Feedback and Presentations from the Second Annual Pathways to Prosperity Conference
By all counts, the second annual Pathways to Prosperity National Conference held in November 2014 was a success, with 250 delegates, engaging presentations, and lively discussion over the course of two days. The conference included six plenary sessions, 11 workshops and roundtables, and a poster session. Attendees included service providers and representatives of regional and national organizations, representatives of Local Immigration Partnerships and Réseaux en immigration francophone, university and college faculty and staff, graduate students, and government representatives.
Organization of such a large conference is not possible without dedicated staff and volunteers, especially because all the work was done in-house, including management of administrative and logistical details, preparation of conference materials, registration, filming, and the entire process of securing and organizing the venue. Our conference committee and session chairs also worked hard to arrange interesting, timely, and engaging sessions. It was thus extremely gratifying to hear from participants that their efforts were appreciated and the conference was a significant success.
According to the evaluation survey, overall the conference was very interesting, useful, presented new information, covered a good range of topics, and had good quality discussion, with mean ratings above 5.6 on a 7-point scale for all of these evaluations. In addition, all of the plenary sessions received mean ratings above 5.4 on the 7-point scale, as did the majority of the workshops and roundtables. The evening poster session and reception were also rated highly, with mean ratings above 5.6. Comments were also interesting, with a range of suggestions that we will try to incorporate in next year’s conference, particularly the suggestion that we provide additional time for networking and limit the number of sessions per day. We thank respondents for taking the time to provide this feedback. Of note, the majority of participants indicated that they are very likely to attend future Pathways to Prosperity conferences, with a mean likelihood rating of 5.9 on the 7-point scale, and 88% of respondents providing scores above the scale midpoint.
The Powerpoint presentations and poster presentations from the 2014 conference are now available in the Library here. The videos of the plenary sessions will be available in the same location in the coming weeks.