EULAR CONGRESS 2022 and Totara Engage – A hybrid congress with over 18,000 participants

The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology, EULAR for short, is a European NGO in which various national specialist societies and patient organizations in the field of rheumatology are organized. The annual EULAR Congress is the organizations flagship event, providing a platform for innovative minds to illustrate the latest scientific breakthroughs and essentially chart the future of rheumatology. Each year the Congress attracts thousands of delegates from more than 140 countries.

The Challenge

Due to pandemic restrictions, the annual EULAR Congress has been held virtually for the previous two years. In 2022 was the long-awaited comeback, and the EULAR Congress was held both virtually and on-site in Copenhagen. It was the organization’s very first hybrid Congress.

EULAR needed a platform to provide virtual participants access to all contents of the congress and give them the best hybrid user experience.

Partners and other participating organizations should have the possibility to present themselves on the platform and thus reach the virtual participants as well.

Integrating the solution with 4 different third-party systems, was a key requirement and involved an extensive team of partners and suppliers.

Data protection and regulatory compliance should have central roles in the design of the hybrid experience.

Strong reporting was needed, to evaluate the engagement of the users and provide data for future improvements.

Finally, the hybrid congress and the role of Totara Engage in it should lay the groundwork for on-demand content from each future congress, providing not only the one-week congress experience, but a long-lasting knowledge and collaboration place for the attendees.

The Solution

As EULAR and LearnChamp are long-time partners and EULAR is used to working with Totara, already having two separate Totara Learn instances, the decision was made to base the virtual exhibitors’ platform for the congress on Totara.

Thinking out of the box, LearnChamp used Totara’s shared service layer and the Engage functionalities to create an extensive virtual platform, which gave users the feeling that they are moving through the large halls of the congress centre, being able to virtually engage with the exhibitors, connect with other attendees and join virtual meetings.

Complex integration with an identity provider system, access matrix, congress app, EULAR’s TV, a Networking tool and a scientific program tool was done, providing a seamless user experience with SSO in place.

Workspaces were used for partners and participating organizations as “booths”, where they could create own resources and share them with participants.

Different dashboards were used as the site plan of the congress centre where participants from all over the world could click on the virtual booths and get informed about the next lectures and other important information.

The lectures were live streamed to the platform and recordings of the lectures were available as resources in each exhibitor’s virtual booth (Workspace). Being able to track the time spent on each video and providing important insight about the quality of each session and the user’s engagement.

Comments were possible in the Workspaces and Resources, although there was custom moderation option active, to release, block and delete comments in order to prevent advertising placement.

Congresses are places to meet people and make new contacts. Therefore, the participants were also given the possibility to create own profiles, discover other participants and network via the virtual platform.

LearnChamp created a new Totara block and dashboard, which was then connected to the app of the congress, allowing the users to take selfies, upload them and create a selfie mosaic on the dashboard, rising the engagement through gamification for the on-site participants and keeping keen memories after the congress for everyone.

“With Totara and LearnChamp we were able to create an innovative and engaging platform for our hybrid congress. LearnChamp truly brought our vision to life and together we set a new standard for future events in our field.”

– Geneviève Schärer, Head of Operations (COO)

Results 

• EULAR held a successful hybrid congress with over 18,000 participants. A third of the congress attendees were virtual visitors, proving Totara’s performance abilities with large numbers of concurrent users.
• A welcoming virtual platform design and UX concept for all integrated systems was created by LearnChamp’s UX design team.
• The virtual part in Engage was visually based on the real site plan, using Totara’s dashboard and custom block plugins for a gamified user experience.
• Integrated congress-wide news and notifications throughout all involved platforms.
• Integrated helpdesk with support automation process behind it, helped streamline the experience of the users.
• The participating organizations/partners could create their own “Congress stands/booths” and fill them with content. The booths were stored in workspaces within Totara Engage. A multitenant setup was used for this part in order to ensure strong data protection. The partners were trained by LearnChamp in advance and supported also during the days and after the congress.
• The hybrid events with Totara Engage took place both in person and virtually, allowing participants to decide how they want to participate in the event. Both face-to-face and virtual participants had the same advantages: they could interact with the speakers as well as sponsors and network with each other.
• Immediately after the Congress, the most important statistics and analyses on visitor numbers and participation were evaluated directly within Totara and could thus be seamlessly passed on to EULAR, adapting EULAR’s strong data protection policy.
• Focus on reports about clicks and visitors of banners on the platform – providing data about the users’ workflow.
• Membership tracking for each Workspace for the participating EULAR partners.
• Content engagement statistic and video tracking reports for Engage.
• User engagement reports, displaying their unique visits in different areas of the platform.

With the help of the Congress app, it was possible for participants to take a selfie, which, if desired, could then be seen by everyone on a huge 150-inch screen at the Congress, displaying a custom-made dashboard in Totara with an automated compliance process behind it for the photos’ quality and content. This resulted in funny and memorable souvenir photos. To top off the experience the snapshots were combined into a “mosaic” on the final day. Bringing even more gamified user experience for all attendees.

The results of the EULAR hybrid congress led to more focus on on-demand content from such events for our customer, better content management, user engagement and a plan for continuous educational options – from congress’ sessions, on the app, at home and the years afterwards.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with the success of our hybrid congress. LearnChamp’s expertise in utilizing Totara made the user experience for our attendees and partners effortless and enjoyable.”

– Kanyka Nam, Congress Manager