Fall Conference Marathon

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We’ve just finished a fall education term where we’ve coordinated four conferences in five weeks in Ottawa, and the first off-site conference for Brockville staff in two years. We feel like we’ve completed a 26K marathon.

I use the wedding metaphor to try and help people visualize the work and emotion involved in creating a successful conference. There are hundreds of details requiring attention. We’ve never attempted so many major events over such a short timeframe and my colleague Marie-Constance Morley deserves enormous credit for the success of these events.

o The 3rd Annual Community Day for Care and Treatment of Schizophrenia reached its 100 registrant ceiling again, as it has every year. The multi-systems panel was a huge success. And the event placed over $2,000 in the pockets of the Schizophrenia Program to reinvest in other education needs.
o The IMHR Free Public Lecture “Breaking the Barriers: Out of the Shadows Through Science” celebrating Mental Illness Awareness Week filled all 170 seats in the auditorium within a 18 day registration period.
o The 5th Annual Ivy Dunn Clinical Nursing Research Day “Keeping Our Clinical Space Safe” was another successful event and for the first time in the past two years, generated revenue for the Ivy Dunn Bursary.
o The Building Healthier Workplaces Conference “Inspiring Leadership”, a partnership initiative that included our lead Human Resource service partners Manulife, Shepell-fgi, and Mercer, raised $10,000 for the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health.

As we debrief these events there are areas for improvement. But these conferences were successful during a period where we are seeing a downturn in the conference industry, obviously connected to the economic fallout that is impacting all public and private sectors.

I also want to take pride in our first conference success in over two years in Brockville where we recently administered the “BMHC Self-Determination Workshop” which received outstanding feedback. We want to encourage and support more of these events in Brockville. Whitnee Denard-Paul, Debra Rice and Candace Whitley have set a terrific example for all BMHC programs.

We live in an age where education is being squeezed onto the web, channeled through the wires of videoconference equipment, and compromised in several other ways. A successful conference that provides great content and takes the learner away from the noise and conflict of their normal workday still has a profound impact on education; and we’ll continue to work diligently to support this traditional mode of learning.