Abbeyfield Care Homes – 2020 AGM & Strategy Launch

The Brief:

Abbeyfield is an English housing charity providing sheltered housing and care homes for elderly people. Based in St Albans, Hertfordshire it has members in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia & South Africa. It must legally bring its members together annually for the AGM and to vote on its ongoing strategy.

Abbeyfield’s AGM was due to be a physical meeting in late November 2020. Eight weeks prior to that Purple Patch were engaged to run the event as a hybrid from Abbeyfield’s St.Albans office.

The Challenge:

Having been delivering both hybrid and virtual events for eight months – the flight path for this event was relatively uncomplex. We made a site visit to their Head Office, did all the usual checks regarding internet connectivity and covid secure measures. Following this, we created the normal timeline. Then came lockdown number two just three weeks prior to the event.

The Solution:

Having to switch from a hybrid event to a 100% virtual one is always at the back of our minds this year – Abbeyfield’s event and all of those in Q4 of 2020 have been planned for just such an incident.

The call was made as soon as the second lockdown was announced – and so our timeline switched to now include technical checks with all the presenters, a run-through of how the day would work from a technical point of view – and critically two rehearsal slots a few days from the event.

Everything else stays the same – the website was live; the invitations had gone out and all the planning was done.

The Result:

Both the AGM and the Strategy Launch went seamlessly – the audience numbers were as expected and there was no drop-off during the event at all. Both sessions benefited from extensive audience Q&A.