The inaugural online WEConnect Africa Regional Conference, held on 7 and 8 July 2021, was attended by nearly 300 people and Flow’s client from WEConnect International hailed the event as a resounding success.
Flow had been tasked with managing the digital hosting of the event. This included providing technical support, project management, video editing and production, and presenter training.
“Building on our track record of hosting successful national conferences in South Africa and Nigeria, our audacious goal was to conduct the first-ever African regional conference and to do it remotely – so that businesses in more than one of the 24 African countries in our database could attend,” said Patricia Langan, WEConnect International regional director for Africa and the Middle East.
The event was also aimed at informing its network of women members on current trends and available opportunities, and sought to connect members, potential partners and buyers across the African continent. The conference was co-hosted by WEConnect South Africa and WEConnect Nigeria, and included speakers from across the continent and further afield. The organisations represented included ExxonMobil, EY, IBM, Unilever and Accenture, to name a few.
WEConnect was already using the Hubilo hybrid online event platform, which allowed for event registration, sharing of event presentations, uploading of attendee profiles and creation of breakaway rooms. Flow was tasked with managing the Zoom integration, and this worked seamlessly with the Hubilo platform.
In addition to hosting the event, Flow also pre-recorded and edited some of the presentations and panel discussions and held numerous coaching sessions with presenters on the to-dos and how-tos of presenting during a live event.
Flow used a combination of Zoom and Hubilo to deliver the two-day event. Zoom is a fantastic platform for keynote speeches and panel discussions, while Hubilo enables one-on-one networking opportunities, virtual exhibitions and a cool gamification element: a points-based leaderboard for attendees, based on their interactions on the platform.
“We knew we’d need a crackerjack virtual events producer and found that in Flow Communications,” said Langan. “Flow, which is also a WEConnect International-certified Women’s Business Enterprise, showed it had our best interests in mind and its small team produced big results.”