Generating a programme for a multidisciplinary conference is challenging and we are grateful for this comment. But we know that each year, we receive similar comments from various disciplines and therefore we try to look at the content over a number of prior years when generating the programme of the conference to ensure that there is a balance over a longer period of time, rather than just one conference in isolation. We will continue to endeavour trying to generate a balanced conference programme for all delegates.

For the 2025 conference, we undertook a large piece of work to attract new sponsors for the conference. This was greatly successful and has helped us to keep our costs down. However, the budget that device companies have for sponsorship of events is more limited than pharmaceutical industries. This, has prevented some groups from joining us. We agree this would be beneficial and we’ll continue to try and attract these sponsors to future conferences as we think it’ll be of great value to the delegation of the conference.

We are delighted that the hands-on sessions in the 2025 programme were well received. Logistically, it can be very difficult to run a large number of hands-on sessions because of the time they require.  When generating the programme, we have to balance the number of sessions that we can offer to cover the important pressing topics. We have generated a programme that covers a sufficient amount of topics to ensure the delegates are receiving good value for money and too many interactive sessions would result in reduced number of topics being covered and would make the conference less rewarding for delegates.

We have previously pursued the option of hiring a third room, but this would increase the cost of the conference and would have the knock-on effect of having to increase attendance fees. This balance has been something we constantly review and feedback from prior delegates seems to be that cost is a bigger determinant for them overall and therefore has been a major driver in our decision making.  We’re always open to considering alternatives in the future, and we’ll add interactive sessions as much as possible in the future if able.

The location for the Welsh Stroke Conference has been traditionally, at the All Nations Centre, Cardiff. Much of this has been down to cost rather than a preference by the organising committee. We try to deliver a conference of high standard but at low cost as we want to make sure that we’re as accessible as possible to all members of the stroke MDT from the lowest banding level to the highest. This is the reason that our delegate rates vary depending on seniority to ensure that we are not inaccessible to those with a lower income. As such, when choosing our venue, we perform an options appraisal each year and it is consistently cheaper to run the conference at the All Nation Centre than any other venue in Wales that has the capacity to deliver the conference on the dates that we have done so.

However, we would love to deliver the conference in different locations to improve accessibility and be fair to all members of the stroke workforce in Wales. If you are able to offer suggestions of venues in the North or West of Wales, that might be able to accommodate a conference of up to 300 delegates, please do get in contact with us and we will be delighted to pursue these options to see if they are viable.

It was previously possible in conferences, run a number of years ago for single day attendance to be purchased. Sadly, we are unable to offer this option any longer as we can give delegates the opportunity to access the missed content after the conference has closed.

It is not technically possible to provide the attendee at one day only the recordings for that one day. As such, if somebody were to attend for one day, paying for that single day, they would receive access to all content for the entire conference at a lower price than other delegates who’ve played full price for both days. We appreciate that the option of single attendance might seem logical, but due to us needing to be fair to those individuals paying full price and having access to the same educational content we will continue to only offer attendance for the whole conference rather than single day attendance. We will continue to review this going forward and if the situation changes, we can reconsider single day attendances.

The topic of food choices at the Welsh Stroke Conference has been raised on a number of occasions. We previously used to offer a hot food option which was the organising committee’s preference. However, it became apparent that as the conference grew the time it would take to serve delegates their food increased and feedback was then received that there was insufficient time for lunch, with many only having a few minutes to eat due to the queues that formed as a result of the hot buffet.

The decision was made to convert to food bags to ensure that everyone was able to receive nutrition and hydration in good time but naturally, the choices became limited. With these options, other venues offer different food options that we would like to pursue, but the cost incurred with these other venues would mean that attendance fee for the conference would have to be higher to absorb the increased cost.

It is important to us that we remain accessible to all stroke workforce members and therefore keeping the cost as low as possible is our overall priority. However, if the feedback about food choices continues to be negative in future years, we may have to make the decision to choose a different venue with better food choices but the cost of the conference as a whole would have to increase to compensate.

We are huge supporters of the Welsh language and welcome this feedback. In an effort to remain as accessible as possible, it is difficult to run sessions fully in Welsh when a significant number of delegates would not be able to understand the content. There would also be questions raised about why we aren’t delivering sessions in other languages. We will continue to try and encourage speakers to contribute with at least some phrases in Welsh and incorporate Welsh language as much as possible throughout.

We do agree that a stroke survivor who speaks Welsh would be a good addition, but we would have to ensure that individual also spoke English to ensure that all delegates were able to comprehend what was being said. This is something we can pursue and we thank you for the suggestion.

We will try to incorporate new research as much as possible, as we do every year, but one of the benefits of the Welsh Stroke Conference is providing a forum for those working hard in researching stroke within Wales to celebrate their achievements and the discoveries that they have made and we are proud to support these researchers in their efforts. It is important that the conference delivers a national up to date set of content and therefore we will again endeavour to incorporate this as we do each year.

We are very supportive of international speakers attending the conference to deliver content. However, we have to balance the experience for the delegates because in previous years we’ve had feedback that there were too many international speakers delivering content remotely and there are technical issues that can occur as a result of this format.

The cost incurred of us flying an international speaker to deliver content at the conference is also to be considered and these costs would have to be passed on to delegates in the form of increased attendance fees. We will continue to try and do so as much as we’re able though, because we agree that the input from these professionals is incredibly valuable to the delegation of the Welsh Stroke Conference.

It’s interesting that the feedback in prior years has been that people were preferentially asking for an earlier finish to enable them to travel home and arrive back to their place of residence earlier in the evening rather than starting late and therefore we need to consider the overall feedback across a number of years where it seems to have been better received the earlier finish on the second day of the conference and to start, as we have done on the first day. We will continue to review though and thank you for the consideration that travelling on the first day might need a slightly later start time.

We have opted to move towards a more ecological model by reducing our paper waste and carbon footprint by not printing copies of the program, we believe strongly in ensuring that we are environmentally responsible. We agree that it is helpful to have the content available and that is why we have this present on the day at key locations. It is also possible to view the program on a smartphone or other electronic device connected to the Internet via the website. So, at this current time, we would have no plans to increase the number of printed copies of the program that are available on the day.

We’ve adopted a model that is very similar to that for the UK Stroke Forum. The reason we’re doing so was to try and ensure that we spread the cost of the conference appropriately through different levels of seniority of attendees.

Overall, the majority of attendees seem satisfied with the current pricing model and therefore we will continue to set our attendance fees based upon this with a year-on-year increase based upon inflation, which reflects the increasing costs of the venues each year.
Depending on future feedback, we may review further.

Over many years we have tried different arrangements for displaying the posters. One of the major issues has been that often people don’t take the time to review the posters because they are too peripheral or not seen as prominent.

Therefore, the current arrangement has allowed a central gathering space for people to network, eat and drink. It also allows people to interact with the sponsors, which is vital for the ongoing efforts to keep costs down due to the sponsors making decisions about contributing to conference based upon gaining positive interactions with our delegates. The posters being more peripheral to this section of the room allows them to still be seen, interacted with and is a good balance in between the various factors we are considering.

We have considered whether posters could be displayed on certain days to enable greater prominence of each poster. However, that would mean that people only attending on one day would not see the benefit of the posters that they can’t see on the day that they do not attend.

We have, however, decided that we will pursue with our website designers the option of having the posters uploaded to the website for review and we’ll update more about this going into the 2026 conference if this is deemed financially viable.