Case Study: LEAF Symposium
Client Company and Main Contact:
Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF)
Kat Owens Project Director, Feminist Strategic Litigation Project
This was a three-day symposium on Gender Justice & Equality, which brought together 83 lawyers, academics and activists from across Canada. Over three days, they listened, discussed, strategized, and connected with each other in meaningful ways that encouraged professional development. Kat and her coworkers at LEAF were thrilled with the way we managed breakout rooms, closed captioning and simultaneous interpretation, as well as their panel YouTube LiveStreams.
The team at LEAF and Neolé had to work together to bring about the success of this debut event. Having originally planned this as an in-person networking and information sharing event, LEAF came to realize the reality of the help they needed to take this event online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their main expectations were to provide a platform for people to build connections and share information and strategies. LEAF works with a diverse group of people, and therefore needed to be able to coordinate simultaneous interpretation and captioning in order to provide accessibility to all participants. They reached out to us to help them implement this event with an eye to helping people interact in a meaningful way.
Our solution was to provide extra support through an interactive online space called HowSpace, where participants could interact before, during, and after the event. Those using HowSpace could ask questions during events, as well as post delayed questions; they could post, comment, like, tag, and share in real time; and they were given a welcome package with all the information they needed for the event. HowSpace was facilitated in both English and French, and the event registration was followed closely to monitor how many breakout rooms needed interpretation and/or captioning.
We also facilitated three YouTube LiveStream panels, which was widely well-received. Our team made sure to do a lot of testing and rehearsals to ensure that all the moving parts worked together smoothly, working together with LEAF to present and facilitate a very successful event.
Let me just chime in and say I thought everything ran very smoothly for the symposium. I had board members tell me they had never seen something so well organized – without technical glitches.”
As a direct result of a great experience, LEAF has decided to work with us for a series of webinars called the “Personhood Speaker Series”
“Our organization recently hosted a three-day virtual symposium, bringing together people from across Canada. The team at NeOlé provided us with all of the support we needed to make this a success, and were professional, knowledgeable, and fantastic to work with throughout. They seamlessly integrated simultaneous interpretation and captioning throughout the event, coordinated live streaming to YouTube, and helped customize an online space for participant engagement. The NeOlé team’s level of organization is incredible, and helped us to stay on track through the planning and execution of the event. Thank you NeOlé team!” – Kat Owens, Project Director, Feminist Strategic Litigation Project
3 day symposium
3 x 1.5 hour LiveStream panels
83 participants
Up to 10 simultaneous breakout rooms. 1 interpretation room with English, French and Closed Captioning (worked with Canadian Hearing Services) 2 bilingual rooms