Frequently Asked Questions

FWD50 is an international conference, and speakers are free to speak in either of Canada’s official languages. We will not be providing real-time audio translation on-site for either language.

Our plan is to provide live machine captioning in both languages in real time on the live stream; and to machine transcribe and translate with human correction before publishing recorded copies of the talks. Videos will be available with subtitles off, French subtitles, or English subtitles.

Yes! We’re committed to making the event accessible to all those who want to have a voice. With that in mind, here are some other ways to get involved:

• You can volunteer to help out, and get a free pass in return.
• If you’re with the media and want to cover the event, we have a limited number of media access passes we can offer.
• We are offering two general virtual conference passes to the first two applications from any municipal, territorial, provincial, or state government! Claim your regional pass now.
• You can partner with us, help us to spread the word and share promotions, and get discounted passes for some of your organization’s members in return.

The short answer is no. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Sharing undermines trust. Across all the events we operate, we do many things attendees love—based on the information we collect during the registration process. If our audience isn’t really who they say they are, a whole portion of the event experience is compromised and falsified. We focus on real interactions and genuine learning among the people who are supposed to be in the room.
• Sharing ruins interactions. Not being able to trust that someone is who they claim to be breaks networking, contact sharing, and meeting new people—one of the main reasons for conferences. Attendees must be able to greet someone based on their name, role, and company with certainty.
• Sharing puts people at risk. Pass sharing makes it impossible to verify identity, online or off. Incorrect identity makes it impossible to enforce behavior during the event and violations to our code of conduct. For legal reasons, pass sharing is not permitted.
• Sharing leads to privacy violations. If person A gives a badge to person B, who signs person A up for a mailing list or opts in for a newsletter, without person A’s consent, that has important legal consequences for GDPR, CASL, and other privacy legislation based on opt-in rules and may expose FWD50 and its partners to legal action.
• If you share your pass, we won’t be able to run future events. We produce a tremendous amount of valuable content with excellent production and an emphasis on accessibility. Tickets pay for this. Our prices, and business model, assume a single person per pass. This is even more true for virtual events with thin margins that run across an entire week.

We offer several ways for groups to save on attendance:

• Bulk bundles of 10 or 25 tickets: Discounted bulk passes are available either in-person or virtual. Individual virtual tickets purchased in this way may be also upgraded to in-person tickets individually. Contact us for more details about bulk passes.
• Department-wide passes let an entire government department attend the event. These passes include unlimited virtual attendance, as well as fifty in-person tickets, and make sense for departments who want to offer access to over 150 virtual attendees. Contact us for more information and additional details.
• Our Regional Access Program offers two free virtual passes to the first two applicants from any municipal, provincial, state or territorial government or regulatory agencies, boards, and commissions of the provincial crown. Claim your regional pass now.
• Our Third Sector Program offers two free virtual passes to the first two applicants from any public-sector focused nonprofit, civic tech, or non-governmental organization. Claim your third sector pass now.

This content is available to attendees at no extra charge, but space is limited. Participants will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to department pass holders. The cohort will be held on October 18th, 24-25th. You must have an in-person ticket to the main FWD50 conference (November 4-6) and currently hold an executive position. Executive Cohort participants can also attend the FWD50 general conference, happening at the Aberdeen Pavilion in Ottawa and online November 4-6, 2024.

To claim your spot, speak with your department training head or the person responsible for purchasing FWD50 tickets. You can purchase an individual in-person ticket and apply here. Don't miss out on this unique training opportunity.

For more details, check out our blog post.

Videos are available on our content platform, Access FWD50. You can learn more about our community platform, and sign up, here.

Once FWD50 2024 is a wrap, we’ll be adding recorded sessions to the platform exclusively for attendees (we make content available to the world a few months after the event.) You’ll need to complete this form to request access to 2023 videos once they’re live.

Need help? If something isn’t working the way it should, or you need help, mail support@fwd50.com.

For Canadian Federal employees, FWD50 has been deemed as training by the government-wide functional community lead (in this case, the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) for IM/IT-related large information-sharing or learning sessions) on September 15, 2017, as posted on the government of Canada internal GCpedia site Conference versus training: Large information-sharing or learning sessions. This is in keeping with the Guide to Travel, Hospitality, Conference and Event Expenditures.

The call for proposals for the annual FWD50 conference usually opens in April and closes on July 31.

All FWD50 conference proposals are reviewed by our Advisory Committee. Once this committee has given its opinion, all applicants are informed in one way or another by the end of September 2023.

While public health measures regarding the COVID-19 pandemic have subsided in the past year, the safety of our attendees, our speakers, and our team remain our first priority. In 2022, we held our first in-person event, without any reported cases of COVID from attendees.

While we recognize that any public gathering poses some degree of health risk, we know that meeting face-to-face is better for our mental health, leads to more genuine connections, and ensures that we can focus on skills, learning, and personal development without the inevitable interruptions that happen when are just a click away.

We also know that many public servants may be unable to participate in an in-person event because of their own conditions or their proximity to vulnerable people. That's why we're continuing to run a virtual format alongside the in-person conference, allowing everyone to participate.

Masking onsite is optional at FWD50 2023. We recommend that participants use a lateral flow test to test themselves for COVID, and attend virtually if they have any symptoms of COVID or other communicable diseases. Please let us know if you have a positive COVID result during or after the event.

Read our COVID-19 policy for more information.