CPD & Association Events Explained: Tech, Trends, and EventAdvice
[Music] Hello everyone. Welcome back to event advice. We are crowdcoms. I am Will Custard. This is Matt Allen. Uh this is a series of videos where we just basically give loads of our massive knowledge on events. Right. You cocky bugger. So with that in mind we today we
are talking about CPD and particularly in the associations market. So CPD continuous or continuing professional development. Give us a little bit of a synopsis of what what that means what is it? So I think it can be called CPE as well. Okay. Um so continuous continuing professional development or uh continuing professional education. Um so
I think it might be different terminologies depending on where you are in the world or even in different types of organizations. It can be called different things. Um it's such a crucial part in membership communities, associations um and organizations to ensure that people have the knowledge, the appropriate knowledge and expertise to continue to do their roles. So so often in medical roles, I give you the example of my wife as a a s a veterinary surgeon. um she is required to make sure
that she is learning and understanding best practices. So many of those best practices are learned in a pra in in practice. So you learn from your peers but in a practice you have four or five people that you're learning from and you might watch videos and you'll look at what other people are doing but most of your knowledge comes from those people that you work with dayto-day. Now a great membership community which is essentially what an association is broadens that that depth of knowledge and gives you the opportunity to learn from and hear from many more voices. The importance of CPE or CPD is to verify that you have participated in, you have completed, you have obtained that knowledge that you can then take back to your workplace, your practice, your surgery and to impart that knowledge in other people. And we're not talking
about a nice to have, are we? We're talking about mandatory. It invalidates in many scenarios, it will invalidate your insurance not to have the necessary CPD or CPE completed each year. you are required to do it as part of your uh insurance in your operation in that particular role. Prove that you are continuing to educate yourself with the new things that are happening things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Um when we talk about that from an association point of view, we are we mainly talking about you know hybrid, virtual, in person. I guess it can be all of them. everything. Um, from a
technology perspective, our responsibility is to ensure that we can provide solutions, which I no doubt you'll come on to, provide solutions that enable the validation or verification that someone has participated and done it. Whether it be a webinar, whether it be an audience that's split between home and in person, or whether it's a purely inerson audience, we have a responsibility to, and let let's also be clear, we have two responsibilities. One to deliver that content to provide the delivery of that content in a way that makes it digestible and relatable and also provide engagement and then we we are absolutely responsible for ensuring that we tick that box of saying that they participated in completed. I'm always a bit torn. This will probably
going off tangent as always. If I've watched something, is that enough? Yeah, is it important that I've understood it? And that's where the detail in CBT comes, particularly from a webinar perspective, but it's the same if you're watching it in person, is just being there enough, and it shouldn't be. We should be challenging people to understand, to demonstrate that they've listened, to engage with, to demonstrate that they're participating. It it can't
in my opinion purely just it shouldn't be and it is at times it shouldn't just be a Will was checked into the session, Will was checked out of the session. Will sat on his mobile phone and I know we build apps but I don't want someone sitting on a mobile phone for the whole of a bloody session. That's a waste of time watch the speaker. Um but you could sit there and watch BBC news couldn't you for 30 minutes particularly you don't in my mind you don't deserve a CPD certification. So you're correct. How how do we provide mechanisms that enable you to sensor check that content as being absorbed as well? Yeah. Um particularly when we're talking from an accreditation point of view, you know that I guess there are different levels of CPD. So my my wife was a medical rep
for a long time and she used to have to go and do it and that really was just you know attendance. There was no test at the end of it and it wasn't life or well I guess when when you're talking about medicines and you're talking about medical devices and things like that it is life and death at the end of it if you don't understand it if you sold it wrong but like you say when you are talking about CPD you know professional accredititations then quite often in lots of other walks of life there will be exams at the end of it there will be you know you will need to prove that you have understood it to achieve that that accredititation it's very interesting I don't know if this is certainly the case but this is my a perception. It could be a wrong one. So if I'm giving misinformation, I apologize. It's just
an opinion that error of misinformation. So it's at least I'm caveating that I'm not certain. We'll fact check it later. We'll fact check. I'm not certain this is just an opinion.
