Over the past few weeks, I have been busy at work with our annual conference. With the pandemic on this year it forced us to rethink what the conference would look like for members. Like other organizations, we went virtual. And, instead of doing this over three or four days consecutively, we spread it out over four weeks. We used Encore and the Chime Live platform, and if you are looking to use a platform for your virtual it is a great platform to use.

Our conference is a great source of planning content, and I would recommend anyone with an interest in planning attend. It is a great way to get immersed in the world of planning and learn about what is happening across Ontario.

Some of the lessons I learned from using the platform include:

• The platform was easy to use, easy to view breakout and keynote sessions, and easy to find programming information.
• The breakout sessions were done over Zoom which is familiar to everyone during the pandemic.
• Communicating messages over the Chime Live platform was also easy to do. You could pre-program and time messages for attendees.

I would highly recommend it if you have a conference to plan in the next year or two.