The British Society for Oral and Dental Research (BSODR) Conference | 2024

We caught up with Katie Whitehouse, Event Manager at BeaconHouse Events about organising The British Society for Oral and Dental Research (BSODR) 2024 conference.

Can you briefly summarise what your conference is about?

The conference, now in its 71st year, came to Newcastle for the first time. BSODR has approximately 600 members nationally with 250 attending the annual conference. The society is run by academics from across the UK. The event programme includes invited keynote speakers, oral and poster presentations, symposia, special interest scientific group meetings, an early career researcher breakfast, an undergraduate student symposia, scientific prize competitions, a trade exhibition and gala dinner.

Why was Newcastle the perfect fit for this event?

Newcastle University has one of the largest and best equipped dental schools in the UK where you can study dentistry or dental therapy at an institution boasting 125 years of expertise in the field. Their research provides the academic foundation for our oral healthcare teaching and clinical practice.

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important, especially in business events. Did your event take any measures to be more sustainable?  

We implemented our usual sustainable events practice and guidance on this event. We worked with the client to keep the carbon footprint as low as possible for their event. This included limited printed materials, vegetarian buffet catering for both lunchtimes, we locate the events close to public transport routes, and we tracked audience travel to / from the event to enable us to report on the full carbon footprint of the event. We always ethically offset 10% of our event carbon to a local environmental charity, Groundwork NE & Cumbria and we guide the client on the offset options for the remaining 90% which is mostly audience travel carbon.

Was there anything that made the event particularly memorable or unique?

The conference included a public facing Speakeasy event called ‘Who can really afford to go to the dentist?’ which aimed to upskill and engage members of the general public.

How did NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau help you with this event?

NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau helped to source the venue and introduced the client to PCOs to manage the event.