There is often if you are in person, you can obtain more points more quickly attending an event. So, for example, with veterary, my wife could go to Birmingham each year or to Miami or wherever they do the annual congress and she can get pretty much all of her CPD certification in two days, two or three days. That will cover the year. She'll do other stuff, but she could get it in that in that timeline. because she's part-time, it's harder because she and she won't as a part-time employee, she won't get the rub of being said, of you're off to Miami because that's too much of an investment. That's for the full-time team. Um, don't be angry if you're watching this from the veteran, but nobody's watching this for the veterary practice. But anyway, um, so
you do it online. If you do it online, you have to provide a summary of everything you watch and it is blooming days worth of webinars and sum and and on demand videos that you go to and then you have to write a summary. My wife, she oft I mean it's normally doesn't have time unless we're on holiday. So it's on holiday that she's doing this.
Yep. And it, you know, can really eat into her the only time that she has available to where she isn't parenting or, you know, working um to do it and it takes longer because it's virtual. I don't know if that should be the case. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. Um right, let's
talk about um well, I mean obviously it it feeds into career growth as well. It's not just, you know, are you maintaining that level. It can be organizations can obviously need it for proof that you are ready to take the next step. You are it's almost you know
proof that you are capable. Well yeah you you you need to know something to implement it and do it. In case an example is your team if you if you're looking at cor career progression then we look at qualification that facilitate it and it's the same in these membership communities. There are people that want to reach the next milestone or step professionally but you need to have the knowledge to be able to apply in the correct way. Are association events you know unique in terms of delivering CPD events or is it what is it broader than that? Uh I think look associations are corporate professional membership communities. Um there are lots of membership communities that don't aren't classified as associations. Um and what we're finding
traditionally in business that there's a a huge overlap in terms of the way that we do things. The best practices that the association communities have been implementing for years and now actually coming back into the corporate world. So we want to make sure that we have a community that collaborate because we understand that the more voices are better than one. We want to make sure that people are heard and listened to on a more regular basis. So we create a technology that facilitates that. And so
actually I think they're not necessarily unique anymore because I think corporate world are are actually replicating a lot of those kind of membership practices that we've seen in associations for you know decades. Well, I mean even we we use it ourselves, don't we? When we, you know, we are training our staff on different features and if you do certain modules within our training, you become a bit of, you know, an expert in the badging or the kiosks or the registration or whatever, then you know, you can get a we know which staff have done those modules who are experts in it and and can kind of advance themselves. So, you can use it in all sorts of different scenar. Yeah, we we definitely do it as a way of it's that carrot and stick, isn't it? You get rewards for doing it. So, there's incentives and
competition element linked to gamification doing things. Um, and there's also like the certification badge element, but there's also the requirement of it. So, quite often with what we're positioning to our team, it might be a GDPR update or an ISO 27,01 update where we need everyone to be adhering to the same policies. And I need to be able to confirm that every single member of the team has watched it. So having mechanisms where we can look at the webinar and say Maline watched for 33 minutes and completed the survey that demonstrates he understood it. Will Custard only watched for 5
minutes. Come on Will. Yeah. You might have passed the test, but you only watched it for 5 minutes. Donna chases me regular. Skip skip skippity r straight to the survey. Um so we need to have that that kind of granular information was where we come in, isn't it? It's um you know these things have been happening for years and years and years without technology particularly getting involved you know they are writing it down on a sheet you're getting a certificate in your post you know it's being done offline where we come into it is obviously and we'll talk about actually the the technology for the certification that we can bring in but in terms of building a community making it easy to achieve those things you know your wife on holiday maybe not having to go here there and everywhere and having a notepad and things like that. Being able to do all those things
online, surveys, polls, making sure you know gamification, making it engaging and fun is where we can really make a difference. So much of it is about accessibility of information um and inclusivity of information. Um it's having things readily available that you can easily complete to do the things that you need to do. Yeah. Donna, for example, who does our video, she doesn't want to have to do 30 presentations to people when they can make it. Yeah. She
wants to record it and she wants to be able to promote it and she wants to be able to see who's watched it when they've watched it and have leaderboards that determine the successful outcomes of people doing it. Let's talk about how our technology can help in terms of, you know, automatic CPD, certificate design, gamification, communities and things like that. What are we doing in to help it? Should we flip this on? I was gonna I was I was gonna carry on. I could see your hesitation. You're like, carry on engaging. Shall I just answer it myself?
