n a capital city where tourism is one of the main sources of income, you would have thought it would be easy to find a location for the 12th EBU General Assembly. However, conference rooms for over 200 people are few and far between, as are hotel restaurants that can cater for that many people. The final solution – the Lisbon Marriott Hotel – was a happy one in that it is handy for the airport and is used to hosting large events, but it was more expensive than we would have liked. In addition the Hotel was relatively obstacle-free and the fact the conference room, break-out rooms, restaurant and garden were all on the same floor meaning people could soon get their bearings. Rivalled only by the bar, the garden soon became a popular place to chat, as many delegates do not often get the opportunity to sit in the sunshine in February.
One of the main difficulties we faced was finding volunteers, even though the Hotel was just across the road from a major university. A number of delegates had asked for a sighted guide and we knew that we would rarely have more than eight volunteers or ACAPO staff on duty at any one time. It looked like the volunteers would be doing a fair amount of running. But the delegates soon showed that they were at home in this kind of event, capable of finding the various rooms and the food and drink, leaving the volunteers with little to do but watch people eat at times.
As the reader can imagine, organising a General Assembly takes a lot of time and ties up human resources. It was felt that we should try to provide some direct benefit to our members from our efforts, in addition to ensuring the delegates were well-received and the GA ran smoothly. This led to us running a Tech Fair alongside the main event, which meant that Portuguese visually impaired persons had the chance to see first-hand some of the latest devices designed with them in mind. Ten firms from nine countries accepted the challenge and brought to Lisbon established products such as screen magnifiers and braille embossers, along with prototype versions of devices that allow you to interpret your surroundings through either sound or haptic information. Despite the GA taking place over a holiday weekend – when getting away from Lisbon is the popular move – around 150 visually impaired people visited the Fair, including Portugal’s leading distributers of assistive technology.
It is important to ensure events like this reaffirm the capacities of visually impaired people, so when hiring musicians for the Gala Dinner the obvious step was to bring together three Portuguese visually impaired professional performers. Judging by the number of people who got up to dance, and the demands for an encore, we think we made the right choice.
Obviously, there were some hitches and glitches along the way, and now thinking back, a number of very small things might have been done better. But there is a global positive outcome we would like to stress for any future GA organisers: your organisation will be stronger after accomplishing this task, as you will be able to communicate more efficiently with blind and visually-impaired people in your own country about what the EBU is and what we all do together, and about the importance of working together alongside other European or worldwide national organizations of and for the blind. Besides that, you will gain a lot of experience in planning and organizing big events for the visually impaired community, thus boosting the attractiveness of your country as a destination for visually-impaired people, which might be relevant both for your organization and your community.