III INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON HUMAN GENETICS
The main advantages of staging this in-person conference was the sheer volume of attendees, who probably may not have participated at such levels if it had been online, and, above all, the personal interaction we achieved. This is the only way to establish great personal relationships at the professional and scientific level, as we are seeing at this event.
Attendees: 700 in-person
Client: Spanish Association for Human Genetics (AEGH), Spanish Association for Prenatal Diagnosis (AEDP), Spanish Society for Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics (SEFF), Spanish Society for Clinical Genetics and Dysmorphology (SEGCD) and Spanish Society for Genetic Counselling (SEAGEN), Digital Health Association and the Spanish Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SEBiBC) and Geyseco (OPC)
Event: Conference
Type: Health
Date: 3-5 November 2021
Days: 3 days
Overnight stays: 1,278
1. Challenge
IN-PERSON EVENT. Many words resounded throughout the conference centre during the III Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Genetics, which brought together 700 people to address advances in human genetics and genomics. But “face-to-face” and “in-person” were the ones that were on everyone's lips over the three-day event, and during stand assembly and preparations the day before the conference. Geyseco (OPC), together with the five scientific societies listed here, our colleagues and strategic allies, plus the whole Valencia Conference Centre team, had a clear idea right from the start that the main challenge facing this conference was to get it successfully organised as a face-to-face encounter and meet all the high expectations of both attendees and exhibiting associations and companies.
Over the three-day event, our Centre was the perfect stage for addressing new advances in hereditary cancer, the use of technologies to analyse a person's genomic information, ethical aspects for use in minors, healthy adults and predictive tests, as well as data management and artificial intelligence and its application to prenatal diagnosis, and other major issues presented here.
2. Solution
What did we need to rise to the challenge? A correct implementation of the strict safety protocols for the event at all times (from assembly to completion), which you can consult here. We also prepared new outdoor garden areas to meet customer needs, as there was a strong preference for in-person networking in between presentations. The event also featured a large indoor exhibition area, where some of the latest advances in human genetics and genomics were presented on 32 stands.
3. Acomplished goals
“From the viewpoint of the five Societies organising the conference, satisfaction was high, because the level of attendance was also very high. Thanks to the facilities provided by the Valencia Conference Centre, we enjoyed really spacious areas in view of everyone's current concerns about the Covid-19 situation, and we were therefore able to minimise these risks”. Javier García Planells emphasised his positive experiences during the celebration of an event that generated over 1,200 overnight stays in Valencia.
4. Curiosities
