Conference Tips

What Does Hybrid Mean?

The conference has been designed to provide you the flexibility and convenience of attending either in-person or virtually. Truly the best of both worlds! Week one is virtual for all (May 12, 14, and 16).  Live-streamed presentations and discussions allow all presenters and attendees to participate without leaving home. In the second week, choose to join us in-person or continue attending sessions virtually. The live content sessions will be streamed to those who are remote.

Registration includes conference presentations from both the first and second week. Virtual attendees will join all sessions remotely, while In-person attendees will be attending the first week remotely and the second week physically in Zhengzhou, China. Aside from conference presentations, there are Professional Development Institutes on May 23 and 26, which is an optional extra for both virtual and in-person attendees. 

All content sessions offered at our conference will be recorded and available for 3 months post-conference. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to consider “Embracing the Future Through Leadership, AI, and Career Design”. You can learn so much with such a small investment. 

The conference platform, Whova, will be accessible to all attendees beginning in mid April, 2025.

Of course, there is so much more to an in-person conference than content sessions. Registering for the In-Person conference includes all of the Content Sessions offered virtually, plus the Meetup Dinner, Reception and Cultural Performance. Many people from China are attending, eager to talk with you about career development practices in other parts of the Asia Pacific region. 

Optional Extras

Two Professional Development Institutes (PDIs) are offered which are not included in the basic registration.  They are available both virtually and  in-person. We also offer three cultural tours as Optional Extras. The tours included a visit to Henan Museum, Local Career Centers in Zhengzhou, and an overnight trip to Longmen Grottoes and Shaolin Temple. 

Using the APCDA Conference Software

Again this year, APCDA has contracted with Whova to provide the software for our conference.  Because this conference is Hybrid, we need a really good Mobile App so that in-person attendees can participate equally with virtual attendees. ALL questions for presenters, whether you are in the room or remote, should be submitted by typing them into Whova.  Whova provides both a Web App and a Mobile App to make this easy. We expect In-person Attendees to use the Mobile App and Virtual Attendees to use the Web App, although they may want to use both so they can easily submit questions to the presenter while watching the session in full screen mode.

Here are instructions for using this new software.

Video Instructions:

Written Instructions: 

Contests at the 2025 APCDA Hybrid Conference

We have two kinds of contests at this year’s conference, the Leaderboard and the Fun Fact Contest. For each contest, we will pick 3 winners to receive valuable prizes. Every winner has the liberty to choose one prize from the list as their reward.

  1. One Free APCDA Webinar of your choice
  2. One Year Free APCDA Membership

You can start participating in the contests as soon as Whova becomes accessible to you. The top three winners will be announced and recognized on May 25, 2025 during the conference closing. 

About Fun Fact Contest

The Fun Fact contest is called a Photo Contest in Whova – you can access this contest in Win a Prize, or under the Photos feature. The purpose of this contest is to give you an opportunity to think of and share with us something interesting that could make you a person that others remember after the conference is over. Your Fun Fact could be related to your life, career experience, local career services, APCDA, or about your country – any fact that you would like to share with others. Photos are encouraged.

Since you will be meeting other new or known fellow attendees during the conference, revealing some fun facts about yourself can be a great icebreaker. All of the fun facts shared by attendees will be immediately available for other attendees to read and vote on.  Post your Fun Facts early to other attendees can vote on them – and can reach out to you if they are inspired by what you post.Here are a few examples,

  1. I joined APCDA on November 11, 2013 but then somehow, I forgot about it until I truly became an active member on January 13, 2020.
  2. Hindi is the national language of India but almost each state of the country has its own language.
  3. A career counselor in me evolved unintentionally while I engaged in lifelong learning.

About Leaderboard

Leaderboard is a dynamic scoreboard that tracks your activity within the Whova App, rewarding the level of engagement the attendees have during the conference. The more someone interacts with others in the platform or actively using the features in the app, the higher the score gets. To get to the top of the leaderboard is to collect as many points as you possibly can in Whova. Some actions that can boost your score on the leaderboard are:

  1. Completing your profile in the Whova App
  2. Add sessions to personal agenda
  3. Post questions in the Session Q&A
  4. Completing the session feedback survey
  5. Add discussion topic or social group in Community
  6. Share an article the the Community