Our press release has been issued summing up the October three-day Festival of the Future which took place online. You can catch up on the wealth of information as most of the sessions are available on the Digital Dorset YouTube channel.
The Festival, which was part of national Digital Leaders week, has to be my highlight of the year. It was exciting, creative, busy and fun, with so many great sessions and learning resources as a result.
We worked across teams/services in the Council and with workforce leads in the Dorset NHS Clinical Commissioning Group to plan and deliver the event in just 7 weeks, I still miss my daily stand ups with this fab team.
Like for many others this year it was the first time we had planned an event of this scale and delivered it entirely virtually. Initially we were only thinking of 10 or 12 sessions, but trying to consider our different audiences and reflect the breadth of digital resulted in over 60 sessions.
On the whole the festival went well with only a couple of minor hiccups that led to one session not being recorded and people entering another session half an hour before the speaker. Some learning we are thinking about for next year (oh yes the festival of the future will be back!):
- It works really well running an event as part of digital leaders week as it helps massively with marketing
- Having our CEO and Exec Director start the day with our morning backstage session and guests was fantastic, and we feel we captured that festival vibe (the team would like to push that vibe even further throughout the sessions)
- Recording sessions has resulted in great content being captured for future learning use which we have already used in a Members digital session
- Very high session registrations but low live attendance has made us think about how people have moved to ‘on demand’ viewing and how this would enable us to approach differently in future – what can be recorded in advance, what’s live and interactive, what’s real life when we get back to it! And some more informal unrecorded live sessions
- The booking system did not create events in peoples diaries or send people reminders leading up to the event, and we wondered if this impacted on live attendance
It was fantastic to hear about the amazing digital work taking place in Dorset on such a range of topics. Last week a few of us met up to start thinking about our 2021 communications and events plan, already the ideas are flowing, watch this space.
Lisa Trickey
Service Manager Digital Strategy & Design
