Phase three case study: Europeana 2020
- Former user (Deleted)
Europeana 2020 took place in the context of a second wave of wide-spread European Member State lockdowns. It was planned as a digital event from the outset because the planning of the event started just as the pandemic forced the first lockdowns. Despite the context, almost 1,500 people registered, with an estimated 67% - 998 people - attending at least some part of the 50+ sessions in the 11 hours and 20 minutes of official conference programming.
Methodology
A post-event questionnaire was distributed to all attendees shortly after the event, and a reminder was sent after one week. 224 responses were received which, out of an estimated attendance of over 998 participants, represents a satisfactory sample of around 23%. We found a small bias towards Europeana Network Association members responding, rather than non-Network members. The questionnaire asked about outcomes relating to areas such as learning and network development.
Registration data were also analysed to understand better the gender balance of registered attendees, the country they were joining from, their age, and if they had any access requirements for the event.
Following in the footsteps of the Europeana 2019 impact assessment, we continued to investigate the environmental impact of our largest annual event. The methodology changed because the format of the conference changed from in-person to completely digital. Having assessed the audience’s likelihood to attend Europeana 2020 had it been in-person, together with the expected method of travel, we calculated an approximate carbon footprint for air travel. At the same time, we used three estimates of CO2 emissions caused by online meetings to come up with a scale for Europeana 2020’s digital footprint.
Phase three - looking back to Phase one and Europeana 2020’s stakeholders
Europeana 2020’s impact assessment could have included many stakeholders. In our Phase one process, we prioritised those who registered to come to the conference, noting that within this category there was a lot of variety. This helped to shape the focus for our data collection.
Priority stakeholder(s) - the focus of the impact assessment
The registered audience (heritage professionals, educators, researchers, etc) - our priority for the impact assessment
Other stakeholders, not a priority of focus for the impact assessment
Invited presenters and speakers
Europeana Initiative partners and peers (including the Europeana Network Association Members Council and Aggregators’ Forum)
The audience that visits and views the conference materials afterwards
The stakeholders for our impact narrative are however a bigger group than those above. Here is the more detailed list of those who were invested in the conference, who might be involved in validation or have a direct interest in the results:
Everyone above, and,
The events cross-team who delivered Europeana 2020
The programme and selection committee who advised on the programme
Europeana Senior Management Team
Europeana Communities
The European Commission (funder)
The second list is much more detailed for us but it might be the other way round for you.
Europeana 2020 change pathway
Here is a simplified change pathway that we developed for Europeana 2020 and the core audience of conference attendees from the heritage sector.
Europeana 2020 narrative arc
Here we share with you our preliminary story board for Europeana 2020. You can see the main elements we bring together in each of the five parts of the narrative arc. You can also see a beginning, middle and end structure within this.
Europeana 2020 narrative arc
Europeana 2020 took place in a completely different context to anything that might have been expected by conference attendees as they said their goodbyes in Lisbon in 2019. At the same time, reaching such high numbers of professionals - and in particular, sector professionals who were not Network members - in the next annual conference was probably also not expected.
Europeana 2020 brought together almost 1,000 professionals from across the world, with 22 more countries represented in the audience than in 2019. As Europeana’s first all-digital conference, the event was able to reach those who might not normally attend Europeana’s annual conferences. There was a much higher proportion of non-Network members in attendance than in 2019, 69% of whom felt motivated to join the Network afterwards.
With the conference being held online due to the pandemic, there were positives and negatives that emerged from the format. We can think of this as a feedback sandwich of the good, the less good and the great.
The conference was a positive experience for attendees and scored highly in terms of satisfaction. There were big increases compared to 2019 in terms of participants gaining knowledge or skills that they can apply in practice (29% increase) and wanting to change how they use digital cultural heritage (39% increase). Perhaps most importantly, in a time of rapid digital change and in the midst of an ongoing crisis, participants had a good time and many welcomed the conference’s accessibility as a digital format.
On the other hand, there were both those who were dissatisfied with the online format. A digital conference has implications for other parts of the event that might have been enjoyed by attendees of past annual conferences. Networking outcomes (e.g. the creation of new contacts) seems to have suffered as a result of the digital format, but that hasn’t seemed to detract from a sense of being part of a community, where we saw a small increase (5%) compared to 2019. Nonetheless, we anticipate that it has or will have an implication on the likelihood of new projects being generated from new encounters or strengthened relationships that are likely to occur when people meet in person.
As the Covid-19 and environmental crises continue to affect daily life in immeasurable ways, perhaps the most interesting finding of this impact assessment is that Europeana 2020 has been estimated to have significantly reduced the annual conference’s environmental impact, with the digital potentially having reduced the carbon footprint by up to 149 times. The digital carbon footprint is being increasingly acknowledged for its own environmental cost. However, a digital event was very much less negative for the environment than a digital (or hybrid) event would have been.
A decision has to be made about future large-scale events, considering in tandem the ongoing health crisis, desired outcomes for participants and the environment. With this in mind, this impact assessment presents findings but also questions to encourage Europeana colleagues to consider the pluses and minuses of a digital event format.