Young Member Engagement Program at the SPE Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition
Success achieved
A young member engagement programme brings together 2025 members from 50 countries, while being run with the help of 417 volunteers recruited through a new system.
- Website
- https://www.atce.org
- Project dates
November 2016 – December 2017
Project team
- Frances van Klaveren, Regional Activities Manager, Eastern Hemisphere
- James Whitaker, Global Young Members Programs Specialist
Tools & Systems
- SPE Connect (hosted by Higher Logic) – a member forum to promote the event and solicit ideas for content.
- Global volunteer platform (hosted by Higher Logic) to recruit volunteers matched to the roles by their skills and experience.
- Social media channels to create buzz ahead and at the event (live stream of PetroBowl final was done through Facebook Live).
- Marketo – a marketing email tool for email campaigns was used for the global email campaign for ATCE.
- Informz – a marketing email tool provided by SPEI to the regional Sections and Student Chapters to promote directly to their regional members.
- Videos – a dedicated playlist for ATCE 2017 was created to house some of the videos shot on site and in the lead up.
- SurveyGizmo for sending out post event feedback surveys.
Introduction
SPE’s Annual Conference (ATCE) attracts in the region of 8000 delegates, amongst which are the major players in the oil and gas industry, and includes around 400 technical presentations and almost 400 exhibitors. Thus for our student members (which make up around 45% of the total membership), such a large event can be somewhat overwhelming.
SPE has a Young Member Engagement Committee which specifically focuses on activities and services for young members, and together with the Young Member Programs Team (based in the London office), an exciting program of activities was put together especially for our Student and Young Professional Members (members of the age of 35 or younger) .
The program included several activities, each with separate goals, including:
- To provide networking opportunities for young members from across the world.
- To provide young members with career advice and support during a difficult time in the industry and high competition for jobs.
- Provide young members with soft skills to equip them better in their professional careers.
- To provide international recognition and exposure through student competitions and awards.
- To provide a platform for educational development of young members through sharing technical knowledge.
- To provide young members with leadership skills to empower them to successfully run regional groups.
- To provide volunteer opportunities for Young Professional and more Senior Professional members to contribute to student development.
- To promote, support and encourage participation in charitable, education, humanitarian and social community services not related to the industry.
Discovery
Ahead of the annual event, a global survey was conducted amongst young members. The survey received around 1500 responses and the outcome helped shape the program. One of the overarching themes was the need for career advice and support during the downturn in the industry. The Career Pathway Fair, which was held as part of the Young Member Program, was first trailed in a smaller setting a year prior and following the success it was expanded to be included in the annual event. It was also for the first time opened up to non-students, to support professional members who have found themselves without a job and/or needing to make a career switch.
Furthermore we firmly believe in member generated content, thus we worked closely with our Young Member Engagement Committee in the year leading up to the event, to put forward ideas for the content and structure of the sessions. The committee is made up of 15 individuals from across the globe, who represent and advocate for SPE’s growing young membership.
SPEI has 168,000 members across 143 countries which are grouped into 198 Sections and 368 Student Chapters. Thus a lot of the member activity happens on a regional level. Each year all Sections and Student Chapters are asked to provide SPEI with an annual report containing details about the types of activities they organize on a regional level and their needs as a group. Staff review all these reports to draw conclusions on the needs of our membership and the types of activities that benefit our members most. This information is also used to feed into the program for the annual event.
We also solicited program ideas as part of a conversation thread in our members-only discussion forum, SPE Connect.
