How Does a Conference Ombuds Add Value to a Conference?
Conferences should be interactive, informative, dynamic, and safe spaces where attendees can share and enhance their knowledge about a specific topic. In an increasingly global world, conferences have become more prominent and busier, and conscious logistics and planning are necessary to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Potential Conflicts at a Conference
The possibility of conflicts or issues arising increases when many people are concentrated in one space. A conference can inadvertently create problems for participants, such as issues around accommodation, other people’s behaviors, different viewpoints, harassment, bullying, sexual misconduct, and, lately, social media.
One example is the 2022 Bitcoin conference, where one conference attendee posted an unflattering picture of another attendee on Twitter. The post blew up, and hundreds of people harassed the woman in the picture. The woman later expressed that she could not find an appropriate channel to raise her concerns.
At conferences, the energy level of participants can be very high, and this energy can lead to inappropriate behavior. When conferences have a demographic imbalance, this risk of inappropriate behavior becomes greater. This can happen at conferences where outnumbered women or ethnic minorities are present. Issues can arise during the conference, at a conference after party, or once the conference has ended through social media.
In these cases, participants need to find a channel through which they can raise their concerns and explore the resources available to them. The issue is that the people responsible for addressing these concerns are often conference organizers or employees who are not independent or neutral. Therefore, internal staff are not always suited or trained to handle sensitive issues participants raise.
The Role of a Conference Ombuds
Outsourced ombuds provide informal, independent, impartial, and confidential support to your members, attendees, leadership, and sponsors and address concerns before they escalate. Ombuds do this by helping people brainstorm ways to resolve problems, providing answers to their questions, sharing resources, listening to their feedback, and reporting it to leadership while keeping their identity confidential.
After the conference, a Conference Ombuds provides the organization with a written summary of trends and concerns raised during the conference. The summary is provided without revealing the identity of the people who reported the incidents or concerns. This is especially valuable for regularly occurring conferences because it helps leadership and management foresee future areas of improvement and how to implement change.
An Outsourced Ombuds also helps organizations learn about issues they would not otherwise be aware of. These insights enable organizations to improve the quality of future conferences. Therefore, organizations avoid lawsuits, negative publicity, a decrease in attendees, and lost revenue.
Benefits of a Conference Ombuds
Some conferences have an internal system where they train staff members, event organizers, or consultants to address specific incidents. These internal systems can potentially mitigate the fallout from bad behavior; however, conference participants tend to be afraid to report an issue to someone who works as an employee or leader within the host organization. An Ombuds is an independent, impartial, informal, and confidential resource for conference participants. Therefore, people feel more confident in reporting issues to a Conference Ombuds.
A Conference Ombuds assists attendees by providing information about conference policies and guiding them through available resources. An Ombuds also assists people in generating options and coaches them in having difficult conversations. The goal of the Ombuds is to enhance relationships between people at a conference and improve communication within the organization.
A Conference Ombuds can be particularly valuable to organizations that hold frequent conferences. An Ombuds informs leadership of systemic problems and provides helpful recommendations. The Ombuds consults an organization on policy gaps, emerging trends, and problematic behavior patterns while protecting participants’ identities.
The role of a Conference Ombuds is relatively new. If you are a conference organizer and have questions about how Conference Ombuds can add value to your conference, please contact us to learn more.
To discuss MWI’s Conference Ombuds Services, contact Josh Hoch, Ombuds & Director of Ombuds Services, at 617-895-4028 or jhoch@mwi.org. To schedule a time for Josh to call you, click here. Elise Ramos wrote this blog article. Elise is an ombuds, mediator, and Program Coordinator with MWI.
