The North Wales Digital Social Care Showcase on 5 March 2025 was the first of its kind in Wales. We learned a lot from organising the event that will help us with future events and may be helpful for others.
Getting advice
Before starting, we spoke to people with experience of planning large-scale events, which was incredibly helpful. We’d like to thank to Social Care Wales and Practice Solutions for sharing their experiences and expertise with us.
Planning timescales and resources
Advice from others helped us think through the time and resources needed to plan an event of this scale. It’s more than you think! We estimate it took around 150 days of staff time over 12 months to organise the event. This included a busy few weeks in the run up to the event where many of the team were working flat out making last minute arrangements, printing materials, organising registration and more. It was also helpful to have a large team of people involved on the day to help make sure everyone knew where they were supposed to be and keep things to time.
Finding sponsorship
In September 2024 we launched a Digital Showcase website to explain what the event was all about along with a sponsorship pack including different ways for people to be involved. We created a form on the website using SnapSurveys for organisations to express their interest in sponsoring the event.
We shared this widely with our networks but found that the most effective way to generate sponsorship was through personal introductions from colleagues. Connections made by members of our Digital, Data and Technology Board were especially helpful. Securing sufficient sponsorship for the event took around four months, although this was done alongside other projects.
Finding presenters, workshop leads and exhibitors
In November 2024 we circulated a call for presenters, workshop leads and exhibitors. Once again, despite sharing this call widely through our networks, most leads came through personal connections and invites. This meant that our project team was much more involved in planning and organising workshops than we had originally anticipated, so we would build in more time for this in future. This may also have been a feature of it being the first event we’ve held like this.
One of our aims was to give people a chance to try out technologies for themselves. We had some excellent exhibitors that really met this brief, but it was challenging to find the right organisations to take part and make sure we had sufficient demonstratable technology. We anticipate this would be easier for future events due to the people and organisations we’ve met while organising this showcase.
Finding people to attend
We started sharing ‘save the date’ invites over six months before the event date and made sure it was in the diaries of the senior leaders who had commissioned and approved the event including members of the Regional Partnership Board and Digital, Data and Technology Board.
When we launched an EventBright page to let people register for tickets the first batch sold out immediately! The Regional Partnership Board’s networks were great for getting the information out to people who wanted to attend. While it wasn’t difficult to find people to register it was more challenging to make sure spaces were reserved for sponsors, presenters and exhibitors while also freeing up enough participant spaces for those who plan and provide social care.
We opened the conference to members of the public in the afternoon and publicised this through accessible formats (bilingual invite video and easy read) but not many attended.
We knew that some of the population groups who would benefit from attending the event would not be able to attend an event like this. For example, people in rural areas may struggle with transport and unpaid carers who work said they would be more likely to come in the evening. Many participants said a highlight for them was hearing from people with learning disabilities about how they use technology in their day-to day lives and they would like to hear more about people’s lived experience in future events.
Through organising the event we created relationships with staff and organisations who support people in communities such as Cwmpas and North Wales Together who deliver digital support directly in communities.
What we would do differently next time:
- Co-design the plan with a group of previous delegates/people with lived experience
- Factor in more time for scoping and workshop messaging
- Focus on how we wanted people to feel after the event
- Consider a more specific target audience
- Review communications plan with RPB team members and people with lived experience
- Work with groups supported by Cwmpas and North Wales Together to develop a plan to reach those who may not attend a big one-day event. Pop up events throughout the year, with key messages around digital technology to support early intervention and prevention, co-designed with existing groups of people with lived experience focussing on hot topics.
Design
The event branding and design work was all done in-house thanks to a talented member of the team, and this saved us a lot of money compared to commissioning the work from an external agency. Design work included brochures, delegate information, posters, banners and signs.
We also developed the structure and content for event website ourselves using templates created by our external website developer as part of our ongoing contract. The website had around 1,300 views between September 2024 and April 2025 with visits peaking at the website launch and in the weeks leading up to the event.
Accessibility
To make sure the event was accessible we consulted with groups in advance about what they wanted to see from the event. We selected a venue that was accessible to wheelchair users and included hearing loops. Our registration form asked about access needs and dietary requirements, which we worked with participants to meet. We created an EasyRead and video invite for members of the public. The website was designed to be accessible to people using screen readers, including a text only html version of the delegates pack along with the PDF version.
The participant delegates included access information for the day.
Caring for the environment
We tried to reduce the impact of the event on the environment by keeping printing to a minimum and sharing the delegate pack online.
To minimize single use plastics, we encouraged delegates to bring refillable water bottles with them, as the venue had water bottle filling stations available. We didn’t purchase any plastic promotional items or single-use items. This included creating signs and posters that could be re-used for different events wherever possible.
We encouraged participants to use public transport or car share to reduce carbon emissions from travelling to the event.
On the day
Overall, the hard work that went in to planning came into its own and the day went smoothly.
As we’d expected with a free event, we had quite a few apologies and people not showing on the day. Those who sent apologies received a link to the website where we have put copies of presentation slides. If we’d had more funding, we’d have like to film more of the presentations for people who were unable to attend.
We also had people show up who hadn’t registered. This balanced out with a similar number of people unable to attend. But it is something to keep in mind when planning future events and to make sure there’s a system for collecting email addresses so we can share follow-up information and ask for feedback.
Managing attendance at the workshops was also a challenge. We’d asked people for preferences in advance and then tried to allocate based on those preferences and maximum room sizes. We think there are improvements we could make in how this was organised and in sharing information with delegates on the day about which workshops they’d been allocated to.
There were a couple of IT issues, which was bound to happen when you’re pushing the boundaries with digital technology. For example, using Mentimeter for polling didn’t work as smoothly as we’d like although it was a really good way to get instant feedback on how the event went. There were also some issues with the translation equipment not working in such a big space.
We commissioned a video of the day, which was a great way to capture the atmosphere of the event. We hope this will help us with promoting future events.
Event video
More information
If you’d like any more information please get in touch with the team at nwrich@denbighshire.gov.uk.