Objectives
- To attract an international audience of young members with representation from all major continents
- To increase overall number of young members participating in young member programs
- To use the newly launched volunteer platform to recruit an international group of volunteers to participate in young member programs
- Increase global representation for the PetroBowl competition
- To provide a program more tailored to career support and soft skill development
- To reduce expenditure of overall cost of Young Member programs to accommodate a lower forecast of sponsorship revenue for ATCE
Timeline
November 2016
- Program development: Young Member survey is conducted to identify needs and elicit suggestions for program focus. Young Member Engagement Committee starts discussing ideas. Program suggestion are elicited through the members’ forum. (All)
December 2016
- Draft program agreed. (All)
January 2017
- Preliminary budget is put together. (All)
March 2017
- Petrobowl question submission for the final opened and advertised through volunteer portal. (PetroBowl)
- Conference centre room booking forms submitted to Dallas events team, including preliminary catering and AV details. (All)
April 2017
- Confirm details for YM programs for conference preview publication. (All)
May 2017
- Regional SPC winners contacted and asked to confirm travel details. Work with travel agency to start booking flights and visas for students globally. (Student Paper Contest)
- Volunteer opportunities are advertised through the volunteer portal, all Section leaders are notified. (All)
June 2017
- Program for Communication skills workshop announced and students invited to register. (Communication skills workshop)
- Put in request for President of Executive Officer appearance. (All)
July 2017
- Facilitator confirmed for the Student Meet and Greet and draft program and activities reviewed. (Student Meet and Greet)
- Confirm requirements for photography. (All)
- Review details for YM programs for second conference preview publication. (All)
August 2017
- All student travel arrangements and hotel requirements confirmed six weeks prior to travel. (Student Paper Contest)
- Program and activities for communication skills workshop confirmed. (Communication skills workshop)
- Provision of on-site materials ordered through Dallas events team. (All)
September 2017
- Plaques and awards ordered. (Student Paper Contest and PetroBowl)
- General preparations including packing and shipping of materials, printed materials including certificates, program handouts, activity materials, on site staffing and timetables created. (All)
- Final confirmation of AV and catering requirements and numbers. (All)
- Finalise on site staffing schedule. (All)
October 2017
- At the event: room set up, volunteer training, on site management, on-site registration, on site risk assessment. (All)
- Feedback forms sent out. (All)
- Thank you letters to all volunteers. (All)
- Award winners announced on spe.org (Student Paper Contest and PetroBowl)
November 2017
- Debrief event and report for future recommendations prepared. (All)
- Upload pictures on SPE Connect. (All)
- Follow up on outstanding enquiries and expenses. (All)
- Post event publications in The Way Ahead and JPT. (All)
- Transfer prize money. (Student Paper Contest and PetroBowl)
December 2017
- Budget finalised. (All)
Activities
The full program consisted of several elements, each with separate timelines and tasks in place.
Young Member Programs at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition 2017
The International Student Paper Contest and the International PetroBowl final were preceded by regional qualifier contests (fifteen for Student Paper Contest and six for PetroBowl), which were managed by regional membership staff and local volunteers over the time period between October 2016 and July 2017.
The YMP team provided an extensive toolkit of documentation which volunteers were encouraged to use when setting up regional contests. Regional winners for both PetroBowl and the International Student Paper Contest were invited to attend ATCE, and were offered a complimentary registration. For Student Paper Contest Winners, accommodation and international travel were covered. PetroBowl winners were encouraged to raise funds themselves to attend, with the help of a sponsorship and funding guide provided by SPE.
This was also the first year the new database was used to collect questions for the PetroBowl quiz. The launch of the new database was advertised to all professional members, as well as on the website and through the online communities for Technical Directors. In person question writing sessions were also carried out by local volunteers, with a guide provided by the YMP team.
In response to feedback from previous years, the Student Meet and Greet program was made more interactive, by including several hands-on activities. A speaker was sourced for this around July time and the YMP team worked with the facilitator to prepare an interactive program designed to acquire networking skills.
The Communication Skills workshop was delivered by a staff member from the YMP team and was designed to simulate a global business environment in which a management and contractors team had to successfully complete a project by using different communication channels to get information across.
All volunteer opportunities were advertised through a newly launched volunteer platform. For each role an in depth job description was created, which allowed volunteers to search the database for appropriate roles available to them, and allowed staff to match suitable volunteers with suitable roles. Based on the level of skill involved, and the time commitment, each volunteer who participated earned points on their volunteer profile which were added up to earn greater recognition opportunities.
The majority of the venue arrangements, registration, marketing and other logistical preparations were carried out by the events team in the Dallas office.
Innovation
Because of the downturn in the oil and gas industry, year on year the Young Member Programs Team have worked hard to put on a world class program with reduced budget and reduced staff. The main way in which we have managed to do so if through the active involvement of volunteers worldwide. Whereas in previous years around ten staff members were allocated to the sessions, in 2017 this was reduced to merely two staff members.
At the end of 2016 SPEI introduced a new volunteer platform on which volunteer opportunities were advertised globally, which allowed members to build their skills profile and be matched and apply to opportunities worldwide. This new way of volunteer recruitment has had substantial benefit for both the quality and diversity of applications and has allowed us to not only engage a wider group of members, but also along with a more in depth volunteer training program, provide a higher quality service on the day. We advertised twelve different volunteer roles across all YM programs and engaged 417 volunteers to help out in the lead up and during the event.
For the PetroBowl final at ATCE around a 1000 technical questions are prepared to be included in the competition. To collect these questions SPEI custom built a question database which allowed for technical questions to be submitted online from members across the world. The collection of questions was previously done through in person question writing sessions, which proved costly and did not allow for the technical breath and regional diversity of questions we wanted to achieve for the contest. The online submission database proved very popular and allowed us to engage members globally to contribute to technical robust content, whilst reducing cost and staff involvement overall.
