Initiative Description
The 2022 AzTAP/IHD Evidence for Success Hybrid Conference was a 2-day conference featuring 4 general sessions (opening and closing speakers and lunchtime presentations both days), 47 breakout sessions, and an exhibit hall with 28 exhibitor booths (consisting of AT companies and social services/disability organizations). 24 of the sessions were specifically focused on AT products, services and ICT accessibility which the others focused on advocacy and disability topics more generally. The conference was held in-person, but participants were offered a virtual registration option and could participate in the 19 out of 51 sessions that were broadcast virtually in real-time. Significant attention was placed on social distancing and health concern mitigation. Collaborating partners were Arizona Department of Education (primary funder), Rehabilitation Services Administration (content/credentialing collaborator) and our parent organization IHD at NAU (technical support/marketing). The conference attracted 330 participants broken out as follows: 227 in-person attendees, 44 virtual attendees, 15 exhibit hall only, and 44 exhibitors. Average attendance in each breakout session was 26.
Lessons Learned/Replication
Eighty of the attendees (56 in-person/ 24 virtual attendees) responded to the post-conference survey, giving the conference an overall satisfaction score of 3.41 out of 4.00 and a lot of very positive feedback in the comments/ narrative portion of the survey. While we are committed to offering both in-person and virtual delivery of content going forward, we believe that trying to offer sessions both in-person and virtually concurrently was challenging on our staff and on participants. As such, this coming year we will deliver the conference in-person, and then offer virtual sessions to those who choose to participate virtually at a different date and time. Further, given the current reality, we intend to increase the number of vendors in our exhibit hall.