SPECIAL OLYMPIC SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM REPORT Background At the outset, when asked to organise the Scientific Symposium, my first question was what was the rationale for having a Scientific Symposium in association with the Games? The response I received from Special Olympics International was that the idea of the Symposium was to attract the academics, researchers and professionals/practitioners working in the field. It was felt that by holding the Scientific Symposium close to the Opening Ceremony and then inviting participants to the Opening Ceremony, that this experience may stimulate their interest in and their recognition in terms of the value that Special Olympics, as a movement, brings to people with intellectual disability. The other point to note with regard to this is that obviously if this is the focus, then those populations are your target audience. In this regard, our experience was borne out by the advice we were given, which was most of the family members and people associated with delegations around the time of the Games are focused on programmes such as Host Town and the Games themselves and therefore you typically do not get a large attendance from within the Special Olympic programmes themselves at the event. With regard to the Belfast Symposium, we decided that the theme of the Symposium needed to relate to the overall research agenda of Special Olympics, given that it was a Special Olympics event. For that reason, we went with the theme Supporting Families. A theme as broad as this, while it s focused on a particular area, clearly allowed us to accept papers from the broad range of areas affecting the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, but with a particular emphasis on the issue of how initiatives, developments, research, projects, etc. impact from a supporting families perspective. Venue One of the early decisions to be made was where to actually hold the Scientific Symposium. Initially, the obvious thing would have been to hold the Symposium in Dublin, given that it is the capital city of Ireland and we know from experience it would probably lend itself to attracting bigger numbers than other areas of the country in terms of attendance. However, there was a bigger picture to be considered at the 2003 Games in that we were absolutely commited from the outset to make the whole event an all island event. For this reason, it was felt that the Scientific Symposium, given that it attracts a different type of audience, was easy to locate in Northern Ireland and therefore we agreed to go with Belfast as the city to host the Conference.
In relation to the actual facility used for the Conference, we had made the decision that it would be over two days. Therefore, we knew we had to deal with the issue of accommodation as well as food, coffee breaks and the actual Conference itself. The second important factor for us was the format we decided to go with for the Conference was primarily parallel sessions, and therefore this dictated the nature of the facility that we could use. We looked at a number of possibilities in Belfast, as the city is well served in terms of various Conference venues. Our decision to go with the Europa Hotel was based on the fact that they basically could meet all of our needs, i.e. they were able to provide accommodation, provide the main Conference room, a series of appropriate break out rooms and also deal with all of the catering requirements. The Europa is also located centrally in Belfast City, near to restaurants, bars and also is well served in relation to public transport. For all of these reasons, we went with the Europa Hotel. Finally, on the issue of the venue, in our case I am happy with the decision we made which was to go to Belfast as I think it was important to have a high profile event like the Symposium located in Northern Ireland. However, the price I think we paid is that the numbers were not as high as they might have been, had we gone for a Dublin venue. Conference Committee It is important to establish your Conference Committee at a very early stage. We decided to go with representatives from two of the major universities, one here in Dublin and one in Northern Ireland. The universities then agreed that they would cosponsor the event which gave the event a certain level of academic credibility. We also had on the Committee representatives from the Disability sector, both from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and, given the theme, a parent from Special Olympics Ireland represented on the Committee. Although not formally a member of the Committee, Steve Corbin at the Special Olympics Washington office was the key liaison person in relation to the Symposium. Steve would have been kept up to date constantly as to how the programme was developing and the decisions we were making in terms of venue, location, format, etc. The Conference Committee took overall responsibility for the organising and running of the Conference and all activities relating to the Conference, i.e. Civic Receptions, etc. Budget In our case, the decision was made at the outset that the Conference would basically pay for itself. Once we had decided on the hotel, we developed a Conference budget (see Appendix). It was also agreed that we would seek some sponsorship for the event in order to reduce costs. We did get agreement from the 2003 World Games Committee to provide a contingency fund of 10,000 in the event that we ran into difficulty in relation to monies. We were extremely fortunate that Kim Samuel- Johnson made a donation of $10,000 to support the event, given her particular interest and commitment to the whole issue of families. Evelyn Greer, who is a member of the GOC, lives in Northern Ireland and is extremely well known there for her dedication to intellectual disability over many years, also succeeded in bringing in a
large grant of 30,000 sterling from Lloyds Trust. In effect, these two amounts pretty much covered all of the costs involved in the Symposium and therefore we had the luxury of this cushion. We had decided at an early stage to try and keep the costs low. Our focus was to provide a high quality event in terms of the range of topics covered and the numbers of papers offered, while at the same time keeping the costs low. The fee we charged, both to parents - which was a reduced rate, and the actual full fee, certainly by Irish standards, was very cheap. We were therefore somewhat surprised that we didn t get more delegates, as we had hoped that we would get somewhere in the region of 400 and we ended up with just over the 200 mark. However, given the level of sponsorship, as I ve said, this did not have any serious financial implications for us. I would, however, with the benefit of hindsight, recommend that the price be increased so as not to be too reliant on a very high attendance and this probably needs to be based on local knowledge as to what the average attendance at a conference is typically. Hotel We established a very good working relationship with the Europa Hotel at an early stage. They have a reputation of being extremely efficient, very professional and again this would have influenced our decision in deciding to use them as the venue. I, as the Chairperson of the Organising Committee, made several trips to the hotel and met directly with the General Manager of the hotel and the Conference Manager. The development of this relationship over time helped us in negotiating the hotel down and they did, in fact, reduce their cost significantly, both for the rental of rooms, equipment and bedroom accommodation, quite significantly because of the nature of the event that was taking place. It is important that only one or two people work with the hotel as otherwise things can get extremely confusing if different people are contacting hotel staff and altering arrangements, etc. In our case, it was pretty much confined to the Chairperson of the Organising Committee and the 2003 staff member who was dealing with the administration of the Conference. With regard to booking accommodation, based on previous experience of other Conferences we made the decision that we would not get involved in making arrangements or taking bookings for people s hotel rooms. Our only involvement here was to agree with the hotel a reduced rate for delegates who were attending the Symposium. We gave the hotel booking reference number and room rate details on the registration form but all delegates were responsible for arranging their accommodation directly with the hotel themselves. I, again, would advise that unless you have the luxury of a lot of administrative staff, not to get into the area of arranging people s accommodation rather let the hotel do this, as we didn t experience any difficulty with the arrangements we put in place.
