The Int’l Federation of Health Information Management Associations (IFHIMA) asked YCL to act as the administrator, program manager, and tech support for their conference in November. It was a different type of project for YCL which turned out to be a great experience!

This was IFHIMA’s first online conference for their official delegates across the world. Previously all conferences had been done with in-person meetings which is difficult for an international group, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. They wanted to try the online meeting to meet their constitutional requirements for governance and develop options for online or hybrid meetings in the future.

YCL was responsible for:

• Maintaining a Planning Calendar for the months leading up to the conference to keep the Board, Regional Directors and special participants on a fairly tight schedule to prepare presentations for the conference.
• Providing tech support on Zoom for 3 board meetings including a practice session.
• Communicating with presenters around the world on their written presentations as well as their oral presentations during the conference. The presenters included people with excellent computer skills and people with few computer skills. It included people who spoke English as their native language and people who spoke English as a second language.
• Preparing a 108 page online publication for the attendees with all of the reports, graphs, PowerPoints and information.
• Promoting the conference with email marketing.
• Preparing the PowerPoint to act as the guide during the conference.
  • Included different types of information: text, graphs, graphics, video.
  • Included 10+ presenters.
  • Was timed to meet the 90 minute time frame. Phew, what a task this was since the meeting circled the globe and presenters have such varied skills!

The day of the conference (which began at 4 am AZ time!), YCL was tech support.

• We used 3 computers!
• We coordinated the PowerPoint with the speakers. Some of whom had weak and inconsistent Internet connections. The President leading the conference was hit by a major snow storm the day before the conference and had very limited power the day of the conference.
• We ran the Zoom meeting.
• We ran the timer for the presenters.
• We did 4 different polls.

Conference Wrap Up

• YCL provided final documents to the board.
• YCL did a debriefing to look for improvements for the next conference.

All in all, it was a fascinating experience. It was our first international job.  It was a project with many moving parts and pieces. It was a project using new technologies.

Great fun!  The best part of Your Computer Lady for me is meeting new people and learning about new industries. This job included all of that in spades!