can present your work @BAPSCongress, a truly international meeting without borders, thanks to MedAll.

 

Register to attend the #69thBAPS virtually

 

Shan Teo

Digital Manager