How can you partner with local organizations to make your conference more accessible and inclusive?

• Collaborate with local disability organizations to ensure accessibility for attendees with disabilities, such as providing wheelchair ramps, accessible seating, and sign language interpreters. • Partner with local diversity and inclusion organizations to promote and ensure representation of diverse communities in your conference, such as organizing panel discussions or workshops that address inclusion and equality. • Work with local non-profit organizations to provide scholarships or discounted tickets to individuals who may not have the financial means to attend the conference, ensuring inclusivity for all.

Start with the end in mind and be intentional. The clearer you communicate your vision for the event the easier it becomes. You many need to work harder to uncover talent that is less well-known, or perhaps not top of mind when conducting research calls but it will be worth the effort. Don't just consider who is on the stage but also who is in the audience. Is the venue accessible? What about the parking? How easy is it for everyone to submit a question? Conferences should provide an opportunity to debate which means diversity of thought is key. Helping to share a variety of views provides attendees with a great deal of value.

To create a more accessible and inclusive conference, partnering with local diversity and inclusion-focused organizations is essential. Start by identifying and engaging these partners early, tapping into their expertise to shape conference content and activities. Collaborate to assess venue accessibility, develop inclusive outreach strategies, and ensure a diverse lineup of speakers. Offer staff training, facilitate networking opportunities, and establish a feedback mechanism for continual improvement. Explore financial support options, acknowledge partners, and sustain post-conference engagement to foster ongoing inclusivity. By following these steps, your conference can embrace diversity and welcome attendees from all backgrounds.

It is important to ensure when collaborating with local organizations to ensure diverse and inclusive partnerships and attendees, to recognize the financial barriers for those organizations to get and stay involved. Non-profits and community organizations often run on shoe-string budgets, and therefore not only is it imperative to well compensate their time at a conference they might not otherwise attend, it is important to recognize and compensate for the fact that their attendance at said conference may take away valuable time from their employees working to support marginalized communities. Think about not only compensating folks attending the conference om behalf of the organization, but also provide a donation for their programming.

Ensuring that we enable people with experiential learning to speak alongside arm chair experts can go a long way in adding nuance to your conversations during a conference. If there are gaps in communication skills of the last mile person, ensure that you plan a skill building workshop or hands-on support on a regular basis instead of just jumping on this at the last minute and then not including important voices due to language or communication skill barriers.

Partnering with local organisations provide for an array of opportunities, now just for a conference but the engagement that lies beyond the same. The knowledge that a local partner/organisation may have, will provide for insights to work towards the larger goal of creating a networking space.

Identifying the gaps within your plans should be looked at from both an individual group perspective, and an intersectional perspective. For example, when looking at accessibility, you should ensure entrances are wheelchair friendly, that subtitles and sign language interpreters are available, and that colours used consider those who may be colour blind. With regards to the LGBTQIA+ community, you should ensure that pronouns are included, that LGBTQIA+ people are represented within any imagery, that you have LGBTQIA+ speakers. Consider that some of your attendees with additional needs may also be LGBQTA+. Including LGBTQIA+ folk with additional needs is a way to connect those groups.

identifying inclusive and diverse organisations to collaborate with for a conference can be an overwhelming task. There are a huge number of organisations that you could be considered, and for the person making the decision, it can feel like a very personal failure if things don't work out and you unintentionally misrepresent or miss an accessibility issue. The thing to look for here is whether intersectionality is considered by any organisation you are considering, so that you can cover as many bases as possible with a smaller, more manageable group of collaborators. For example: do the interpreters cover LGBTQIA+ related language? Is the transportation suitable for those with disabilities? Does gender equality include non-binary?

Sign an NDA and make everything formal, transparent and consensual. Knowledge building should be a collaborative process but we should always be mindful of giving credit to people for their work

Consider that information gathered at an inclusivity focused event is likely to be very personal, and for some, such as an LGBTQIA+ individual who is not out to their family for example, it is information that should not be publicised. To ensure responsibilities are completed in a timely and trustful manner, it is important that before any work is carried out, an NDA detailing the importance of employee and attendee privacy is agreed and signed from both parties. Everyone should then work from a single agreed source of tasks, which details who is responsible, what the expected completion date is, and who to contact for any amendments/changes/comments/etc. This task list should be accessible to involved in the project.

For this, plan in advance. Co-creation needs goal alignment, process and operations alignment and if you start early, you will be able to eliminate last minute roadblocks. Collaboration is meaningful, but it is also a lot of hard work. It is not easy and so having enough resources to enable effective collaboration is the key

Collaboration on projects like this is absolutely vital. To ensure a smoother uptake from the partners perspective, spend some time looking into their goals and objectives as an individual organisation, and see how you can align the conference with them. This will show the partner that you are serious about their work and the value it brings to minority groups, and empower them to take an equal lead in the preparation. When planning is involved, be sure to include the partner, and encourage them to share their thoughts and perspectives. The earlier they're involvement, the smoother the partnership will be in the long run. And if you can give additional time for them to come back to you with suggestions and insights on plans, even better.

One thing I have found helpful in this regard is organising catch up sessions online or offline really helps not lose touch with community/partnership built during a conference. Reconnecting with peers and partners post the official engagement over informal conversations and meetups help keep everyone in loop and hence gives a headstart whenever there's a next event planned up.

The best thing to do is not lose whatever meeting and collaborating momentum that was gained while planning and hosting the conference. Keep those touch points for at least 3 months after the fact to ensure both you and the partner get everything they need to out of the conference process. Actively listen to and action any feedback or suggestions from the partner, and continue working together to see how that information can be used to further promote inclusivity both inside and outside of your organisation. For example, some data may be may be useful to compile into an eguide or whitepaper, other data may be useful to highlight inequalities within social media campaigns. Essentially you can use whatever you found to further your work.