Web page to document event results | Mandate Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC | Concept and Design dubbed perceptions | Language English | Year 2018 | Link to web page

This year the SDC network on governance held its global face-to-face event in Kiev. The final report from the event is web based: key event moments and insights are shared over the web. The report is hosted on the FDFA SharePoint platform, providing you with basic tools to create your report. Nothing fancy, but better than any PDF report shared by email! - Have a look!

In the past I have written about the advantages of web-based reporting. This time I would like outline 3 key steps in the production.

For this report, I joined the workshop team early on. Once the thematic focus was clarified, I started creating the workshop page. The structure follows the thematic blocs. Each block is then filled with content: background documents for participants to read in advance, or travel information. You want everyone to start using the workshop page as early on as possible. Everyone should know that this is the place to get all the event information. In this case, the workshop organizers used SharePoint collaboration tools to finalize key workshop documents, such as the program.

It won’t make sense to record the entire event on video. You end up with uncountable hours of footage that you will be compelled to put online - killing your audience’s attention with too much video ;-) Find the right reporting mix: text, video, photos of flip charts. In addition, not every group discussion needs to be summarized during a plenary session. Some knowledge can be share in your final report only. This way you keep your participants in action (they don't just sit and listen) and you appease the typical workshop “fear of missing out”.

Workshop participants visit your event-page especially during the first 2 weeks after the workshop. Thus try to finalize your report quickly, before general interest fades away. This is easily said than done. From a technical point of view SharePoint is rather user unfriendly for quick and easy content upload. Packaging, uploading all workshop content takes time. Then your report is approved from the event organizer before it is released. One way to speed up the delivery to the end-user is to publish quickly and let the end-user tell you which content needs change. - Combined with a discussion forum, talking about changes to the final report is a way to keep the discussion flowing beyond the event.

This is not my first post on the topic. Here you find previous postings that might be of interest to you:

• Story on the wall
• Event page spreads knowledge
• Web based reports rule!
• Create a workshop report with WordPress