Finding a long-term partner

Finding a long-term partner

The Wildlife Disease Association is an international scientific society that promotes healthy wildlife and ecosystems, biodiversity conservation, and environmentally sustainable solutions to One Health challenges. WDA, a non-profit with 1,600 members in 85 countries, has two full-time staff and relies massively on their passionate volunteers across their councils and committees.

Beginning in North America, WDA has expanded to include six Geographic Sections which have further connected members across the globe. These sections, Australasia, Nordic, European, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, each hold a seat on the WDA Council and undertake activities in their own geographic regions. Staying true to strategic and conference goals is key for the WDA, they’re dedicated to growing and sharing the body of knowledge pertaining to Wildlife Health Science.

With global reach and limited resources, in 2016 WDA needed to find a partner that provided them with flexibility from one event to the next regarding their software needs, an integrated scholarly event solution. That meant finding a platform for their conference chairs to use in both their own chapters and the annual meeting.

Building a partnership

Sharing knowledge on all areas of wildlife health is central to their mission. For WDA, knowledge of wildlife health is best achieved through rigorous science, recognition of other accumulated forms of knowledge (e.g. traditional, experiential, professional), and open and respectful debate. Passionate about wildlife health, WDA members hold these debates and knowledge sharing at their Annual International Meeting and Section conferences.

WDA was hoping to build a long-term partnership that enables them to share rigorous science and knowledge about wildlife health with their members. The first priority was to find a partner for the abstract management at their annual meeting. When Ex Ordo first came up as a solution the main thing that stood out was that it was a system that provided multiple uses as an integrated event solution. From there, Ex Ordo and its range of products were utilised in both the Annual Conference and some of the Biannual Section events due to its ease of use.

WDA understood that great conference content is built on solid peer review and Ex Ordo gave them tools to share knowledge and expertise in their way for members. It is connected to the easy-to-use registration and scheduling platform and enables them to efficiently schedule their conference content and events. The Ex Ordo mobile app which was used for the first time in 2019, has provided great success for WDA in terms of communicating in real-time with their conference delegates en masse. Finally, the events system helped them connect with the international community on a global scale. This is topped off by the Ex Ordo support team, while in a different time zone, the conference team knew they would have a detailed response to any issues waiting for them.

Member focused initiatives

Members are at the core of WDA’s focus, and they certainly take priority over their conference software solutions. The exceptional group of employees and volunteers run several impressive initiatives to contribute to the Wildlife health community through their events.

Early career researchers

An important focus is their early career members and students. For WDA, it’s key to showcase the next generation by enabling students to share their research, compete for awards, and make important connections, all of this is done to help them launch their careers. An entire day of the conference is devoted just to student presentations, emphasising the buy-in from the whole association. The presentations are a combination of verbal and posters and involve prestigious awards.

Opportunities for all

As costs go up for travel, food and hotels it becomes more challenging for those from lower income countries to attend the annual international conference. For WDA, ensuring that their conference is accessible to all, no matter where you are in the world is top of mind. A virtual and hybrid component has been used by WDA in the past few years to extend its reach. Global collaboration is important to WDA. Providing opportunities for engagement and knowledge sharing is important and Peri is very keen to have all attendees participate.

Engaging their community

Keeping the global view of their community does come at a cost. Peri and WDA plan to continue running hybrid events in the future with the biggest challenge being the cost of it. For them, they rely on their local hosts. Ex Ordo enables them to continue pushing to engage their community by making their conferences available to as many countries as possible with the use of features like the integrated event hub.

A future with Ex Ordo

With the Wildlife Disease Associations member-focused initiatives being a cornerstone to their success, the future (when it comes to conference software) remains on Ex Ordo. Which has enabled them to build their conference programme in the Ex Ordo system and then sync it to the mobile in one click of a button.

For conferences in 2025, work with Ex Ordo has been underway for some time with WDA firmly on top of its efforts. Peri and the team are already planning their 2026 meeting, and the organisers are keen to continue working with Ex Ordo, familiarity and ease of use are the key motivations. In 2027 WDA goes to Latin America, with Peri planning to continue sharing knowledge on Wildlife Diseases globally using Ex Ordo.