The CommsConsult team travelled to Bogota, Colombia, for the Global Development Network’s 12th Annual Conference. The conference centered on the theme, “Financing Development for a Post-Crisis World: The Need for a Fresh Look”. CommsConsult were invited back, for the second year, to run the GDNet Online Outreach Team, doing social reporting on all of the hot-off-the-press conference news.
During the three days, more than 200 researchers, policy makers and development professionals were gathered at the Universidad de los Andes to discuss important and pertinent issues within microfinance, philanthropy, innovative sources of development funding, domestic resource mobilization and development aid. Heavy-duty issues, but CommsConsult was there to help to communicate the headlines clearly, using a range of multi-media platforms.
Web 2.0 played a huge part in the coverage of the conference, with the majority of the stories and news items being posted onto the GDN conference blog. The blog doubles up as a portal for the conference social networking platforms by including Twitter and Flickr streams and it also linked to live streaming of the plenary sessions.
During the event, a conference e-newsletter was sent out with the top stories at the end of each day and a ‘GDN Conference Daily’ broadsheet was printed out and placed around the University, giving the headline news.
Conference goers were also encouraged to offer their opinions and projections in comfort the comfort of the ‘Communication Bubble Diary Room’. Andrew Clappison, Communication Manager at CommsConsult, describes the aim of the Bubble Diary Room as being to “capture people’s messages and take them forward”. Continuing that it is “very important that academic research has the opportunity and the platform to stretch out beyond academia”.
The Diary Room video clips on the GDNet YouTube channel, which you can access through the blog.