FAO assists and advises on food security and nutrition, forest health, fisheries and aquaculture, climate change, plant and animal pests and diseases, international food trade, organic agriculture, rural livelihoods, and much more. Overseeing and setting priorities for this work in Europe and Central Asia is the job of the FAO Regional Conference for Europe. Convening every two years in a different location, the Regional Conference is a complex undertaking for both the host country and FAO's team in the region. Goran Stavrik, who has played a coordinating role in three consecutive conferences, reflects on the many behind-the-scenes factors that make for a successful FAO Regional Conference.
What is most crucial in preparing a Regional Conference?
Most people would agree it's the content: preparing the agenda in consultation with our member countries, and developing the background papers for each of the policy and technical topics to be discussed. In my experience, though, practical and logistical preparations are equally important. It's a thousand tiny details that fit together to create a smooth-functioning environment where the delegates can work and debate without distraction.
What is the starting point on the logistics side?
One of the first and most important tasks is to select the venue. Not just any hotel or conference center will suffice, because this is a three-day conference involving up to 300 delegates and observers, debating in plenary with simultaneous interpretation in at least four different languages. Then there are side events and presentations taking place in smaller rooms during the breaks, meetings of delegations with FAO's Director-General, and scores of journalists, photographers and cameramen. For our recent Conference in Voronezh, the venue was designated well in advance and was really well suited to the event.
And next?
Registration is usually a delegate’s first point of contact, so we work hard to make the online experience easy, flexible, secure, and transparent. Registration sets in motion a whole series of other actions – for hotel booking, visa application, travel itinerary, ground transport on arrival, printed badge, and more. If we do our work well, the participants will arrive rested and in a good frame of mind to work.
In parallel, we are finalizing, translating, and posting all the background documents on the Regional Conference webpages – in English, French, Russian, and Spanish – and all this is reflected on a Conference mobile app. A series of advance communications go out to journalists in the host country and across the region, and we work on how the venue will be set up and dressed.
Finally, it's Regional Conference week.
The FAO team arrives a few days in advance, to oversee set-up: construction of the podium, installation of the mega-screen and cameras, positioning and hook-up of the interpreters' booths, unpacking and mounting the national flags, dressing the venue, testing the webcast connection, and briefing the volunteers.
Who are the volunteers and what do they do?
Typically these are university students in the city where the Conference is taking place. They are recruited by the host government to help at the Conference information desk, meet delegates at the airport, copy documents, staff the publications desk, monitor the local media for news about the Conference, and act as ushers and messengers in the plenary sessions. In Voronezh we had about 30 volunteers, all of them very competent and enthusiastic. It would be all but impossible to run a Regional Conference without them.