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Project Summaries

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Second Annual Field Meeting 2005

BLS conducted this 5-day meeting for the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The purpose of the conference was to share lessons learned in the implementation of PEPFAR activities (prevention, care, and treatment) and for representatives from Country and Core Teams to meet with other Country implementers to discuss best practices, current issues, and future planning and to include partners, especially local and new partners, to enhance sustainability of programs. The project required a high level of international coordination, cultural sensitivity, and adeptness for accommodating international attendees.

Below is a partial list of tasks that BLS coordinated with great success.

  • Providing international meeting management, including international participant and travel management and serving as liaison with U.S. Embassy and government agencies abroad
  • Conducting pre- and post-conference meetings, including contract negotiation, pre-conference planning group, and subcommittee meetings
  • Providing meeting management and coordination
  • Designing and preparing meeting materials including name badges, name tents, save-the-date letters, and folder labels
  • Designing and producing marketing materials (registration brochures, save-the-date electronic postcards, posters); and program book management
  • Designing and managing conference Web site
  • Determining fee structures and managing fee categories
  • Developing Web-based applications for online registration, abstract management, poster session management, concurrent session management, and summary reports
  • Coordinating and supporting documents and materials
  • Coordinating vendors for artwork and materials development (e.g., signage, binder covers)
  • Providing writer support
  • Coordinating food and beverage requirements including morning and afternoon breaks
  • Providing traditional meeting coordination such as site and agenda management, travel, audiovisual coordination, onsite support, reporting, and more

Internet Enabled Meeting
BLS coordinated a 4-day training session for a group of Federal employees using our Internet Enabled Meeting (IEM) system. The meeting was conducted on the Internet using a conference call for the audio portion of the meeting. The meeting included 30 Federal trainees and 5 Federal trainers located in 7 different states. Trainers used PowerPoint as well as Word, Excel, and PDF files to present information. BLS coordinated and facilitated all aspects of the meeting using our Web and Conference teams. Key areas of this project included pre-session training and orientation of all speakers and attendees on the use of the IEM system; working with the client to develop an agenda that was appropriate for Internet training; developing and formatting materials to be presented during the session; hosting, monitoring, and facilitating the live session; and using the Internet to collect and analyze feedback from the participants. The result, using an IEM, was a 30 percent reduction in the cost of the training session over prior years and an overwhelmingly positive response from the organizers and trainees.

International Disability Law Conference
BLS coordinated this 5-day conference for the Social Security Administration. This conference brought more than 120 people with disabilities from 20 different countries to the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. The project required an extremely high level of coordination, sensitivity, and adeptness for accommodating international attendees with disabilities that included deafness, blindness, and many other extensive physical challenges. Many of the participants did not speak English and several required personal assistance. Below is a partial list of tasks that BLS coordinated with great success.

  • Transporting participants from Washington-area airports and providing foreign language speaking escorts and personal attendants when necessary
  • Providing daily transportation to and from the Mayflower Hotel to other downtown hotels because the number of fully accessible rooms at the Mayflower could not accommodate the number of participants with disabilities
  • Providing onsite cash disbursement of travel reimbursements and stipends. (some of the receipts were denominated in foreign currency, which required on-the-spot foreign currency exchange)
  • Providing closed-caption television, simultaneous translation booths for five languages, and sign language interpreters
  • Providing conference materials in Braille, large print, and other alternative formats

Web-Based Library and Literature Search System
BLS has developed and continues to enhance a searchable, Web-based, bibliographic, full-text database system for the National Institutes of Health. The key tasks for this project are database design and implementation; document acquisition, cataloging, and documentation. The system is used to manage the publications produced by investigators working on three cohort studies, and it was designed to replace an inconvenient and inefficient paper-based system.

Conference Call Management
BLS developed a conference call management system to assist with coordinating and managing more than 40 conference calls per month for just one project. Call groups range from 5–25 participants and average 1.5 hours in length. BLS is responsible for maintaining a monthly calendar, scheduling calls, maintaining distribution lists, preparing and forwarding notifications to participants (domestic and international), securing technical writers to provide call summaries, and providing overall management and quality control support of the process.