Like many of you, with changes to grants, work, and life during the pandemic, we had to pivot and change how we provided services. This included how we planned and organized our annual Technology Summit. This event provides guidance and best practices to the field around the intersections of tech safety and intimate partner violence, and this time was no different besides being virtual.
We have held many webinars over the years, but replicating an annual 3-day, in-person event all on the inter-webs was a different undertaking. Overall, our first virtual Summit was a success and we reached many more people than we could have fit into a ballroom. But, being honest, there were also some tough moments in the background while planning and holding the event. There were laughs, there were tears, excitement, and exhaustion.
Our priorities for accessibility and equity are paramount to our work. We believe that when you create spaces for those at the margins, everyone succeeds. This meant we needed to ensure that the American Sign Language interpreters and closed captions were accurate, that presentations were understandable, and that materials were translated. While we succeeded in some ways, there is much to learn and always room to be better. That’s the thing about advocacy, allyship, and doing this work; you never arrive. This is a constant journey of growing, making mistakes, and doing better. And since we see this as a journey we’re all in together, we wanted to share some of our lessons from the virtual event space to hopefully help with anything you may be planning. We created a new resource, Tips for Hosting a Virtual Event , to do just that and we hope it’s helpful to your planning process.
One similarity between virtual and in-person is that at the end of the day, the presenters and the audience – the people – are what is really important and make the event great. Audace’s fun and innovative ways of presenting made up for not being in person. Shalini’s dedication to each participant, answering questions and emails around the clock, demonstrated the commitment to each participant. Corbin’s dynamic presentation with Lish (who knew confidentiality could be engaging?). Elaina and Toby helping to proof documents, provide in-webinar support, and then doing amazing presentations. Rachel’s great MC’ing skills, leadership on accessibility, and managing our interpretation needs. And all of Erica’s leadership, helping keep this ship afloat, while also providing support to each team member, jumping in to answer emails, and working with our funders. We also had several NNEDV staff who assisted all week long. Kelly, Ashley, Robin, and Teresa all played roles to help manage the Spanish interpreter, the ASL interpreter, the Zoom set-ups, and the closed captioner. Each person was integral. Our Virtual Tech Summit could not have been done without each person’s collective vision and dedication to the success of this conference.
We also celebrated Safety Net’s 20th Anniversary, and while we have come a long way since Cindy was providing trainings on fax machines and beepers, we still have more work to do. We know that the next 20 years will see us evolve, grow, and reach new levels, always grounded in our core tech safety principle of being survivor-centered.
Would we do this again? Probably not. Just kidding! This was a tremendous learning process, but we know that with any great event, comes great responsibility. We have a responsibility to our team, our funders, and, most importantly, to you, the programs that work with survivors each day. We take this responsibility seriously and we work each year to make it the best we can. Whether in person or virtual, it’s always better, more accessible, more inclusive, and always centers the voices of survivors every step of the way.
In peace and tech safety,
The Safety Net Team or Dream Team (whichever you prefer)
(Audace, Corbin Elaina, Erica, Rachel, Shalini and Toby)