At SPEI we strongly believe that volunteer engagement is beneficial both for our members as well as the organization so we were pleased to see the successes of the roll out of both these systems.
Marketing
The Young Member Programs were promoted as part of the overarching promotional campaign for ATCE which included a global email campaign to the entire membership (168,000) and non-members, a social media campaign (paid and organic) with #ATCE2017, Google AdWords, web banners, printed adverts (internal and external) including adverts in the Journal of Petroleum Technology (flagship journal distributed to the global membership), trigger campaigns through ATCE website visits, and through media partners, sponsors and committees.
In addition, more specific channels were used for Young Member Programs as follows:
- Program specific volunteer opportunities were advertised through a recently launched volunteer platform.
- A social media campaign engaged our young members through SPEI Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube pages, including a dedicated Facebook page for PetroBowl.
- SPE Connect, our members’ online discussion forum, has dedicated groups for Students and Young Professionals and this included announcements leading up to the event.
- The Regional Membership staff worked directly with local Sections, Chapters and committees to promote the event to our international membership.
- We engaged our Technical and Regional Directors to secure volunteers and represent different career disciplines for the Career Pathway Fair – these individuals have a well established reputation in their regions and naturally their engagement attracts more members to the sessions.
As the Young Member Programs are free of charge and do not require pre-registration, promotion of the activities continued on site to increase footfall on the day. This was done through the ATCE conference app which sent push notification to alert attendees of the sessions and their location. Also a daily newsletter was sent, which included a preview of the upcoming sessions aimed at Young Members.
The International Student Paper Contest (ISPC) and the International PetroBowl events are both student competitions for which the final is held at ATCE. For ISPC fifteen regional contests took place ahead of the final, and for PetroBowl 7 Regional Qualifier competitions took place to feed into the final, thus all these regional events were used as a way to promote the final at ATCE. PetroBowl was promoted through student-produced videos showcasing their global journey to the PetroBowl final at ATCE. Note that these videos are from 2015 and 2016 respectively, as unfortunately due to financial restrictions we weren’t able to produce them for 2017, although they were used as a promotional tool to increase global participation year on year, in 2015 and 2016.
Challenges
Staffing
Due to staff redundancies, the preparations for the program were entirely carried out by one staff person (three staff in previous years), and this was alongside the usual year-round activities for the YMP team. In previous years around ten members of staff would assist with onsite activities, due to several parallel activities, and for 2017 there were only four members of staff available. Thus the staff members had to prioritize the tasks carefully, and not all could be carried out due to time constraints. The program was very tightly packed and thus there was little leeway to overrun, or accommodate any unexpected changes.
Restrictions in financial resources
A drastic reduction in the budget available for the 2017 program, meant that hard cuts had to be made. By not covering travel and accommodation for PetroBowl attendees, and by cutting down on catering, AV and marketing/branding, the YMP team still managed to put on a high quality program that was even more extensive than previous years but at a third of the costs (savings on approximately $240k).
Working with students
Having worked with students from all over the world, the YMP team has found that this generation demands contact and instant communication. This expectation has been challenging to respond to at times especially considering the reduction in available staff to assist with enquiries.
Arranging international travel
Travel for the International Student Paper Contest winners (thirty-seven) was organized by the YMP team with the help from a travel agency. Although detailed travel information was requested upfront, it does require a lot of time going back and forth between the students and the travel agency to ensure all arrangements are made appropriately and in line with a tight budget. With the recent changes in US policy, it was a lot harder for international student to secure visas in time and several had to drop out due to visas being denied.
Volunteer drop outs
The 2017 event saw a higher percentage of volunteer drop outs than previous years. This was due to a combination of less volunteers being able to get the time off work approved (due to staff redundancies within their own companies), more difficulties getting funding for travel covered by their employers and more difficulty securing visas for the US. Despite having over-recruited, there were still several last minute drop outs and we had to rely heavily on our Technical Directors to fill the gaps. Volunteers were also shifted between roles and re-trained on site, to ensure there was enough coverage for all programs.
PetroBowl questions
Despite the new database for PetroBowl questions making online submission of these much easier, there were not as many questions submitted as expected (for the final around 1000 questions need to be prepared). Thus some questions had to be taken from previous contests and reworded to be included again.
