Transforming an In-prior Conference into a Massive Online Event to Celebrate the United Nation's World Creativity and Innovation Day amidst the COVID-19 Crises

Abstract

The University of Jyväskylä’s UNESCO Chairs and the Council for Creative Education-Finland decided to celebrate the United Nation’s World Creativity and Innovation Day in the form of a traditional, physical conference on 21 April 2020. During the last phases of preparations for the event, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly hit the world and the organisers needed to transform the traditional conference program into an online event with several innovative solutions. In this chapter, the conference organisers describe the theoretical and technical background of the online conference, which has started a new conference series at the University of Jyväskylä.

When it became clear that the conference could not be organised as a physical event, the organisers modified the conference’s topic to respond to the “creative and innovative” challenges in education worldwide amidst the COVID-19 crisis. In the case of the initially planned offline event, a few hundred participants were expected from several different countries. However, to the greatest surprise of the hosts, the same educational conference in the online setting attracted 12,220 unique visitors from more than 60 countries across five continents.