Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference

We worked with Yardhura Walani at the Australian National University to deliver the Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference from 31 March – Thursday 3 April 2025 at the Lowitja O’Donoghue Cultural Centre in Canberra. The conference marked ten years since the first Indigenous Data Sovereignty event was held in Australia. The conference was strongly attended by international delegates, with the first two days open to Indigenous delegates only.

The conference had one stream of content during the morning session and three breakout streams in the afternoons. We organised a welcome reception on the eve of the conference and a gala dinner on Wednesday 3 April 2025, all at the Cultural Centre. The conference had 260 delegates on day one and two and 415 delegates on day three.

We helped the team with end-to-end event management of the conference. We created an overarching design for the conference from commissioned artwork which flowed consistently throughout each touch point from the custom event microsite, an eDM marketing campaign, social media content, and onsite materials including conference bags, custom lanyards, notebooks, pens, digital signage and PowerPoint templates. We managed registrations and event enquiries through a dedicated event inbox and had complete financial management of the conference as well, managing income and revenue.

We developed a conference app which enabled delegates to view the program, speakers, sponsors, the cultural program and to provide feedback.

We managed the abstract process and speakers from end to end which included handling abstract submissions, confirming speaker attendance at the conference, briefing them of their requirements and handled each PowerPoint presentation on the day.

We engaged, briefed and managed suppliers onsite including catering from Bella's Feast, AV from Elite Event Technology, photographer and videographer Wolf Lab, weaving workshops from Culture on the Move, floristry for the conference days and gala dinner from Urban Jungle, and dancers and musicians.

We also managed sponsorship for the conference with 9 sponsors. This included liaising with all potential sponsors, handling their sponsorship benefits from start to finish, providing them with exhibition guides and supporting them with their exhibitions on the day. We also managed speaker and guest travel, arranging international and domestic flights and accommodation.