Apollonia: Technopolis provides meeting services that adapt to our needs
The Finnish Dental Society Apollonia provides dental further education, organizes courses, and lectures in dentistry and sponsors dental research. Technopolis provides meeting rooms and services that match Apollonia’s training needs.
Challenge
Apollonia organizes diverse courses, lectures, and training events, for which they need modern and adaptable facilities. The facilities must support professionally organized webinars and hybrid events.
Solution
For Apollonia’s customers, it is important that the facilities are centrally located and large enough. On lecture days, reception services and catering play an important role as well. The modern meeting rooms and high-quality services offered by Technopolis have succeeded in meeting Apollonia’s needs.
Apollonia’s Education Coordinator Milla Tanskanen coordinates the practical arrangements for the courses planned by Apollonia’s Education Committee comprised of dentists.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we mainly organized lecture courses; webinars were still a thing of the future. However, during the first COVID spring, basically all the planned courses were converted into webinars,” Milla says.
Cooperation starts
The cooperation between Technopolis and Apollonia began in 2016, and one major event that has solidified the cooperation was the 2017 anniversary of Apollonia. During the anniversary year, events were held in several cities in Finland.
The anniversary educational events also mark Apollonia’s first hybrid event: educational events were streamed from Helsinki to other locations so that participants could participate in the event from their respective locations.
“Since the anniversary events, we had been contemplating streaming the courses but, at the time, we did not go through with it. The challenge here is security: we must ensure that unauthorized people cannot have access to the courses or distribute the material,” Milla explains.
The cooperation so far has mainly involved lecture courses and webinars. Hybrid events will be a new endeavor for Apollonia, and they will also influence costs. The first hybrid events are promised for this fall.
Technopolis Ruoholahti meets our needs
“For us, Technopolis Ruoholahti campus in Helsinki is ideally located and easily accessible. It has modern and spacious meeting rooms, and everything works exactly as it should. On lecture days, the reception services play an important role in providing support services for the lecturer: the friendly staff is always ready to help. The lobby team never disappoints; in the morning, tea and coffee are served to the participants. Catering plays a surprisingly important role in our courses and can leave a good impression,” Milla says.
“Seminar room Mill in Ruoholahti campus is especially good, as there are several screens, which makes it easy to follow the presentation. The room is also suitable for our courses, which usually have about 30 to 40 participants. There are enough power sockets and technical support is always available,” Milla explains.
Technopolis organizes the events with its partner, Stremia, an organizer of remote events. With the technology and other facilities in place, cooperation with Stremia is smooth and seamless.
“Furthermore, we have been extremely happy to work with Marita Tainio, Technopolis’ Conference Services Sales Manager. There is always something that crops up at the last minute, but Marita never fails to sort everything out!” '
Events in the future
Apollonia has yet to decide which courses they will be organizing in the future. Will it be lecture courses, webinars, or hybrid courses?
“When it comes to webinars, we have received very good feedback from participants, who feel that remote participation is extremely convenient. The hybrid model is also very good in terms of reaching participants, especially those who might not otherwise attend,” Milla concludes.
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The Finnish Dental Society Apollonia is a scientific association founded in 1892. Apollonia’s membership today comprises more than 6,000 dentist and dental students. Apollonia provides continuing education in dentistry, supports dental research, drafts dental current care guidelines, produces, and coordinates scientific content for the Finnish Dental Journal and disseminates research-based information.