Strategic Development of a Scientific Congress
Since becoming the core PCO for the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (DGPPN) in 2002, CPO has increased attendance of the DGPPN Congress from 2.300 participants in 2003 to 9.500 participants in 2016. How could CPO continually develop the congress in growth and more income, making it the largest congress in the field of psychiatry in Europe?
Our Solution
CPO’s primary focus was placed on the sustainable improvement of services for the participants and increasing the financial surplus for the society. Like any scientific society, the DGPPN depends on a significant surplus to finance their activities. Today the board is very satisfied with the generated surplus. We further could advise the best handling of the fiscal challenges for the benefit of the DGPPN.
Specific Activities to Improve the Service
A core office staff is an integral part of our services. The team members continuously take care of the congress and its active participants all year round.
For instance, our staff personally monitors and manages the electronic submission of abstracts so that abstract handling is not left to the anonymity of a software system.
We also encouraged the DGPPN to record the most important presentations per webcast and to place them in the electronic library of the DGPPN.
CPO is especially putting strong emphasis on delegate marketing, using proven and new advertising and marketing strategies.
Another successful new marketing tool is an exclusive access to a physician portal of one of our partners with 170,000 physicians' addresses in Germany alone.
The DGPPN adopted CPO’s proposal to offer a Congress Kindergarten which is very much used by mothers as they can feel reassured visiting the congress knowing their children are fine.
The DGPPN Academy significantly contributes to the increasing visitor records offering more than 80 training workshops during the congress. Promoting and organising these is also part of CPO’s responsibilities.
In this respect, the handling of national and international CME credits plays a major role. CPO arranges for the accreditation of the congress with the relevant medical entity. We organise the evaluation of the conventions and the participants can either print their certificates onsite or download them after the congress.
Like all other CPO conventions, the execution of the DGPPN Congress is characterised by a high level of precision together with a comfortable atmosphere. Our technical crew ensures the smooth run of all lecture presentations, which are transmitted to the lecture halls via the in-house network from a centralised media centre. Not hostesses but young media technicians take care of the speakers in each lecture hall.
With our web-based congress information system CO CONGRESS ONLINE® we deliver updated and comprehensive information about the congress. At an early stage the congress programme is generated and displayed. Each participant creates their personal congress programme schedule from over 600 sessions and 2,100 accepted abstracts, all also available as app, developed by GLOBIT GmbH, CPO´s IT company.
Outcomes
CPO became Core PCO in 2002 for the congresses from 2003 onwards. By that time, the congress had an average of 1,800 participants. Since 2011 round 9,500 participants from 49 countries attend the nowadays largest congress in the field of psychiatry in Europe.
