The Northwest Tri-County Intermediate Unit 5 (IU5) is a regional educational service agency located in Pennsylvania, United States.
The education agency provides cost-effective programs and services, playing a crucial role in supporting administrators, teachers, families and students in the 17 tri-county school districts that comprise IU5. Its service areas include Special Education, School Improvement, and Innovative Technology.
Every year, IU5 runs a conference for educators across Pennsylvania. The SAS Institute connects educators from across the commonwealth and provides them with insights on state educational initiatives. In 2020, its core topic was 'New Perspectives in Education: 2020 Vision for Teaching, Learning, and Leading'.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought extremely tough challenges to the educational system worldwide. Thus, it is a critical time for actors such as IU5 to step up and deliver rich, meaningful and timely information to educational leaders.
The SAS Institute has traditionally done that, and has therefore been regarded as a top-quality conference. However, the event had always been hosted in-person, so IU5 did not have any experience in setting up virtual events. Keeping that in mind, IU5 was determined to achieve the same level of quality while hosting the event virtually in 2020.
Added to that, the education agency wanted to prepare for a hybrid future, where events are likely to feature both in-person and virtual components. Distinctively, IU5 was also looking for a strong backend system that could fulfil its specific fiscal and operational needs.
Since IU5 had no experience with virtual events, they spent a considerable amount of time researching the best in-class platforms. Given their resolve to deliver up to high standards, IU5 ended up selecting InEvent's platform to help them do so. In their words, the big difference is that InEvent is an event platform, not a webinar tool.
Among InEvent's features, the Virtual Lobby stood out as a favourite. Designed for engaging virtual events, the Virtual Lobby is easy-to-use for the event organizer and allows a smooth event navigation for attendees.
As the two-day conference included many sessions - both live and pre-recorded - it was essential for attendees to be able to switch seamlessly between content according to their preferences. In that regard, InEvent's platform proved perfect as it offers attendees a personalized event journey, alongside networking and engagement features enhancing the event experience.
Furthermore, IU5 effectively used InEvent's landing page and registration features, Indeed, the regional education agency set up a customized SAS Instute 2020 website, including all key information (speakers, agenda, registration) and driving event attendance. And, it created a captivating registration form, aligned with an attractive event identity.
Finally, InEvent's ticketing feature enabled IU5 to manage tickets, billing and payments in one place, tracking the number of tickets sold and the status of payments for each attendee. Importantly, they were able to integrate registration with the payment platform powered by Stripe and with their own internal invoicing system.
In summary, the two-day education conference was a success, keeping its high-level standards and leaving attendees delighted with how the platform performed and delivered the content.
There is more to the platform than just the technology. InEvent's people and partners are an integral part of the platform and were a significant factor in our decision to use InEvent.Vince Humes, Director Innovative Technology Solutions,
Northwest Tri-County Intermediate Unit 5
