FWD50 may be months away. But our society is still confronting a once-in-a-generation health crisis that is disrupting every facet of modern life. The safety of our attendees, our speakers, and our team are our first priority.

Due to the restrictions in place this past November, FWD50 2020 was a purely virtual conference. We’ve spent the last few months planning all kinds of unexpected experiences to celebrate being together as a community again. We were hoping to hold a hybrid event with dynamic activities between in-person attendees and virtual attendees, but we’re going to have to shelve those plans: With the uncertainty of new COVID variants, and for the sake and safety of our community at home and faculty abroad, we’re going to run this year’s annual event in an exclusively virtual format.

We’ll miss seeing familiar faces and making new friends, the chance conversations in hallways and queues, the back-of-napkin insights and whispered truths. And we’ll do everything we can to keep that alive online.

For Canadian Federal employees, FWD50 has been deemed as training by the government-wide functional community lead (in this case, the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) for IM/IT-related large information-sharing or learning sessions) on September 15, 2017, as posted on the government of Canada internal GCpedia site Conference versus training: Large information-sharing or learning sessions. This is in keeping with the Guide to Travel, Hospitality, Conference and Event Expenditures.

In 2020, we launched the Regional Access Program, which welcomed nearly 80 regional governments around the world absolutely free of charge. For the second year in a row, we are offering two general virtual conference passes to the first two applications from any municipal, territorial, provincial, or state government! Claim your regional pass now.

We also offer discounts to government groups who buy tickets in bulk (starting at 5 tickets). If you’re part of a municipal, state, provincial or national government that wants to purchase group tickets, contact us.

The short answer is no. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Sharing undermines trust. Across all the events we operate, we do many things attendees love—based on the information we collect during the registration process. If our audience isn’t really who they say they are, a whole portion of the event experience is compromised and falsified. We focus on real interactions and genuine learning among the people who are supposed to be in the room.
• Sharing ruins interactions. Not being able to trust that someone is who they claim to be breaks networking, contact sharing, and meeting new people—one of the main reasons for conferences. Attendees must be able to greet someone based on their name, role, and company with certainty.
• Sharing puts people at risk. Pass sharing makes it impossible to verify identity, online or off. Incorrect identity makes it impossible to enforce behavior during the event and violations to our code of conduct. For legal reasons, pass sharing is not permitted.
• Sharing leads to privacy violations. If person A gives a badge to person B, who signs person A up for a mailing list or opts in for a newsletter, without person A’s consent, that has important legal consequences for GDPR, CASL, and other privacy legislation based on opt-in rules and may expose FWD50 and its partners to legal action.
• If you share your pass, we won’t be able to run future events. We produce a tremendous amount of valuable content with excellent production and an emphasis on accessibility. Tickets pay for this. Our prices, and business model, assume a single person per pass. This is even more true for virtual events with thin margins that run across an entire week.

Contact us and let us know what group you’re with, and we’ll put you in touch with the group ticket buyer. They can purchase an additional ticket for their group at their group rate on your behalf.

Yes! We’re committed to making the event accessible to all those who want to have a voice. With that in mind, here are some other ways to get involved:

• You can volunteer to help out, and get a free pass in return.
• If you’re with the media and want to cover the event, we have a limited number of media access passes we can offer.
• We are offering two general virtual conference passes to the first two applications from any municipal, territorial, provincial, or state government! Claim your regional pass now.
• You can partner with us, help us to spread the word and share promotions, and get discounted passes for some of your organization’s members in return.

Videos and slides are available to all 2020 attendees on the FWD50 2020 website.

Setting up your account: Find out how to set up your account and view all sessions here.

Need help? If something isn’t working the way it should, or you need help, mail support@fwd50.com.

Want to buy a content pass? If you couldn’t attend FWD50 2020, don’t worry! You can still buy a pass to access all the amazing talks. Mail us at community@fwd50.com and we’ll let you know about pricing—as a Canadian Federal Government employee you might be eligible for a free pass—and take care of creating your account.

Did we miss something? Please let us know; we’ll do our best to consider every request fairly and quickly.