Lessons Learned: How do you organise an inclusive symposium?

How do you organise the most inclusive symposium possible? Is inclusion a diverse range of speakers, an accessible venue, a hybrid format, or all of these and more? How do you measure inclusivity, and how do you know if you’ve succeeded?

These were the questions we posed when we began to organise the 2023 EDIS symposium on inclusive leadership. Equity, diversity and inclusion practices are at the heart of EDIS – our vision is to build a diverse, equitable and inclusive science and health research sector, which means these considerations must be central to everything we do.

Here, we outline some of the lessons we learned when organising the 2023 symposium, including what went well and what we’d like to change in the future. Sharing lessons learned is part of our ongoing practice to encourage transparency and open reflection – you can also read our lessons learned from the 2021 symposium here. 

Background

The EDIS 2023 Symposium focused on the theme of inclusive leadership and took place in-person at The Francis Crick Institute and online via Zoom. The symposium’s primary goal was to bring together diverse voices from across the science and health research sector to share emerging practices on designing, implementing, and rewarding inclusive leadership.

The inclusive leadership focus was drawn from our refreshed 2023-2026 strategy, which features a goal of inclusive leadership being collaboratively defined and practised across the science and health research sector.

We were certain from the outset that we wanted to challenge traditional ideas of what leadership can be and question the image of a leader as a lone, late-career individual. We purposefully invited a diverse range of speakers from across the sector, with different professional backgrounds and levels of seniority. Everyone’s expertise was of equal value. For a full overview of the speakers and programme, the delegate booklet can be viewed as a PDF here.

Learning 1: Take your time

We began planning for the 2023 Symposium in February and it took place in September. This gave us seven months’ worth of lead-up time, which was essential in ensuring we had time to collaborate with speakers, implement accessibility considerations effectively, and put significant thoughtful into what we wanted the symposium to achieve.

We began by booking the venue, then drawing up a draft programme, and then inviting the speakers. We had time to tour the venue and identify where accessibility had already been considered (e.g., a wheelchair-accessible stage) and where we would have to make changes on the day (e.g., making a set of toilets gender-neutral).

The symposium organising team was small, so having time to plan workload and begin organising early also mitigated some risk of burnout.

Learning: Start organising as early as possible, ideally six or more months in advance for a large-scale event with a small working team. Last-minute issues or curve balls will always come up, but by having a long period to organise the foundations of the event, anything unexpected will be more manageable. 

Learning 2: The challenges of hybrid events

EDIS events are, by default, run in a hybrid fashion with both in-person and online attendance options. This is primarily an accessibility consideration for those who aren’t able travel to the event location for a variety of reasons, such as disability, cost, or caring responsibilities. Online options also support international attendance.

We followed the same principles for the EDIS symposium, and it was effective in several ways:

• We had 209 online attendees, which was around the same number as in-person attendees.
• We had a significant number of international attendees online, logging on from countries including India, Uganda, Germany, and the US.
• Online engagement was strong, with attendees using the side bar to chat and ask questions to speakers.

The online element of the symposium was effective and something we will continue in the future. However, there are remaining challenges in running hybrid events. While we created a Menti site for online attendees to input their thoughts throughout the day, online attendees did not have the same opportunities to network or talk to the speakers as the in-person attendees. In response to our feedback form, in-person attendees reported that they felt able to fully participate in the symposium at higher rates than online attendees.

Learning: There is a continual challenge in running hybrid events – how do you ensure online and in-person attendees have equivalent experience and opportunities, particularly for events run by small teams without capacity to moderate online spaces? In the future, we can explore creative solutions, such as having discrete online sessions. 

Learning 3: Trust is a must

An symposium is only as good as its speakers, and speakers thrive when given autonomy over their own participation. Building trust between the organisers and speakers was critical to ensuring the speakers could bring the full range of their experiences and expertise to the symposium.

To build strong relationships, we did several things:

• We held one-to-one introductory calls between speakers and the lead organiser.
• Speakers were given their session topic and the symposium’s goals and encouraged to be autonomous in deciding what they would like to speak about.
• We offered proactive support for speakers who wanted more guidance.
• We actioned feedback the speakers gave us and communicated what we had done.
• All speakers were paid the same hourly rate for their time.