Achievements
To attract an international audience of young members with representation from all major continents – this was achieved as fifty different countries were represented amongst the total of 2140 young members attending ATCE. Although the number of different countries represented was impressive, the majority of delegates were from the US and the overall percentage of international delegate numbers would have been higher if we hadn’t faced the issues of international delegates being declined visas for the US in light of recent changes in legislation.
To increase overall number of young members participating in young member programs – this was achieved as 2025 young members participated across the events, in comparison to 1191 the previous year.
To use the newly launched volunteer platform to recruit an international group of volunteers to participate in young member programs – this was achieved as the majority of the 417 volunteers were recruited through the new system, which allowed for an overall improved global representation amongst volunteers.
Increase global representation for the PetroBowl competition - In 2014 the PetroBowl competition transitioned from a US based event to a global event, with international representation increasing year on year, and for 2017 a total of 27 universities from 19 countries were represented which was a huge achievement.
To provide a program more tailored to career support and soft skill development – the Career Pathway Fair which was first run at ATCE in 2016 was expanded for 2017 to include a wider variety of disciplines, and also the Student Meet and Greet program included sessions on how to network in a professional setting as well as career advice from more senior professionals.
To reduce expenditure of overall cost of Young Member programs to accommodate a lower forecast of sponsorship revenue for ATCE – Cost for PetroBowl was halved, by restructuring the format of the contest and reducing the number of teams so that only 1 hall was needed to run the contest, in comparison to 2 halls previously needed. The number of SPEI staff members travelling to be on site was reduced, by actively engaging volunteers to assist on site. The PetroBowl contest was live streamed via Facebook free of charge, in previous year this service was paid for. The catering costs were reduced, as well as cost for promotional materials resulting in an overall saving of around $240k compared to ATCE 2015 held in Texas (financials compared with ATCE 2015 in Texas rather than with ATCE 2016 in Dubai due to regional price differences).
Targets & Statistics
ATCE 2017 attracted a total of 8157 attendees, of which 26% were young members (2135). This is considerably higher than for the previous year in which the total conference delegation was 1084 (455 young members). It has to be noted that the 2016 version was held in Dubai for the first time, whereas normally ATCE is held in the US where the majority of our members reside and thus historically has a larger delegation.
- Amongst the Young Members attending ATCE, a total of fifty different countries were represented
- Overall Young Member attendance across all programs was 2025, compared to 1191 the previous year.
- Fifteen Regional Student Paper Contest were held across the world in the lead up to the International final at ATCE. These events combined attracted 517 abstracts, 246 of which were selected to partake in the regional contests and thirty-four of which were invited to the final.
- For PetroBowl a total of twenty-seven universities from nineteen countries were represented and for the Student Paper Contest a total of thirty-four contestants participated, representing twenty-seven different universities and sixteen different nationalities amongst the contestants.
- A total of 417 volunteers participated across twelve different volunteer roles for Young Member programs.
Financials
Although ATCE engages a large number of external partners, suppliers and sponsors (398 sponsors and exhibitors for 2017), for Young Member Programs we work mostly directly with the membership to create program content and provide volunteer opportunities for them on the day. The income generated through exhibition and sponsorship sales is used, amongst other expenses, to support the running of Young Member Programs.
All Young Member activities are included in the ATCE registration rates (Student rate for 2017 was $75). The contestants for PetroBowl and SPC were all offered complimentary registration. The costs for catering was kept to a minimum to ensure funds could go towards supporting students’ attendance. Funds were set aside specifically for contestants for the Student Paper Contest at a total of $53,138 to support four nights’ accommodation and international travel to the US for thirty-four students from across the world. Total expenditure was $104,222.
What would we do differently?
Career Pathway Fair
For the next year it is proposed to shorten the time of the Career Pathway Fair session. In the 2017 program the Career Pathway Fair was immediately proceeded with a Young Member reception, to allow for an easy flow between sessions. The Career Pathway Fair was scheduled over a 3 hour period, but after 2 hours several students had made their way around all the stands and left, and this created a gap in the program.
Student Meet and Greet
The inclusion on the interactive activities was well received, but some of the momentum was lost when last minute presentations were included from the President and several Board members, which meant not all material could be covered off by the facilitator.
Feedback
For future events it would be better to collect feedback on site in real time (either through paper, polling or online). There was a delay in the survey getting set up following the event, which meant it was sent out later than usual and had a very low response rate.
Social media
For future events, the power of social media should be embraced more, and used to our advantage. Although the PetroBowl contest was live streamed via Facebook, the engagement ahead, during and after the event could have been better. Unfortunately the staff member who was responsible for social media engagement for YM programs was made redundant and therefore the resources weren’t in place to build up on the strong engagement with social media we had in the previous year. An alternative would be to get volunteers to assist with this on site.
