Planner Resilience: Sarah Loganbill, Global Ministry Center: Church of the Nazarene, Inc.
Read how meeting and event planner Sarah Loganbill of Global Ministry Center: Church of the Nazarene, Inc. became innovative in surviving and succeeding during the Covid-19 pandemic.
How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?
Like many other organizations experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, we started working remotely in March of 2020. All travel and events were either postponed, canceled, or turned fully virtual. My colleagues and I quickly became versed in all things Zoom and began planning events from our dining room tables and couches. We faced many challenges, conducted a LOT of Zoom research, and held many testing scenarios (which usually turned into many more hours of testing than originally planned for), and we were able to pull off our annual workshop completely virtual, with the biggest attendance we’ve ever experienced for this event! While the attendees missed the face to face networking (as did we), they spoke very highly of this past year’s workshop. We were able to reach a wider audience across the globe which is definitely impacting the planning and content for this year’s virtual conference. We hope to be back in person in the future but we also plan on continuing with a hybrid event so we can aim to reach and support more of our constituents globally.
This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where we celebrate the positivity and optimism shown by planners across the industry when navigating the turbulent waters that COVID-19 has brought the meetings and events industry. Keep an eye out as we release more stories like this over the next few months.