Sam Burrell

As the chief exec of a large charity with a social justice agenda which focusses on the rights of women and girls globally, Girish Menon brings a broad view to the challenges of leading through turbulent times, relevant to all of us. Katy Amberley is the chief exec of the British Society for Haematology and was keen to invite Girish to speak to us at Society Street to explore what increased global uncertainty means for those of us leading our mission-driven organizations: both for the organizations, but also for us as individuals.

Society Street brings together a group grappling with the practical issues of putting on a hybrid event to discuss the common challenges they are facing and how they are thinking of resolving them. Meetings have changed forever, and 2022 and beyond sees many societies looking to bring a “best of both” to their next meetings and discovering a whole raft of new challenges. Here they are in lively conversation discussing how they are managing hybrid, and touching on some of the issues they are thinking about. All three of them work within a society or with societies: Laura is the Executive Director of the International Communication Association, which is running a hybrid event in May 2022 in Paris; Theresa is currently the Head of Education at the British Society for Haematology and is planning their hybrid meeting for April 2022; and Violaine is the CEO of Cadmore Media and has been working with her society clients on resolving common issues they face as they plan their online and hybrid meetings going forwards.

Society Street brings together a group of experienced product inventors, innovation enablers, and creators in conversation, exploring ideas, challenges and opportunities for societies as they seek to diversify portfolio and generate new income. All of them have worked with societies and beyond in finding new ways to grow: Sam H is the co-founder and MD of 67 Bricks, an organization that helps societies (and other content rich organizations) maximise the value that already resides in their content; Liz is the Chief Product Officer and co-founder of the recently launched Hum, which works to help associations to improve their reach and revenue; Mike is the Managing Partner at Clarke & Esposito and has been has been creating products for societies for most of his career; and Simon, who is co-founder of Cadmore Media and consultant at Renew.

Our March event started the conversation about income (and activity) diversification for societies: with publishing revenues challenged, and revenue from in-person meetings disappearing completely, how can societies adapt to the new environment they find themselves in? Our September event returns directly to this question, with an interview with Paul Bower, who we met at the March post-Society Street Zoom call.

We bring together three people who have extensive experience in building communication strategies to ensure societies stay connected with their authors. Authors are looking for an outlet for their research – they want impact, they want recognition, they want readership, and they want to be part of a community that cares about their work. Societies are ideally placed to help authors achieve their goals and make those all-important connections. Societies also want to sure ensure their authors have a great author experience, and want to nurture those long-term relationships. So how do successful societies manage to stay connected? Particularly if they have outsourced their publishing to a commercial publisher? (This is something that we know comes up a lot). And how do author communications fit in with the overall communication strategy? After all authors are probably also conference delegates, readers, volunteers, members, editors, etc. Our contributors have a lot to say about strategies that have worked for them so join us for a conversation about the “author experience” and how to keep that important society/author relationship alive.

This session explores our experiences of running annual meetings online in 2020, reflecting on what worked well and what worked less well, and how these experiences will inform meetings design and strategy going forwards. Tobey Jackson, from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), will share with us what AIAA did – and how that is shaping their thinking about what they do going forwards (sneak preview: there are some things that were better online that they will continue to do!). Find out more about what they did here: https://www.boscobel.com/how-to-do-a-virtual-conference-right-heres-what-aiaa-did/ Gemma Prunner-Thomas, from the European Economic Association, who, when planning for a pivoted online conference for August 2020 went back to first principles to design their event, and when she couldn’t find a platform that did what was needed, took the plunge and invented one. Sarah Stannage, from the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC), will be fresh from the IIC event which runs in the first week in November – and is a truly international, several-day event which will be a hub-and-spoke event: it has more attendees signed up than they have ever had before. She will talk about how they began to address issues like addressing the digital divide, time zones, and simply managing vast amounts of content.

Intro reel for E-Learning Fireside Chat August 2023

What now? Does Coronavirus mean that Open Access is a slam dunk? What impact does it have on your publication activities – right now? Next month? Next year? Join Angela Cochran, Judy Luther, Simon Inger and Sam Burrell in conversation.

What does the future hold for subscriptions? Does Plan S mean the death of your publishing business? Can quality publications survive in today’s information environment? Or only science ones? And what did the latest implementation guidelines of Plan S add to the conversation? Sam has ALL the answers (and a crystal ball).

One of the important sessions from our planned in-person event, we look at who it is that societies serve (and is your society doing what it should be doing to serve those communities)? What is it that younger potential members want? (Is membership an anachronistic notion, or does it foster a sense of tribe and belonging?) We start off this session with each of our early careerist speakers talking briefly on what they would like to see from Learned Societies, and we then enter into a wider conversation about what societies could be doing, with contributions from the audience.