Interviews

Planner Spotlight Series- Bel Hanson, ISCB

Bel Hanson, of ISCB, brings awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world.

Luke Whalin
Sep 10, 2021
Interviews

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This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world. 

 

Name: Bel Hanson

Company Name: International Society for Computational Biology

Job Title: Senior Manager, Operations and Programs

Years of Experience: 8

How were you able to adapt during COVID-19 when the meeting and events industry got disrupted?
 
Our number one priority was to ensure that the sharing of scientific research was not disrupted. We transitioned all of our events to virtual platforms and ensured the priority within those platforms were the research talks, posters, and networking so that discussions and collaborations could continue.
 
As a planner, what was the number one thing you learned over the past year?
 
Where there's a will there's a way. We wanted to ensure that all of our members had continued access to research and training. To do this we ran several conferences on more affordable platforms to keep costs low and we restructured our registration system so that it now have tiered fees based on the World Bank Economic Ranking system.
 
Is there anything you are changing in your planning process moving forward as a result of the pandemic?
 
We plan to keep our tiered fees registration structure to benefit our attendees and truly hope that we can continue with a virtual component for many of our events so that those members unable to travel can continue to participate.
 

This post is part of the HopSkip Planner Spotlight Series where HopSkip spotlight's planners across the industry to bring awareness of how they adapted to COVID-19, communicating and lessons learned and sharing how they are viewing the meetings and events industry in a post-pandemic world. 

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