One of our bigger challenges is to find a suitable venue to host the APRICOT Summit. Conference week has a requirement to support 3 parallel tracks, plus provide up to a dozen small meetings rooms for APRICOT sponsor meetings and our co-organising partner, APNIC. This means that venue selection becomes quite a thorough process carried out by the Secretariat along with the potential local partner.
The APRICOT technical training, known as the APRICOT Workshops, take place the week prior to the conference.
The workshops are usually held in the conference venue itself, but do not have to be located there. Usually any full capability training venue like a College or University has suitable facilities, and can be a good location to run the APRICOT Workshops.
The workshop facility requirements are listed below:
Microphones/audio amplification is not necessary, not unless the room itself has poor acoustics. There are no remote participation requirements other than any organised by the instructors themselves with their own training equipment.
Water bottles and glasses must not be placed on the training room tables, but at the side of the room in a dedicated spot. The use of plastic for water bottles is discouraged - providing water dispensers or recyclable glass bottles is strongly recommended.
The venue itself needs to have sufficient common space to serve the refreshment breaks mid-morning and mid-afternoon, as well as a suitable venue to serve a light lunch for workshop participants. Lunches are normally standing buffets, or sandwiches, or similar light snacks.
The rooms also need to be secured when not in use. Ideally the APRICOT Secretariat will have the keys to each room, but if that is not possible, venue Security must be on-site when rooms require to be unlocked on demand in the mornings, locked during lunch breaks, and locked again at the end of the day. This is especially important if the venue is a public space, like a University campus, or a Convention Centre, or a hotel.
One important feature of any APRICOT Conference venue is its proximity to other facilities in the chosen location. The main conference hotel will be where most delegates opt to stay, but for those on limited budgets, or operating within corporate discount programmes, having a choice of at least 3 or 4 other hotels in the neighbourhood is essential. These hotels would need to range from budget to full service.
It is also essential that the venue is easy walking distance to restaurants and cafes in the vicinity. Not every delegate wants to eat venue food day in and day out, and quite often meetings between delegates are more productive away from the conference venue itself.
Plus, choice of conference venue needs to keep the two major social events of APRICOT in mind, the Opening and Closing Socials. It is not desirable to put delegates in buses to spend a long time sitting in traffic jams to get to a social event venue - having a good choice of social venues within walking distance (15-20 minutes) is pre-requisite for final venue selection.
As for the venue itself, the conference week has a more esoteric requirement. But can be broken down into relatively simple components: public meeting space; private meeting space; secretariat functions.
The public meeting spaces are:
The general public area mentioned above must have adequate seating to allow delegates to sit down and hold small informal meetings, if they require. Usually two or three chairs around a small coffee table is the ideal setting.
The private meeting space requirements are:
The Secretariat functions require:
These outline requirements may need some adjustment depending on local facilities or any modification in the format of APRICOT. They only serve as a guideline to assist the local host work with the Secretariat to find the most suitable venue for the Summit.
While APRICOT is not a conference about food, delegates come from over 50 countries around the world, and it is essential that the venue chosen is able to cater to their dietary requirements. The main requirements for a venue is the ability to cater for:
Any other specific dietary requirements will be notified directly between Secretariat, the local host, and the chosen venue.
It is normal practice (and strongly recommended) to set up separate areas for those who have no dietary needs, kept well apart from those who have Vegetarian, Halal, or GF needs. This is for practical reasons only, so that delegates with dietary needs are able to go to their specific catering zone, rather than having to search for their specific needs in amongst the general provisioning.
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Page last updated on Friday, 21-Apr-2023 15:19:27 AEST.