How to make a mark

The AFINO International Conference is history. With a high level of enthusiasm and engagement during the three conference days in Oslo, we are so happy to share that this was a fantastic experience.

Let us start with the end, first. With the spirit of the events at the conference fresh in mind, Helge Rynning from the Research Council of Norway honored the participants with a poem at the last day – inspired by the fact the conference was held at Soria Moria, the hotel with the same name as the Norwegian fairy tale:

You have made another landing at the moon
Even though AFINO will be closing pretty soon
Let’s acknowledge – this is almost like a fairytale
Keep up the momentum – using networks, meetings, mail

Even if the lines were spoken out with a smile and a little playfully, it also caught a vibe present at the conference. We really appreciate this token from Helge Rynning, and also the permission to share the lines outside the conference hall at Soria Moria.
We are also glad to spot some of the same perception in the evaluation forms, which many of the participants submitted after the conference.
More about the review from the participants in the end.
Be sure also to scroll to the bottom of the page for additional photos from the conference!

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Unique focus
No other institution or organization in Norway is comparable to AFINO when it comes to working across the fields of responsible research and innovation (RRI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
It is more about ways of working, trying new processes, rather than reaching a final result in the fastest possible way.
That is also why the networks and collaborations matter and has been one of AFINO’s primary goals since the beginning in 2019.
This goal is both ambitious and hard to achieve, because it means transforming practices in research and business. Hence the title of the conference “Transformative Research and Innovation” and the desire to understand where we are in this journey towards transformation.

Open invitation, worldwide!
The AFINO International Conference has been an opportunity to both continue a collaboration and to widen the existing network.
The invitation to the conference was open to researchers and others from around the globe and across various disciplines to engage in the discussions on RRI, CSR, values, ethics, and transdisciplinarity.
It was exhilarating to see that so many signed up!

Around 110 participants came to the conference location Soria Moria Hotel in Oslo, travelling from countries like Japan, South-Africa, Australia, US, Brazil and many European countries. All together participants from 55 different institutions globally signed up.

The FOMO dilemma
It was pointed out by AFINO’s Director Siri Granum Carson, several times during the conference, that the programme came with a feeling of FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out.
With a choice between 64 presentations in the parallel sessions, 6 interactive sessions, 4 plenary sessions, a book presentation, and a Movie Aperitif Talk followed by a movie night, the feeling is quite understandable.

It is also understandable that the programme felt a bit hectic and packed. In that sense it was even more impressive to see the level of engagement among the participants. We are very glad to report that none of the 64 presentations lacked a committed audience, comments or questions!
More reflections on the content of the conference and its significance for AFINO’s mission will be published in a separate blogpost.

The true feedback
With more than 100 participants from so many institutions and from different fields, the risk of not meeting everyone’s expectations is truly there.
The organizing team had a clear perception that the event was a success, the atmosphere good and the participants happy and engaged. The feedback survey at the end of the conference reassured us that this impression was not the product of our own bias.

The event was not perfect; a quite packed programme was pointed out by several. A schedule with more time for networking, discussions outside the seminar rooms and time for reflection and discussion, were also mentioned.

“More/longer breaks. It was very back-to-back”

“The programme was heavy, in terms of sessions/day. It makes you really tired after 3 days. Less is more. Provide more free time for networking and reflection on new insights”

“The only reason I didn’t rate it a full 10 is because the days were a little bit too packed”.

The feedback form also reassured us about the quality of the programme.
Nearly 90% of respondents rated the conference programme and scholarly quality very high (scores in the 8-10 range).
But there is always room for improvement…

“I think that the scientific content of some of the sessions could have been better. I saw a lot of descriptive work based on (single) cases without clear methodological and theoretical backing. The scientific value of the contribution was very nice but could have been even better”.

“Overall very interesting presentations and discussions in plenary sessions as well as those tracks I attended. A weakness though, were that few of those I discussed with seemed to have deepened their knowledge in RRI as a EU policy framework and regulatory tool. Also, the discussions of responsible research were mainly lacking in the sessions I attended”.

What’s next?
Another interesting question in the form was whether the attendees could be interested in attending a conference like AFINO2024 again. We were impressed to see that almost 90% of the respondent answered “definitely yes” or “probably yes” and nobody chose “probably no” or “definitely no”. A clearer answer could not have been given.

As AFINO’s funding from the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) comes to an end this year, the question of AFINO’s inheritance and how to continue the work remains open. AFINO’s Director Siri Granum Carson informed the participants at the conference about this situation, and revealed at the same time that collaborators in the network are searching for possibilities to organise a new conference. When and where is still in up the blue, but an ambition is clearly to built it as a continuation of the AFINO International Conference.  

As organizers of the conference, we are deeply grateful for all support, kind words, enthusiastic participation, travel efforts, and valuable feedback we have received during and afterwards.
A warm thank to you, all!
It has been such a pleasure to be part of this experience.

We encourage you to stay in touch with the new contacts you made during the conference—who knows, it might add value to your work in the future!
At the same time, we keep our fingers crossed for another conference in the coming future.

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Featured image in top: From left; Siri Granum Carson (Director AFINO, NTNU), Margit Sutrop (University of Tartu, Estonia), Matthias Kaiser (University of Bergen), May Thorseth (NTNU), and Christian Fieseler (BI Norwegian Business School).

All photos: Eva H. Murvold.