You should just start because you know better than me, don't you? So, we we're revising our C. Let's do this. We're doing some major changes to our CPD certification and approach on the platform at the moment. Right at the moment. Would you mind explaining what we're doing? Yes. Yes. I wouldn't mind. Okay. Come on. No, I wouldn't mind explaining. So, uh, we've known and we've had ambitions to make this a lot easier to implement, CPD, a lot easier to implement for people for a long time and we've had these this kind of going in the back of our minds and now we are we've we've we've prioritized it in the road map to actually get this done. So, what we are
doing and will come out in May. Um, so that's May 2025, just in case you're watching this as an old video. Um, is we with our, you know, the the pattern that we've got is to give people Wizzywig tools to design pages, to design registration forms, to design badges, drag and drop, no code, nice and easy. We see that pattern is exactly the same for a certificate. So we can we will be able to completely and utterly replicate any sort of certificate that you would have had offline. People can obviously still post those out in cardboard form if they you know nice paper stock form if they want to. But
the the print at home, get your certificate, prove that you've done it route, you'll be able to replicate what your real life certificate looks like or you'll be able to design a brand new one if you want to and then send that off as a PDF to your printer. So you can actually that be your style. I love the builder for the certification. It is so slick. It'll be nice. So it'll be
obviously there's in terms of certification, you're looking at a lot of personalization. So you're looking at a lot of merge tags, merge fields into you know pulling names in, pulling job titles in, pulling um actual different modules. So we'll have a big library of different certificates that you can design. So you unlimited number of
points I can't remember that being so the the clever bit that it is obviously going to be what triggers that certificate to happen. What we don't want to do is just give you a certificate designer. We want to put data on the back of it on, you know, and give you triggers, what we call triggers to activate that to be automatically sent to people when they meet a threshold. Threshold. Yeah.
Clever. So, it's, you know, that could be anything. So, it could be filling in a survey to prove you've done it and getting that survey correct. It could be um scanning a QR code. It could be having your attendance, your badge code tracked in tracked in, checked in, checked out. Could you just do check in?
Because sometimes people just want to check them in. They don't have enough stuff to check them out. You can just do check in or you could you could do what we're building is the the sort of time. Yeah. You need to be in a session for a certain amount of time. Sometimes that's
a requirement. Yeah. Things that will come slightly later than the first version is things like we know how for virtual events we will know how long someone watched something for. So you could add that you will be able to add a series of triggers. So it can't it doesn't it to one thing has to happen to start with it will be one thing. Yeah.
But shortly afterwards it will be you can build up. So, you have to um you have to have scored at least 100 points in gamification. That's what I was going to ask you. So, you have to have gone and points found information. Prove that you know the information. That's cool. You need to have attended sessions for a certain amount of time. Yeah. You need
to have um uh you need to have completed a survey, a feedback survey at the end of the session. So it could it could be lot a series of things and then automatically once that's triggered you will get the email that says congratulations you've achieved your certificate here is your certificate as a PDF attachment which you can print at home if you want to. Yeah. And like I said you could you could also receive a fancier one. So you can have surveys or feedback associated with abstracts. So that number of abstracts that they've reviewed or Yeah. So we can uh we will
bring be bringing online the sort of page view element to it. The sort of you know what did you what was your activity what was your behaviors okay throughout the event and the other thing that we will add to it as well is just a manual send out. Yep. Well a couple of things actually. So you don't have to do the trigger based thing. So if you wanted to do something slightly more complex that we can't achieve initially, you can just put those people into a group and send everyone the certificate after you just create the email template using your template design, match it across from previous emails. Yeah. And what we've learned from previous functionality that we've got is particularly when around email and junk boxes and you know this it's it's a complicated beast sending an email to someone. Um so you will be able
to download that certificate as an organizer and send it to them a different way if you wanted to or you know um or get every individual certificate as and when just one by one send it to them again. Sounds good. So there's lots of lots of things we are doing to aid it and that will uh whenever we do something first of all it is the first step in what is usually a quite a long road map of making it as good as possible. Yeah it changes. gather the feedback from people. We've
we've already got a lot of feedback from people along the development cycle. We'll get it out there. We'll talk to people, get them using it, get their feedback, change it, amend it, make it perfect. So, we're excited about it. It's a nice fe it's going to be a nice feature, a nice addition to what we're doing.
