Singapore has been chosen to “host” the 2020 Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) Conference after the organisers, who cancelled the physical event earlier this year, launched a new global RFP to develop a virtual format for the same December 10-12 dates.
Endorsed by the World Health Organization, ADI is a federation of 120 global members and the biennial conference is one of the world’s largest on the subject, according to Kenny Goh, founder of MICE Neurol, a Singapore-based event-tech company, which clinched the RFP.
Goh commented: “Singapore’s excellent physical infrastructure helped to clinch the physical event. The event returning to Singapore in a digital format and the appointment of a local player to manage such a prestigious event is a compelling testimony of the city’s digital transformation over the years.
“ADI’s endorsement is a boost to Singapore’s efforts to be the centre of global events because future events are likely to be hybrid – physical and digital.”
During the three-month RFP selection process and numerous custom demonstrations, Goh said MICE Neurol acquired extensive knowledge on what mattered to event owners and how they evaluated competencies.
On the scale of the three-day event, Goh said more than 1,000 members submitted “abstracts” to drive conference content. There will be 500 presentations – comprising oral sessions, pre-recorded sessions in three languages for a total of 150 hours, and three hours of live sessions with simultaneous interpretation.
Some 1,000 delegates from more than 100 countries are expected to participate virtually.
Goh noted: “The 2020 conference is the biggest to-date and the most complex to be organised with the queens of Spain and Sweden attending, and Singapore’s president as a speaker.”
The MICE Neurol team, Goh said, had organised 48 digital events in the last six months compared to six in the last three years, where it provided expertise in both the travel and digital domains, and played the role of “integrator” and quality control enforcement.
“The war now is between digital and analogue and the industry must groom event ‘architects’ and ‘engineers’,” Goh observed.
The shift towards digital events, he noted, explained the “glaring results” of a survey of event organisers who did not know how to cost such events, and who also did not understand what happens when analogue meets digital.
