International Conference on Prevention and Control of Foot and Mouth Disease

Renowned more for its bureaucracy than for its innovation, particularly in the running of meetings, the European Union tasted the benefits of participative large scale working!

The European Union invited experts from all over the world to gather in Brussels in the wake of the foot and mouth disease crisis to pool their knowledge and to seek insights for the future. With an anticipated 400 plus attending, the challenge was to both share data and allow participants the opportunity to discuss and develop ideas. The structure created for the event gave participants a series of inputs through formal presentations on each day, and also allowed them to break into 4 groups of around 100 to work through the implications of what they had heard.

VISTA was brought in by DEFRA in the UK to help ensure the success of these group sessions, bearing in mind the number of participants, the need to work in more than one language with simultaneous translation and the complexity of the subject!

The solution - electronic mind mapping in each group straight on to a laptop beamed live on to a screen with 4 exceptional people at the keyboards!

The mindmaps for each day were centred on the theme for the day - Day1 Prevention and Control, Day 2 Socio-economic consequences. One of four pre-determined branches off the centre was given to each group to develop the issues further and to provide the topics for smaller groups to discuss in more depth.
Take a look below...........

The feedback from the participants was positive - it allowed everyone to have a voice, to see what was being written and gave them the bigger picture. It was also invaluable in helping to frame the conclusions of the conference back to the participants as the context for the final panel session.

From a logistics point of view it was hair-raising! But we would recommend it again - only if the situation demanded!!