

Attendees will be able to navigate to different rooms to watch pre-recorded content, semi-live content that features pre-recorded talks with live Q&A chats with the speaker, and live presentations, which can all be searched for by topic or speaker. Those items will be “live” and can be clicked on to redirect attendees to a sponsor’s website or exhibitor booth.

From there, attendees can click through to different areas of the convention center, which will be outfitted with the same sponsored messaging placement - floor decals, escalator clings, etc.
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The attendee experience will begin outside of a virtual version of the Miami Beach Convention Center, where they will be greeted by Eichler - or his avatar, which all ASTRO staff members will have during the meeting - and provided instructions on how to navigate the space. (Thevenot could not disclose the platform vendor at the time she spoke with Convene.) Much like the newly transformed face-to-face meeting, ASTRO’s virtual meeting will emphasize engagement, whether attendees are in educational sessions, visiting exhibitor booths, or “walking” around the virtual convention center. On June 1, ASTRO produced three hour-long webinar presentations for exhibitors to demonstrate how they, as well as attendees and sponsors, will be able to take part in the immersive event. “It’s going to be the ASTRO Annual Meeting.” Miami Beach, Through a Screen “We are not going to make this into the ASTRO virtual meeting,” she said. That’s 120 education, workshop, masterclass, and panel sessions, and 2,500 abstract presentations, to be exact. In 2019, ASTRO introduced more TED Talk–style presentations, entirely virtual posters, and presentations on cancer breakthroughs in fields beyond radiation oncology. Though some plans for year two of the program’s reinvention will need to be placed on hold until ASTRO’s next in-person annual meeting in 2021, “we are not doing a skinnied-down meeting,” Thevenot said, adding that ASTRO’s plan is to incorporate all of the typical meeting content, including concurrent sessions, plenaries, and clinical trials. We really wanted our meeting to reflect that change of how people are getting and processing their information.” … People are listening to podcasts and looking on mobile apps. “We really stepped back and thought about how people get information now. “Medical meetings have been pretty stagnant in the way we present content - didactic lectures and not very much interactivity,” Thevenot told Convene in April, before the decision was made to change the format to virtual. The organization was already in the second year of a three-year reinvention program, with an emphasis on debate, discussion, and interactivity at its in-person event. Thevenot said the choice to go digital has been embraced by not only ASTRO’s board of directors, but by event exhibitors and attendees as well, partly because the organization has given its staff enough lead time to create “the best possible virtual meeting.” Transformation Times Two “Most of our members are on travel restrictions, through June of next year,” she said, so a face-to-face conference may not be a possibility for many of the event’s attendees. Given that ASTRO’s members treat cancer patients - who are at a higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19 - it was critical to find a new way to deliver content in 2020, the association’s CEO, Laura Thevenot, told Convene. Eichler, MD, FASTRO, announced that out of an “overwhelming concern for the safety and well-being of our members, their patients, exhibitors, staff, and the families of all involved” during the pandemic, the association’s board of directors “made the important decision to transition the live meeting in Miami to an immersive and interactive virtual meeting that will occur over the same dates.” The 2020 event was set to bring oncology professionals from around the globe to the Miami Beach Convention Center in October, but on May 5, ASTRO President Thomas J. E-Book: Future-Proofing for Business EventsĪt ASTRO’s annual meeting, attendees will be able to immerse themselves in the virtual exhibit hall experience by entering booths similar to this example, shown during ASTRO’s recent webinar walkthrough for exhibitors.Īmerican Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO) Annual Meeting brings together approximately 12,000 professionals in the radiation oncology community, including physicians, nurses, biologists, physicists, and radiation therapists who collectively treat more than one million cancer patients every year.
