One of the defining features of the Liberal Democrats is that we have a democratic conference with one member, one vote. We discuss and debate policy together and party officers and Parliamentarians are held to account.
In these extraordinary times, however, we are having to change the way we work as a party.
Conference will take place from 25th to 28th September
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has meant that we have had to cancel our physical conferences for Spring and Autumn 2020. That does not mean, however, that we have to suspend our internal democracy.
To that end, Autumn Conference will be taking place online this Autumn. We will have the same sort of sessions that we usually have and we hope to replicate as much of the conference experience as possible.
Conference will take place from 25th to 28th September. The exact timings will be confirmed once the Conference Committee has selected the agenda in mid-July.
We are delighted to have partnered with Hopin, a professional conferencing platform, to bring you our Autumn Conference. You can find out more about Hopin and how the online conference will look here. In order to access conference, you will need a computer, smart phone, or tablet. That’s all.
This video describes a generic Hopin event. For our Federal Conference, Hopin will be customised. You will see the usual party logo and colours, the terminology will be familiar because we will be using the terms, ‘fringe’, ’training’, ‘auditorium’ and ‘exhibition’ to describe the different parts of our conference. We have highlighted this video because we thought you would like an introduction to Hopin as early as possible. We will be running other training events to get you used to the system as conference approaches.
Hopin will recreate our auditorium virtually and it has a voting system that will allow us to hold the debates that we are used to.
Submit a motion for conference here: libdems.org.uk/submit-motions
There will be a virtual exhibition as well as training and fringe meetings.
We are presently calling for motions for conference. You can submit a motion in the usual way here: www.libdems.org.uk/submit-motions.The deadline is the same announced before, 1pm, 1st July 2020.
We are working hard to make sure that registration opens in the coming weeks.
We will also be taking bookings for virtual fringe meetings and exhibition stalls. If you would like to discuss that, please contact Wilma Robinson: Wilma.robinson@libdems.org.uk for commercial and charity bookings or Isabelle Pucher: Isabelle.pucher@libdems.org.uk for party bodies.
We are really excited about conference. This will be a new way to meet, debate and engage with each other. We hope to see you (virtually) in September!