These communication and knowledge exchange tools included guidebooks, bright yellow laser cut signage, CX branded helium filled balloons at each coffee house, coffee house map and the ‘focus point boards’ used in the Paper Exchange.
Conference delegates were given their own compact, personalised conference guidebook at the beginning of the two days. The books were attached to lanyards and the front cover was printed with the delegate’s name and affiliation, which meant that the guidebook doubled as a name badge.
The guidebooks were a tool that aimed to improve the knowledge exchange experience of the delegates by supplying useful information such as details of conference contributors, other delegates, programme and paper abstracts. Different coloured lanyards were used to indicate who was a member of CX and who was a paper author.
Two different coloured plastic tokens were clipped onto the guidebook lanyard before the conference as a way to group and direct each delegate to different coffee houses in Lancaster, where the tokens could then be exchanged for a drink or piece of cake, during the ‘Coffee House Discussions’ section of the conference.
Each delegate was given a map of the locations of the coffee houses just before they travelled into centre of Lancaster. Each coffee shop location was marked on the map and colour coded to correspond with a drink token, unique discussion theme and Twitter hashtag (both of which had been decided by all of the delegates minutes before the map was finalised and printed!).