financial excesses

TRAINING & TECHNOLOGY
congress or similar event:
they can review in detail any
lecture they attended in person
and can virtually visit
events they were unable to
attend due to their own particular
congress schedule.
Clients can actually customize
their online participation
to suit their own needs and
requirements; the system allows
for flexible user and administrator
rights. Congress
contents may be open to all
users, but it may also be protected
by password or require
prior registration and
it’s also no problem to install
a payment function. "m:convidoc
will enable congress
organizers to turn the Internet
into a source of income.
We can install a credit-card
payment function for contents
not designated to be
available at no cost“, Hohm
explained. Here, too, flexibility
has top priority. Online
congress participants will not
necessarily have to book the
entire event. An option might
be to sell tickets for specific
lectures or presentations or
to put together packages, for
example with keynote addresses.
The online tickets
are sold on the same Internet
platform as the admission
tickets to the congress.
Congress contents may be
recorded and transmitted by
m:convidoc both at the Congress
Center Rosengarten
operated by m:con in Mannheim
and also at any other
Turning the
internet into a
source of income
congress center. Organizers
planning to use m:convidoc
will first have to obtain the
lecturer’s and/or author’s
declaration of consent to
making contents available in
the Internet as is provided in
the applicable copyright act.
Thomas Hohm and a team of
six colleagues have been
working on implementation
of the m:convidoc concept
since November 2009. They
currently have ten video recorders
available, which may
be operated in parallel mode.
Their equipment was put to
first practical use in April at
the 116th Kongress der Deutschen
Gesellschaft für Innere
Medizin (DGIM) e.V. in
Wiesbaden. Approximately
8,200 physicians and scientists
from all healthcare sectors
had traveled to the
Rhein-Main-Hallen in Wiesbaden
to further their medical
expertise. The congress
had its focus on state-of-theart
imaging systems, inflammatory
medicine, infectology,
and intensive medicine.
128 industry partners exhibited
their most recent developments
on more than 2,900
square meters of rented exhibition
space. m:con has
been in charge of organizing
the entire five-day event for
the past six years – this encompasses
everything from
planning and finding sponsors
over speaker management,
media contacts, participant
registration all the way
to making meeting technology
available. Almost 1,300
speakers gave lectures and
presentations at the event. In
the course of the pilot project,
the team filmed five sessions
in parallel throughout
the congress, online subscribers
were able to watch
more than 100 sessions with
over 300 lectures live in the
Internet. Those unable to attend
the event may visit the
congress homepage at
http://www.dgim2010.de/,
where they have access to
medical contents. Thomas
Hohm is convinced that this
was a most successful
launch for m:convidoc, and
m:con managing director Michel
Maugé is certain that
this option for virtual attendance
at congresses has considerable
potential: "There’s
a need for innovative solutions
capable of bringing the
congress industry forward.
The combination of congress
contents with Web 2.0 technology
creates genuine surplus
value for organizers."
130 2/2010