How ASRS Pivoted Its Annual Meeting to Virtual in Less Than Six Weeks: A Virtual Annual Meeting Case Study
The American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) is the largest retinal organization in the world. Their annual meeting is typically held in person with an average of 2,000 people in attendance. Like most organizations, ASRS was faced with the daunting decision of either cancelling their 2020 meeting amid the COVID-19 pandemic, or pivoting to virtual. Time was tight, but the decision to transition their event to a virtual format was made.
“Safety considerations for our members and travel restrictions played a huge part in why we transitioned our July live event in Seattle to virtual. We only had six weeks to pivot this brand new setup and member experience.”
— Jill Blim, Executive Vice President, ASRS
Event goals
ASRS wanted to closely replicate how their annual event would have been experienced in person including:
- Collaboration/networking opportunities and a robust virtual event platform to transport the annual meeting to their members, with both live and on-demand capabilities
- A team of experienced production professionals to elevate and enhance the experience
- A virtual exhibit hall to connect their partners and sponsors, with their members
- Fully supporting their remote speakers with in-depth training, coaching, and technical assistance to ensure increased audience engagement and a unified user experience
The solution
ASRS partnered with OVATION to deliver a robust, customized platform to host their annual meeting, including an exhibit hall for partners.
Additionally, OVATION was ASRS’s production partner to safeguard that all virtual speakers were prepared and properly setup, to enrich the content and creative, to provide comprehensive and technical support, and to help bring a noteworthy experience to their members.
The results
“The OVATION team helped our remote speakers learn how to use virtual technology which was new to most of us. They helped us figure out how to best situate computers, audio equipment, and lighting to have a consistent and professional feel across the board. They delivered soup-to-nuts speaker training which was essential for our first year going virtual.”
“A lot of man hours went into speaker preparation so that everything would run smoothly — and it did! We had one session where a member forgot to unmute, but OVATION was able to unmute remotely and overall, everything went remarkably well. Everyone was very happy.”
“People loved the way we organized the meeting. Speakers submitted their pre- recorded talks in advance, OVATION did most of the heavy lifting there. Recaps of those talks were all live sessions with time allocated for both discussion and questions.”
“Our exhibitors were very happy to still be able to connect with our doctors, especially given the circumstances.”
“The entire experience looked extremely professional and the attendance was great as well. Probably the best we’ve ever had!”
“We’ve gotten so many compliments and several people have contacted us to get OVATION’s information to do their meetings.”
— Jill Blim, Executive Vice President, ASRS
Audience Testimonials
“The virtual meeting was great because it allowed participants from all over the world to have the opportunity to attend and be updated.”
“Great! This was overall an excellent meeting experience and in many ways superior to the standard meeting format. We were able to participate with and view all presentations and topics in the live meeting which is not normally the case. We can view all individual presentations on our own time and more in depth. And obviously this was the only truly “safe” format given current times, not to mention what a cost savings to our members!“
“Excellent opportunity to participate in a high quality international congress at this time of losses and challenges worldwide, congratulations!“
“Excellent. I preferred this virtual meeting to our regular travel meeting.“
“I loved it. I would not have attended the in-person meeting, but this allowed me to be there. There was a large savings of time and money with no loss of information transfer. There was fantastic value and the experience was more comfortable than any meeting venue. Kudos to the organizers for making such a smooth, well-run meeting with concise presentations, great presenters, and nary a technical gaffe. Hoping for more of these in the future!“
“Honestly, I think I got more out of this virtual meeting because there were no distractions. I do miss the collegiality of the live meetings and there is a great transfer of information informally, but for actually paying attention, this was better.“
“I felt the online format was well done and would I would consider this a model for selected future meetings.“
“VERY COMPLETE EXPERIENCE!“
“Overall amazingly productive.“
