Dear Friends,
What a conference! Not only was this the first in-person nationwide event for the OA in four years, but also the first conference for many delegates and staff. I hope you have enjoyed hearing how to make the most of your conference experience from our communications this week.
When I was asked to lead the web team in January, I never imagined the long and winding road ahead. This site was designed from scratch in just 7 months by our team with one primary goal: to ensure information was easily accessible to all ahead of and through the conference. I am so proud of how our team achieved this goal, even as deadlines got tighter and the volume of requests increased as the conference approached.
And it paid off – nearly 53K page views by 10K unique visitors as they experienced our organization’s most advanced event site ever created. I could not have asked for a better team to make this achievement possible. Neil and Lucas, thank you for publishing content quickly and cheerfully with impossible timelines. Cam, thank you for your dedication to powering the streaming presence on the website. Eric, thank you for your support backed by years of advising the OA web presence made my life so much easier this week. And Jason, thank you so much for your unwavering support in every stage of development over the past few months. I learned so much from your gentle yet experienced advice, and I truly could not have asked for a better mentor.
Delegates and staff, if you are interested in making an impact on the organization beyond the conference, I highly recommend you check out the OA volunteer board to see how your skills can support the year-round communications team.
At one point it felt like our Slack mentions would never stop, but now that they have, many congratulations are in order to my 77 communications team colleagues. I will forever treasure this committee’s impact and the friendships forged along the way.
Sincerely,
Ben Bishop