Bac Together in Sheffield and Online
We finally did it! After a long wait due to COVID restrictions, on Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 March 2022, we finally had our first face-to-face meeting – albeit with a substantial online cohort too. The 41 in-person attendees arrived in Sheffield to beautiful weather and a warm welcome from the staff at Halifax Hall. Meanwhile, the hybrid format allowed everyone to participate – including 35 team members who couldn’t travel to Sheffield due to other commitments, responsibilities, or concerns about the COVID situation (that unfortunately does not seem to be going away!).
The meeting included updates from all nine BPD projects – BAC-STOP, BRIGIT, CALIBER, DeS-BL, Disease Suppressive Microbes, Future Oak, Pseudomonas-Prunus, Ralstonia Phage, and Xanthomonas Threats. This allowed us to appreciate the huge progress made by all teams, often under difficult situations. Using Slido, so that in-room and online participants had equal opportunity to contribute, each project talk was followed by a lively and engaging Q&A session.
Mariella Marzano (BPD Programme Coordination Team) led a session on cross-project stakeholder engagement. Participants then worked in teams to put together a plan for a workshop that might involve several (or even all) projects and be of interest to a number of stakeholder groups. Many great ideas were generated and after flash presentations we got to vote. A proposed workshop on rapid diagnostics for identifying plant diseases won the internal voting, but workshops on microbiome approaches for disease management were also popular.
Hybrid events need a different approach to the traditional style of poster displays which don’t work so well for online attendees. Our poster session included six traditional posters in the room in Sheffield and five video posters presented virtually on a Padlet board. All posters made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the progress made in their host projects.
One the second day, Debbie Harding (BBSRC) led a session exploring what the legacy of the BPD Programme might be. As an example of project legacy, Saskia Hogenhout shared outcomes from BRIGIT, showing us all the engagement activities that the project included. This session was a time for reflection and anticipation as we all considered what lasting contributions to knowledge and society we are hoping for by the end of the programme and in the years to come.
The Sheffield participants were well looked after by the staff at Halifax Hall, relishing the opportunities to get to know BPD colleagues over breaks and meals. Although the online attendees had fewer opportunities to network they particularly enjoyed hearing about all the projects, and felt well integrated into the meeting. At the end of the conference, the most common feedback request was for more opportunities to meet in person, or at least in a hybrid format, to continue to exchange ideas. Future Oak project lead James McDonald summed it up nicely; “I think it’s the face-to-face event that many of us needed. You could feel the positivity and energy in the room and many great things will come out of it.”
By Joana Vicente, BPD Coordination Team and Xanthomonas Threats, BRIGIT and Ralstonia Phage projects