By the time the symposium took place, we had strong relationships with most of the speakers, who delivered phenomenal presentations and panel discussions. We also developed ongoing mutually beneficial relationships.

However, due to some changes in the speaker line up close to the symposium, we did not have time to develop strong relationships with all speakers. This meant that some speakers did not have the same degree of autonomy or trust in the organisers as others.

Learning: Building strong relationships with speakers was one of the most successful elements of the symposium and allowed speakers to be more creative and open about their leadership experiences. We will continue to confirm the speaker line up early and, in the future, will plan for any speaker changes close to the event. 

Learning 4: Burnout, burnout, burnout

The symposium was project managed by the EDIS Communications and Administration Officer Robin Craig, with ad hoc support from other members of the EDIS team (Lilian Hunt, Fola Afolabi, and Lauren Couch). The Wellcome Global Events team managed registrations and supported heavily with logistics in the run-up to the event and on the day, and the Crick Events team facilitated the smooth running of the event in the space.

The Symposium put significant pressure on the Comms and Admin Officer, and workload was a continuous concern. The EDI elements of the symposium were rightly prioritised, but the extra time, energy, and thought required to deliver a truly inclusive large-scale event resulted in the Officer working long and intense hours in the lead up to the symposium and experiencing burnout afterwards.

Lesson: In the future, we need to reconsider how we balance the EDI elements and scale of events with our capacity as a team. This may mean changing the format of the event or having more staff members working on it as part of their role. 

Learning 5: Discussion time

Some of the feedback we received from attendees is that they would like more time to collaborate and discuss EDI as part of the symposium. We also received this feedback in 2021 and committed to creating more spaces for attendees to interact with one another – during the 2023 symposium, this took the form of having time and space for in-person attendees to network and an interactive Menti board for online attendees.

What we found, however, is that attendees wanted space during the sessions to discuss ideas with one another and the speakers. The number of questions speakers received during Q&A portions often meant that discussions had to be cut short to keep to time. Similarly to the challenge of hybrid events, there is a question of capacity to moderate discussions with a small team and ensure they abide by the EDIS Safer Space Policy.

Lesson: While people certainly used the networking time and space, finding ways to have more discussion-based sessions during future symposia will be valuable. We will consider creative ways to do this and if it’s possible to moderate these kinds of discussion spaces with our current team. 

Final Reflections and Measuring Success

One of the ways we measured the success of the symposium was through feedback from attendees. We circulated a feedback form and diversity data questionnaire in the days after the symposium and received 104 responses, covering about a quarter of attendees.

Among other findings, we learned that:

• 96% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the symposium was an inclusive event.
• 90% agreed or strongly agreed that the speaker line-up was suitably diverse.
• 88% agreed or strongly agreed that it was a more inclusive event than other non-EDIS events they had attended.
• 88% agreed or strongly agreed that they learned about emerging EDI practices.

Additionally, we found that a whopping 93% agreed or strongly agreed that they would attend an event run by EDIS again. When comparing these responses to the symposium goals we initially laid out, we can confidently say that the symposium achieved its primary aims of facilitating knowledge-sharing on EDI practices and leading by example in terms of EDI best practice and inclusive events.

Our next steps are to analyse the respondent data by demographics to understand if certain demographics had significantly differing opinions – for example, if those who declared that they are disabled found the symposium more or less inclusive than their non-disabled peers. This will help us to understand if there is more we can do to create a truly inclusive environment.

EDI is an iterative process, meaning that it is constantly evolving as we learn more, respond to people’s needs, and trial new ways of doing things. We’re thrilled with how well our 2023 symposium went, but recognise there’s always space for change and improvement – we’re excited to see what we can bring forward to the 2025 EDIS symposium!

Resources

Some of the EDIS resources we used when organising the symposium include:

• A Guide to Working with British Sign Language/English Interpreters
• A Toolkit for Creating Radically Inclusive Grassroots Events
• The Diversity and Inclusion Survey (DAISY) Question Guidance V.2 

If you would like to be kept up to date with EDIS events and symposiums, you can follow us on our X/Twitter and LinkedIn or subscribe to our monthly EDI roundup newsletter. If you have any questions about EDIS, email Robin Craig at r.craig@wellcome.org.