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 during the in person event 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.
• 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 +: Save even more with grouped access to all events and recordings. Contact us for more details about bulk passes.
• Department-wide passes let an entire government department attend the event.
  • Small department passes (<800 employees) – Unlimited virtual access and in-person seats for your team.
  • Large department passes (>800 employees) – The best value with expanded in-person access and full virtual coverage.
  • Contact us for more information and additional details.

As well as being our online events platform, pas are available on our community platform, Access FWD50.

You can learn more about our community platform, and sign up, here.

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.

We'll be running content throughout the year. We want to showcase incredible stories about how digital government is driving efficiency, improving services, and modernizing the public sector. Unlike past years, the call for proposals will be open all year round.  

You can expect to hear back from us if you get selected, within 15 business days.