Global Forum 2017
Every year, my office hosts a huge conference in Wroclaw, Poland, convening policy experts, journalists, and government officials (including several heads of state). Attendees and panelists focus on the most pressing issues facing transatlantic relations, discussing paths forward and forging the interpersonal and intergovernmental connections that are critical to facing the challenges of the day.
This production is a HUGE effort on the part of everyone involved, with the absolute champions being our events team. The communications team plays a big supporting role, of course, and team digital is no exception.
This year, we faced surprise complication: President Trump’s first visit to Poland, which happened to be scheduled on the first day of our conference 200 miles away in Warsaw. Realizing that this would surely pose an unintentional ultimatum to our attendees, the decision was made to move our conference to Warsaw. One month out.
The scale of this challenge was wild. Not only did the events team have to figure out new logistics (venue, accommodations, travel, etc.), team digital was tasked with several items that had to be completed ASAP and simultaneously:
- Construct an entirely new brand for the conference that was also approved by our Polish partners: The “Wroclaw Global Forum” name and visual identity was totally tied to a city in which our conference would no longer be taking place. Our team constructed a new visual identity (logo and color scheme) and had it approved by our partners overseas super quick. These elements rolled into everything we did and beyond, including backdrops and key visuals for interior displays.
- Create a new website for the conference that would also do its best to accommodate the loss of a proper mobile app: The city of Wroclaw maintained the website and the app for the conference in the past, and as they were no longer participating, both were out of play. With a limited budget and even more limited time, we opted to construct a responsive WordPress site and relied heavily on the Cr3ative Conference plugin (highly recommend), which after a bit of tweaking worked perfectly for us. One of the more challenging aspects of running a conference, once you’re on the ground, is keeping up with nearly constant agenda changes and communicating those changes to attendees. This setup eliminated a lot of that headache. You can take a look at the live site here.
- Create a suite of graphics to promote the conference both before and during the event: We needed to produce graphics for everything from social media and webcasts to TV and print ads. It had to be eye-catching and modern, and equally bill both Atlantic Council and our Polish partners.
This would have been a lot even if it was all my team had to do, but the beginning of summer is one of our busier times anyway. It was an incredible effort by all involved, and, as of today, the conference has completed successfully and the bulk of my team’s work is done. Here’s some of what I created in support of this valiant effort.
The Website (live version here)
Promo Graphics
Agenda/during the conference
