NCSEA successfully held its first truly hybrid event, February 3-5 in Washington, D.C. NCEA’s Policy Forum is traditionally a “can’t miss” event for the child support community. However, the impact of COVID was apparent in 2022, with in-person attendance at only 50% of their previous in-person forum, due to government travel restrictions as well as personal preferences. By expanding the audience to virtual attendees, NCSEA delivered timely, relevant, and thought-provoking content to a wider audience. The all-plenary format provided the perfect opportunity to live stream sessions, as well as to offer recordings of the sessions almost immediately after the plenary was completed.
The live-stream sessions were very well attended and had great engagement by virtual as well as in-person attendees. Q & A was conducted via the virtual platform and allowed both audiences to have their questions addressed by presenters and participate in polling. And, of course, virtual attendees were very active on the Chat function, communicating with other virtual participants.
NCSEA experienced the “mandatory glitch” as the opening plenary began – it is technology after all! Once that was resolved, the Policy Forum continued as hoped, with seamless in-person and virtual presentations. It was a new experience for NCSEA, but one that forced the team to look at how it presents conferences in the future.
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