Call For Papers The Committee decided that, as this was a World Games event, we were anxious that the Symposium would indeed be an international/global event. We circulated, therefore, a number of international organisations with the call for papers. These included the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability (IASSID), Inclusion International, as well as a number of Irish umbrella organisations, e.g. the National Association of the Mentally Handicapped in Ireland, the Federation of Voluntary Bodies in Ireland, etc., and all Special Olympics National Programmes. We basically used any mailing list that we felt would reach our target audience, which as previously said, were people working in the field of Intellectual Disability around the world. In our call for papers (see attached), we outlined the theme, the kind of areas we were interested in receiving papers on and details with regard to the format we wanted abstracts to be submitted in. One of the universities took on the job of receiving abstracts and co-ordinating that side of the programme. We were fortunate to have received in excess of 60 papers and given the fact that we were using a parallel session format, we accepted all of the papers that we received. In the call for papers we also added a Registration of Interest form, which meant that you were getting not only to people in terms of whether they wanted to submit a paper, but also that people could register if they were interested in hearing more about the Conference, when a detailed programme was available. Programme In our case we decided that all speakers would have to pay the registration fee at the Symposium. While this was the subject of some debate, at international events now this has become quite the norm rather that the exception to the rule. In any event, it didn t pose any difficulties for us and I feel no speaker was in any way discouraged because they were expected to pay the fee. With regard to the programme itself, we circulated the programme in March of 2003. I feel, again with hindsight, that we probably left this a little late. It would have been better to get the programme out, probably towards the end of year in 2002 and then to recirculate in March, and then if need be, closer to the actual Conference, depending on numbers, to possibly have another run. We did not print, we feel, enough copies of the Conference brochure and ended up having to do a rerun which, of course, adds to your costs. The advice again would be to print more that you expect you need and to distribute them widely. Attendance As has already been mentioned, we feel there may have been some issues with regard to the actual location of the Conference, which affected negatively the numbers in attendance. Belfast is at one end of the island and therefore, even though it s a small country, the mindset would be for a lot of people that it was quite a distance to travel, particularly if you were working down south in the Republic of Ireland.
The other issue that I feel we underestimated was the level of involvement of service providing organisations in the Games through both the Host Town programme and people volunteering at the Games. This may have influenced, therefore, organisations decisions to fund people to attend the Conference. If they were already down staff due to releasing people to volunteer, etc. The other factor that I think definitely affected the attendance from the Republic of Ireland is that agencies are experiencing significant financial difficulties this year due to the limitations of Government funding for the disability sector. For this reason, a number of agencies, when contacted, said that they had suspended all travel and conference attendance as a way of reducing costs. We did do some targeted marketing in the last few weeks leading into the Conference. With the assistance of the public relations company, we produced a couple of articles for the press promoting the Symposium and we also targeted a number of the service providing agencies in Northern Ireland with a view to encouraging them to send staff. Certainly, the latter did pay dividends as we had a fairly significant rise in the number of registrations from Northern Ireland in the final two to three weeks. Related Events We, as a Committee, felt it was important, given that we were going to have people visiting from around the world, participating in the Conference that some kind of reception would be held on the first evening. We approached Belfast City Council who were extremely supportive of the event, saw it as an important issue for them to be involved with, and for that reason they agreed to host a Civic Reception for all of the delegates on the first night and then a VIP formal dinner, hosted by the Mayor, for a specified number of people on the second night. All of the costs in relation to this were covered by Belfast City Council. Once again, I would encourage the next Committee, once they know the location of the event, to meet at an early stage with the City Council or local Government reps in order to get their backing and involvement with the event. Conclusion Overall, we as a Committee were extremely happy with the event itself. I think this was achieved because we had been planning for several years and also while the Committee was relatively small, everybody brought their particular skills and expertise to bear and took on different tasks as we went through the planning of the event. The amount of time involved, particularly in the last two to three weeks, should not be underestimated and I know the staff member from the 2003 office and myself as Chair, spent a very significant amount of time dealing with the final details, press, room reservations, transportation issues, etc. etc. that inevitably come to bear as you get nearer the event. We were also fortunate that we had excellent volunteers who assisted with registration, directing people to rooms and basically mucked in with all of the practical details once the event was underway.
With regard to the media coverage and the profile of the event itself, a very significant factor in this was the fact that we released the results of the Multinational Attitude Survey as part of the Symposium itself. This very important piece of research really did attract the attention of the press and was a significant factor in regard to the level of coverage that the Symposium actually received. Christy Lynch Chairperson Special Olympics Symposium Committee
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