How EuPFI’s Virtual Conference Fostered Global Innovation

What is the EuPFI Virtual Conference? 

The European Pediatric Formulation Initiative (EuPFI) hosts an annual conference, in partnership with APV, that brings together members of the pharmaceutical technology and the pediatric pharmaceutical industries to facilitate development, innovation and regulatory science in pediatric drugs. The goal of the EuPFI conference is to network and share knowledge about current best practices and innovations in this niche.

The annual event has run for 12 years, and this was their second annual conference hosted virtually through vFairs. “We had our first one [in 2020] and then we booked again because we weren’t sure what the experience was going to be this year, and it was a nice experience for us all,” said Valentina Marinkova, Events Manager at APV.

EuPFI Challenges & Objectives 

Challenges

Since EuPFI already had a vFairs conference under their belt, their biggest focus this year was to facilitate networking and knowledge sharing as smoothly as possible. Building on their existing experience and knowledge of the platform, they wanted to leverage some of vFairs’ new features to support their objectives. 

Objectives

The virtual conference sought to accomplish a few key objectives:

• Connect members of the pharmaceutical technology and pediatrics community 
• Facilitate easy virtual networking 
• Share knowledge, findings and new concepts through a virtual platform

To achieve this, the EuPFI, in collaboration with vFairs, put together a virtual event space that fostered interactive presentations, multifaceted chat and spaces to share multimedia documents that attendees could browse at their leisure.

Let’s have a look at a few key features that made the conference a success.

EuPFI Conference Details 

Attendee Profile Search & Chat

Two key upgrades between 2020 and 2021’s events were the attendee profile search and chat functions. The EuPFI team found it extremely beneficial for attendees to search profiles of other attendees, and even filter by fields such as ‘Job Title’, ‘Area of Interest’ or ‘Company’ to find new connections. They could then start a chat conversation through text, audio or video call, or they could send a chat invitation to connect with the user later on. 

Multifunctional Poster Hall

The poster hall was a function vFairs helped the team develop for their 2020 event, then released as a staple feature afterward. The vFairs team spent 2021 refining it’s capabilities, and the EuPFI team was happy to make use of its functionalities for their 2021 event. Along with the ability to upload a PDF poster to the hall, poster presenters were also able to upload videos of their presentations and a chat button allowed visitors to reach out to the presenter directly with additional questions. 

Mix of Live and Pre-Recorded Webinar Sessions

The team wanted to address their top priorities of networking and knowledge sharing, so they hosted a mix of live and pre-recorded webinar sessions. Some pre-recorded sessions included a few minutes at the end where presenters would actually answer audience questions live. This allowed attendees to feel engaged and to have their questions addressed immediately, while still being able to offer high production value that pre-recorded sessions facilitate. 

Why vFairs?

vFairs had already proven to be a great solution for the EuPFI team when they hosted their 2020 conference. One of the biggest draws to vFairs both last year and this year was the virtual venue. They wanted to offer the immersive and multifunctional experience they’d provided attendees in 2020. “You could use Zoom, but it’s not the same. vFairs, for example, offered the feeling that you’re in a real venue,” noted Valentina.

Using vFairs again was a simple choice, especially when the team heard about all of the new features that were available to them this year. New networking capabilities, a familiarity with the platform and updated functionalities combined to create the perfect reason for EuPFI and vFairs to partner once again. 

Results

EuPFI was able to review their event metrics through vFairs’ post-event reporting feature, and were thrilled to find that they had hit the objectives they intended for themselves. They also received extremely positive feedback from their event attendees. The poster hall in particular ran very smoothly and received excellent feedback. 

Overall, EuPFI was very happy with their event outcomes and the experience they had planning their event with vFairs for a second time.