Global oncology career expo

A global oncology organization wanted to open up career paths and connect people across a function spread over 52 countries. The obvious format — a plenary broadcast with a Q&A box — reaches everyone and engages almost nobody, because the thing people actually want from an event like this is a conversation with someone senior about their own situation.

Virtual made that harder, not easier. The corridor conversation is the part that does not survive a webinar.

We designed the event in two halves that did different jobs.

The plenary carried the shared message and set up the day. Then the event broke into “choose-your-own” breakout scenes organized by area of interest, so participants navigated to what was relevant to them rather than sitting through what was relevant to the average attendee — 40 live speakers across the program, each one running something small enough to be a conversation.

The final layer was the one most virtual events skip: informal networking with senior leaders, structured enough that it happened and loose enough that it did not feel like a scheduled session.

1,123 people across 52 countries took part. One participant described it as the best event they had attended in twenty years with the company — which is a higher bar than a satisfaction score, and the kind of thing people only say about an event where they got something they specifically wanted.