Events & Conferences

The accreditation of events is focused on large or small groups of individuals learning from and with one another on a face-to-face basis. 

The CPD Standards Office assesses ‘events’ differently to ‘training courses’ and has two different accreditation categories for each. 

Training courses are typically F2F groups delivered in a classroom format with a teacher – student methodology. 

Events are similar – in that they are F2F gatherings – however this category accredits a wide range of events in different formats that are not in a classroom environment. These include:

Conferences

Are F2F events that run across a day, or more, and invite a large number of delegates. A conference could have 50 or 5000 people in attendance and is often structured with keynote speeches, seminars and presentation sessions. Many conferences have several ‘tracks’ where delegates have a range of sessions to choose from throughout the day.

• Length – conferences generally run from 1-4 days. It is unusual for them to be shorter than half a day or longer than 4 days. 
• Number of attendees – Conferences can have any number of attendees although usually they cover a specific area or industry and may have 100’s or 1000’s of attendees. 
• Location – There are many professional conference venues and exhibition centres in each country, and can sometimes take place at a large hotel. These venues often have a number of different areas or rooms for the attendees.  
• Number of speakers – These events can have any number of speakers that cover different areas related to the event theme.
• Communication Style – One-way communication of information to attendees
  
  

Lectures

Presentations on a subject by an academic expert / established speaker, typically hosted at universities or educational establishments, whereby participants have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. Lectures often cover theoretical material, scientific data and findings from academic research studies.

Seminars

Are a group of individuals that come together to learn from one or more speakers. These sessions tend to be more practical and skill-based topics, where the learning objectives are clear from the outset, and questions are encouraged during or at the end of each presentation.

Forums

large discussion groups, often with presentations from several speakers, focused on exploring a particular topic or theme.

Other events that could gain accreditation include:

• Roadshows
• Discussion groups
• Networking events
• Thought leadership events
  
  

Please note – we don’t consider this to be an exhaustive events list and would love to hear what other events you might be organising.