Um, okay. So we we've we've covered this a little bit earlier, but the the sort of examples of CPD activities in terms of event types, so webinar series, workshops, online courses, conferences, that sort of thing. Does that pretty much cover what we're talking about when we say CPD activities? Yeah, I mean it's across all of those formats. So what
were the formats again? conferences, conferences, webinars, workshops, online courses. Yeah, I mean that that ticks that ticks off all the boxes. Um I think what you're finding is that often now rather than being all of the CBD CPD associated with a single conference where you get all your membership community. It is going to be a combination of all. It's about creating a community that can continue to collaborate in between the inperson conferences. And when I talk
about that echoing what we're seeing in corporate or corporate copying the the kind of membership association, that's exactly what we're seeing. An event app that turns into a community that enables webinars which has that continuous conversations throughout the year. Um, let's brainstorm a couple of things that you might be able to use CPD for that maybe, you know, obviously event organizers are going to be watching this and a, you know, the association market will resonate with lots of people, but out maybe slightly outside of the box, I guess academia, so universities, colleges, open days, things like that. So, attendance like that. Yeah. Yeah, I
mean training and education L & D platforms are using this type of thing on a regular basis for some of the people in our market. So um you know those who perhaps know a lot about event technology want to and they've got communities they've got membership communities within our platform might want to think about you know adding in some sort of certification well along the way. We want to we want to for our community. Yeah. um any community. People like getting something back. Yeah. And when they do anything with us,
when they get something, it's customized and it's personable and it feels special. And it's the same with those certificates. They look bloody fabulous. And people like getting things like that. I quite like the badges as well as certificates. I would like to be able to have a badge and then you can promote that badge and you can say, "Look at me, how wonderful I am." And creating those assets. Traditional gamification, right?
It's it's um that little dopamine hit of I've achieved something. I've got something to prove. I've got something to prove that I you know hit that milestone. I mean it probably you like it so much because you were you were a swimmer as a as a young man. I've got all my badges badges all over your shorts for all your Did we get them for gym as well? You did used to get them for in primary school you used to get Was it Coca-Cola? No, it might I don't think it was Coca-Cola. That was the Bobby Charlton Soccer School, I think.
What was one where Sharon Davies came in? Do you remember her coming? Super schools. Super schools. Blime me. I had a picture of me sat on Sharon Davies lap. My dad was so jealous. Well, I was I remember that so well because I think we were about six or seven. Well, perhaps a little bit older. Yeah, maybe.
I was too scared to sit on Sharon Davis's lap, so I didn't have the photo. I wasn't. I think I got one with Daley Thompson now, so he didn't scare me as much as Sharon D. It was the year before or after we had Daily Daily Tom. Isn't it amazing that you had back then like the these guys were just absolute superheroes? Like Sharon Davis cuz I was a swimmer. She was like a a superhero to
me like literally a this goddess. Yeah. Of like sporting goddess coming to our school. Daily afraid of her. I think that's why I was scared to not scared of Daily. But she got perhaps got a nicer
face. Perhaps he had a different energy. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. Um, where were we? I mean, that proves that I remember the badges. I remember and I know people aren't going to send out. Look, we do not have technology to give you an embroidered badge with your CPD. Get on with it. But, um, I have designed them. Do you
know I I nearly for our staff to have actual physical badges and very they had to wear on their crowd when they got very very keen actually. No the some of the t-shirts have badges on the sleeves and we were thinking actually we could we don't need to get embroidered stick on badges but that would be more fun like scout badges. Yeah, but you could we could have a series of t-shirts with so a mean who goes outside could have his on-site hero CMS hero perhaps all of his badges. Let's be honest. A mean would have every
badge. I mean, yeah, absolutely. A lot of our guys would have a lot of badges. You'd almost have to have long sleeve t-shirts because you're it's like scouts. So, you put them down your down
your sleeve. Could we wear the scarf toggle? A waggle. And is it waggle? I don't know. It's a waggle. sixes and dib dib dib and all of that. I remember I lasted about two weeks in scouts. Well,
you can see that accreditation and CPD. It's not just for associations. It's for life. If you run a scout group and you wanted to do digital badges, we don't have any scouting groups as clients running events, but if you wanted to do it dig, they probably do do it digitally. Yeah, they probably do. Yeah. Um and you know, you've got Duke
of Edinburgh, things like that. There is there is tons of things where you get a badge or a certificate at the end of it. Yeah, people love certificates.