Customer service and communications
Due to the limited staff resources, it was difficult to respond to member enquiries in a timely manner. Additional communications were already sent out to preempt any enquiries that might be coming in, but the sheer load of emails to get through for just one member of staff, meant that the responses were slow at times. In addition students often expect an instant response, which can make communicating effectively with them even more challenging. The PetroBowl Facebook page worked well for getting information out quickly.
Volunteer opportunities
For future years it should be considered to start advertising volunteer opportunities a bit later. For those volunteers who committed early in the process, there were many drop outs and this resulted in duplications of efforts of having to secure a new set of volunteers nearer the time of the event.
On site branding and marketing
There was not as much branding on site compared to previous years, mostly due to budget restrictions and lack of sponsors. If more budget had been available, it would have been good to invest in this to strengthen the overall brand awareness of Young Member Programs at ATCE.
Sponsors
The priorities of the Sales team were to secure sponsors and exhibitors for the main exhibition and conference, and thus no sponsorship drive specifically for Young Member Programs was initiated. The income generated through the overall revenue covered the cost of the activities provided for young members. For previous years some sponsorship has been secured for PetroBowl, however the market is currently very limited as many oil and gas companies have had major reductions in their budgets reserved for sponsorship and exhibitions. Thus as the market picks up in future years, a dedicated sponsorship drive for Young Member Programs could be revisited.
Feedback & Testimonials
The majority of feedback was collected onsite and via social media. A small survey was sent to attendees, with some of the highlights of the results as per below:
- 78% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend the Student Meet and Greet sessions to their peers.
- 90% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend PetroBowl to their peers.
- 92% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend Student Paper Contest to their peers.
- 46% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend Career Pathway Fair to their peers.
- 75% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend the Student Communication Skills workshop to their peers.
- 86% of respondents said they ‘definitely would’ of ‘probably would’ recommend the Young Member Reception to their peers.
Testimonials from the survey include:
“I was intrigued by the depth of knowledge that was available to learn from. I will definitely do this again in the near future.”
“SPE gives the best opportunities and enormous experience that helped me to make my life unbelievable.”
Feedback was also collected on site through interviews
“SPE is a very valuable tool that the Petroleum industry has, because it is a networking opportunity and I would love to just stay in contact, because the more contacts I have, the more fun I have in the industry. I meet more awesome people, I am definitely going to stay with SPE. It is full of awesomeness”
“You bring in so many companies and they are all so friendly and willing to talk to students. They have specific booths for us to talk to recruiters! Where do we get that opportunity? Nowhere else!”
From an interview with an US based student who had been offered a job by one of the exhibiting companies, and was asked whether she would plan to continue her SPE membership upon graduation.
“Being involved in SPE gives you the opportunity to build skills you may not be exposed to in your day to day work environment."
“I have also liked having the opportunity to give back to the community through programs such as Energy4Me and SPE Cares. It is great to come together with a bunch of colleagues and help change the world.”
From an interview with a US based Young Professional Volunteer.
Wider impact
Young Member programs at ATCE really brings together the global student membership in a setting where they can learn, network and build lasting friendships. In the global oil and gas industry this is of tremendous importance. Especially with programs such as PetroBowl we have seen a huge increase in global engagement, with universities participating from all over the world, in a contest which was predominantly attended by US based universities only a few years ago. For students to be exposed to such a large international network, and to gain access to an exhibition with almost 400 exhibiting companies, can really open doors for their careers as we have heard from several students first hand. The funding that SPE makes available to support top performing students, allows those bright minded individuals to shine on an international stage and make opportunities available for them to which they may have otherwise not have had access to without the financial support. SPE’s student members are tremendously enthusiastic and active at a regional level, with many universities replicating global programs and events on a regional level and thus strengthening the reputation of SPE across the globe.
With the current downturn in the industry, there is a lot of uncertainty amongst students and young professionals regarding their career and job security. Young Member programs contribute to the development of non-technical skills, and provide international networking opportunities that can give young members a head start in what is a very competitive market. Young members hear from senior professionals how SPE have helped them through previous downturns in the industry, which makes them appreciate the benefits offered through our network.
Effectively engaging volunteers has also had a very beneficial impact on our members as well as our Society. By being involved first hand with the Young Member programs, volunteers feel a strong affiliation with the society often referring to us as the ‘SPE family’. Considering over 400 volunteers were involved in some way with the Young Member programs at ATCE, this would not have been possible to run at the same scale without them. Also projects like SPE Cares allows our members to give back to the community, by being involved in charitable activities outside of the industry.
