With less than two months to go before the 41 st International Congress on Intellectual Property, which will be held from the 23rd to the 26th of August, adrenaline levels are jumping among the members of ABPI’s Congress Organizing Committee.
While the last speakers are being confirmed, technologies are tested, and new sponsorships are signed. There are still details to be fixed on the ceremonial, the studio, the presentations, and a myriad of items. Time is short, everything has to be checked, and nothing can fail. The largest intellectual property event in South America, which last year brought together more than 1,200 participants, among them more than a hundred foreigners, is preceded by a lot of anxiety and has been improved with each edition.
The event’s Organizing Committee is composed of ABPI’s president Luiz Edgard Montaury Pimenta and 28 other members and responsible for the final word in the production of the event, such as choosing the themes and speakers and inviting authorities. “The great challenge of a virtual event is to keep the audience high”, says Montaury Pimenta. The formula? “ABPI has endeavored to invite top-level speakers, including economists, members from the judiciary and renowned experts in the matter”, explains ABPI’s president.
Included in this recipe is the careful choice of the presentations’ themes, which must keep up with the contemporary. If major decisions are under the tutelage of the Organizing Committee, the operational feasibility of the event and a multitude of other decisions are under the responsibility of ABPI’s executive director Erika Diniz Silla and her team. It is the hardcore of the organization and production of the Congress. She is the one who manages the entire event, chooses and tests the most appropriate technology, takes care of the invitations to speakers, registrations, ceremonial, sponsorships, promotion, and much, much more.
A well-calibrated combination of content, speakers, and technology is what guarantees a good audience at a congress. For security reasons there is a redundancy of links to meet the number of participants in each panel, so that a possible fall in the system does not affect the debate. Furthermore, before the main event, each piece of equipment is tested in smaller events, such as the webinars that ABPI promotes throughout the year. “In addition to putting together a scientific program with relevant and current themes and renowned speakers, the essential thing is to focus at all times on the participants and their experience”, teaches Erika Diniz, also a member of the Organizing Committee.
At each virtual event, the choice of technology gives rise to many innovations and, again, experience is the best teacher. Last year’s Congress, the first virtual edition, had 40,239 page views and 3,022 hits from more than 30 countries. These numbers surprised even the organizers. “We learn from experience and look for studios with more advanced technology and high-speed links with network redundancy”, explains the director.
The new communication technologies have been well absorbed by ABPI, which has already been producing hybrid events for its members in virtual rooms since 2019. The advantages of this type of event are notorious, as ABPI’s director emphasizes: “There are many advantages in a virtual event, starting with the possibility of having renowned speakers from anywhere in the world without the need to travel, the lowest ticket, being able to deliver to the participant, more democratically, all high-level content of the event”. As for the degree of expectation and anxiety, the two types of events are equivalent.
It is heart-stopping!
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