So, okay, that's I mean, you can tell that we love CPD. It's why we've finally built the I found my record of achievement the other day with my like GCSE and all all the leaflets, all the certificates, like all my gym, swimming, like football, all everything all in this one. I was explaining to my team the other day what a national record of achievement was. Yeah. So, because I think it's I think they stopped giving those folders out. Beautiful. Shortly after ours, so I know I know exactly where my wife's national record of achievement is. It's got all of her CBD in. Yeah. All of her um pharmaceutical
industry certificates are in there. Yeah. I mean it it does beg the question, why are you still using your national record of achievement as an adult? Mine stop mine did stop at 16. Yeah. You know, she's not taking Oh, she
probably does take it to interview. I'm not surprised that she's done it though. No, you know, you know that she probably she worships that that burgundy folder. Um I actually looked to see if you could buy one cuz they're quite they're quite cool from a retro point of view. They're quite cool now. Yeah. And I think that
you know some of the things that government do are obviously questionable but that sort of thing for kids. We might find that that comes back physical. Yeah. The physical element of it. Yeah. I can't remember what country it is that also some of these traditions that need to come back. It's like the when you have a baby and you'd get a Moses basket, you'd get formula, you'd get um you know blankets and your ba baby outfits. So that you started and is
like kind of that kind of national initiative just fabulous start off point. I mean my children uh we're we're getting told to actually get back on subject. My children actually um were the generation that got a trust fund given to them by the government. So they've now they're all 18 20 1920. My kids they can now access the money that the government gave them when they were um born. Did that must have stopped with because it stopped in Toby doesn't have it. So my youngest Toby is the same age
as my Rosie 2011. I think it stopped in 20 2009 something like that probably. Typical. It's typical. You missed it. Yeah. Um you were supposed to put money into the trust fund. We've got a savings account separate, but it does it was a nice little sort of 800 quid now for them to to to kind of use whatever they want. Anyway, yeah. a quarter of a year
of car insurance for them. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Um right then. So
um I mean we've talked about how it's integrated into our technology. Um it simplifies the delivery because obviously a lot of these people traditionally have been doing offline, haven't they? Yeah. Well, yeah, they will have done a lot of it offline in terms of certification. used to do. It's the same with like that kind
of member community voting and uh um weighted voting, you know, general meeting voting. It's that type of thing that would traditionally have all been done offline and actually now we can really simplify it. Yeah. Uh for people doing and I guess using I mean what we've seen is people gathering using our tool to gather that information but then not having the final piece of the certificate and the trigger being in our platform. The result. Yeah, the outcome. Lovely. Okay.
Um, future trends for CPD and associations. I mean, I touched on, you know, those additional us being a platform that you could use for learning and development. I guess I guess it's us just pushing the pushing the functionality that exists for communities to do more. Yeah. you know longer exams you know results at the end of a survey what about more engagement do you not think it's a it will be in relation to demonstrating an understanding of the content so I personally feel it will be more kind of a AI products where you can potentially do a collaborative piece of work with a group and then it will demonstrate that everyone within that group has understood it for certification or you'll take a quick snip snapshot of a video of a review of what you've done. It will then take those outcomes and generate the certification. I think it will be valid. It'll be validation of the retention of information rather than just having it delivered to you. That
will be the innovation. I mean that's how my son uses AI is to help him revise. Can you generate me a quiz based on based on this content that I can revise from? and it will give a series of questions back to them which he can then backwards and forwards will he have to give the awarding the like the national awarding body so if it's a Oxford yeah I mean he yes he can either yeah he can so it will actually troll yeah clever so help me revise yeah absolutely okay I think we have covered pretty much everything and a bit more for CP lots of very useless stuff in there super schools all sorts so thank you very much for joining us again. Please remember to like and subscribe if you can. Um, but for now, I think probably we will see you next time hopefully. Goodbye. [Music]
2025-05-16 09:41
