Roadmap for Success: Transforming a Conference for NC’s Municipal Attorneys

It was the week that felt like a year.

By March 9–13, the UNC-Chapel Hill community was bracing for local impacts from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). As the University issued ongoing guidance to campus leaders and employees, every day forced a new set of decisions and determinations. Cancellations, building closures, and work-from-home orders began to flow into inboxes and social media feeds.

The School of Government was no exception. As the host of more than 200 courses and conferences each year, the School was forced to cancel and postpone many imminent events as the unit responded to a new remote work reality. A wide swath of faculty members began to shift much of their attention to supporting local government officials in their response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Faculty member Frayda Bluestein was traveling in California when she was alerted to the changes happening on UNC’s campus. Bluestein and her team needed to make a quick decision on the fate of the annual Municipal Attorneys Winter Conference and Fundamentals Workshop, an important educational event scheduled in just two short weeks.

The event is tailor-made for the attorneys who represent cities throughout North Carolina. Faculty have created a learning structure that awards up to nine credits of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits, which are required by the North Carolina State Bar. The program includes coursework to fulfill specific needs, including an hour of ethics training and a program for those who are new to being municipal attorneys.

In the end, Bluestein’s determination to serve a critical population of legal officials, and her confidence in the School’s staff, made it a simple decision. The show would go on, with one caveat—it would be planned and presented completely online.

“This is a very specific group of people,” Bluestein said. “They really rely on this training. The dates are set far in advance, so postponement would make it difficult for folks to get there. It’s a big group, but we felt we could make it work.”

From there, Program Director Alycia Inserra and IT staff member Paul Bonner sprung into action. With pandemic response creating a fluid situation, Inserra and her team had to plan for multiple contingencies, communicate with 160 conference registrants, and begin training 11 different speakers to present online.

Because the School hosts so many events and courses, many faculty and staff are familiar with a tried-and-true formula on how to operate an event.

“This was a new process and a new challenge to think through,” Inserra said. “So many parts of hosting the conference were the same in many ways; what was different was getting both our speakers and our participants comfortable with the new setting.”

Inserra, Bluestein, and Bonner offered several practical tips for a successful online conferencing experience:

• Cultivate comfort: Inserra ensured all speakers were comfortable and confident using Zoom prior to the conference. Her efforts included two practice runs in advance, including a call three days before the conference in which every speaker logged into Zoom to practice sharing screens, testing audio and internet connections, experimented with breakout rooms and more. Bonner was present during both sessions to offer troubleshooting support and guidance.
  
  
• Consider your agenda: A schedule built primarily into one-hour blocks made for a smooth transition to an online format. If a break didn’t naturally occur in the schedule, Inserra added one to allow speakers time to get situated with the technology. Shorter sessions allowed the hosts to offer more breaks to participants and decrease screen fatigue.
  
  
• Encourage interaction: Presenters used several Zoom features to bolster participation in the meeting, including small group discussions in breakout rooms and smartphone polling options during the ethics course. “We made an effort to engage with people as much as we could and make it as close to an in-person experience as possible,” Bluestein said. 

The conference went off without a hitch, educating 145 municipal attorneys across the state. Many attendees were grateful for the opportunity to learn online. One course evaluation read: “You did an amazing job getting this large conference online. Zoom worked so well. Kudos to all at the School of Government—we couldn’t do what we do without you!”

Now, the conference has provided a roadmap for success for other School of Government events.

“It was an exciting achievement,” Bonner said. “We planned and delivered it 100 percent online, and in the same way that we would deliver this course if it had been held at the School—and it worked great.”