CommsConsult team members Andrew Clappison and Betty Paton were asked to travel to Cairo, Egypt, to work alongside GDNet and Euforic Services as social reporters for the Economic Research Forum (ERF’s) 18th Annual Conference.
This is the second time the team has been asked to perform social reporting for ERF’s annual conference, and this theme was just as pertinent as the last, focusing on Corruption and its effects on economic development. Given the current political environment in the country, many of the speakers and participants were keen to emphasize the importance that the debates and discussions taking place during the conference might hold in shaping Egypt’s future.
During the three-day conference, Andrew and Betty live-tweeted from the plenary and parallel sessions on the presentations and debates taking place. The team also captured lots of multimedia footage and uploaded photos to Flickr and talking head interviews with key speakers to YouTube. One of the most integral outputs at these events is an electronic newsletter, which gets sent out to all the conference participants at the end of each day with all the headline stories and latest news from the sessions. The newsletter always has a great pick-up and is a great way to point people in the direction of the ERF blog.
Betty was also tasked with producing a conference overview trailer, compiled of interviews with all the key figures at the event and footage from the sessions over the three days. Screened during the closing ceremony of the conference, the trailer underlines the role that ERF can play to further understand the problem of corruption and economic development.
The picture on the left shows the whole communications team:
(Back row from left) Haitham Hamed el-Khouly (GDNet), Pier Andrea Pirani (Euforic Services), Zeinab Sabet (GDNet), Andrew Clappison (CommsConsult), Shahira Emara (GDNet), Shahira Monieb (GDNet), Dina Mannaa (GDNet) (front row from left) Maya Madkour (GDNet) and Betty Paton (CommsConsult)
The link to the ERF conference blog can be found below: