How to add your improvement event to our calendar

As a Q member, you are welcome to add your events to the Q community calendar on our website. It’s a great way to share your event with a wider audience and gain interest from others involved in improvement.

Before your event is published on the calendar, it will be reviewed by the Q team. After you submit your event on our online form we will proof it, check that it meets the minimum GDPR requirements, and may edit it to fit with our house style. One of the team may come back to you if we have any questions or need any information before we are able to publish it.

We do not publish events which:

• are not relevant to our improvement audience.
• do not contain a privacy notice, link to a privacy statement, or contain information on how participants can ​‘opt-out’ of receiving communications. This should be in the event description and in any linked registration forms.

1. Read this guidance carefully to ensure you have everything in place before you submit your event for review.
2. Plan how you will process and protect people’s data. Make sure this is clear in any event communications and note our requirements outlined below regarding links to your organisation’s Data Protection Policy and Privacy Notice.
3. Complete our online form at least seven weeks before your event.
4. The Q team will review your form as soon as possible and get back to you within five working days.

If we have all of the information we need, we will aim to publish your event within a week. However, it may take longer to publish your event if we need more information or have any queries – so be sure to factor this in. 

It’s best practise to promote an event a minimum of six weeks in advance and the longer it’s on the Q calendar, the more people will see it.

We’ve outlined some guidance to help you share a clear and engaging event post on the Q calendar which also meets basic GDPR requirements. Once you’re ready, you’ll find a button that will take you through to our online form at the bottom of this page.

It’s good practice to give a minimum of six weeks’ notice when promoting an event. This will allow you as an organiser to have enough time to plan and run your event effectively and give people enough time to make arrangements to attend.

It can take the Q team up to a week to review and publish your event, so please factor this into your planning.

Hybrid, in-person, online; there are many ways to host an event.

If your event is in person, take a look at our checklist to help you make sure the venue is accessible for all participants. 

If you’re hosting the event online, there are various options of online platform to use. Online events can be cost effective, can break down geographical barriers, and can be more convenient for people who are fitting the session in around work or other commitments.

Some tips for online events:

Online events can run more efficiently if there is someone else to support you with monitoring waiting rooms, the chat box, and keeping an eye on any tech issues throughout the call. They can also support you if you are planning to record the event by managing starting, pausing and stopping the recording.

Planning to record your event? Make sure that you have the consent of anyone who will be on the recording, and have given them the option to turn off their cameras and change their name should they wish to. 

In addition, it is important to inform people how a recording will be used: will it be sent to people after the event in a follow up email, uploaded to your organisation’s YouTube account, or shared on social media?

We often think about inclusivity when it comes to in person sessions (i.e. physical access, providing a quiet space, providing a prayer room). However, remember that inclusivity should be considered in online events too. 

For example, people using screen readers may be impacted by virtual or blurred backgrounds. If you have people at your event who lip read, it will be important to advise people to keep their cameras turned on throughout the event or pin a speaker to make them more visible.

Our online form will ask you for the details of your event, including:

Event title (maximum 10 words)

The event title will be the first thing people viewing the Q calendar will see. Therefore, event titles should be clear and concise. Anything too long or too abstract might be confusing and fail to grab people’s attention.

Event teaser (maximum 50 words)

The event teaser appears below the title on the Q calendar and is a one or two sentence summary of the event. It’s your chance to show people how interesting your event is and should encourage people to click through to learn more.

Event description (maximum 200 words)

This is on the event page, which people can access as they click through to learn more about your event. It includes an event description as well as all the other details about your event such as date, time, links, and more.

In your description you could include:

• more about the event: a link to an agenda, information on speakers, information on your team/​organisation and your reasons for hosting the event.
• something about why the topic is important within the improvement landscape.
• any pre-reading, additional context or information you would like people to know before the event.

You must also include information about how you process data. A short privacy statement, with a link to your organisation’s privacy notice and information on how someone can opt-out of receiving post-event communications should be included here. There is more detail on this below.

If you are collecting any data for your event, such as using a registration form, you need to ensure that you are processing people’s data responsibly and meeting GDPR requirements.

Some points you should keep in mind to help you promote your event with confidence when you need to collect someone’s data:

• When creating your registration form, only ask for data you need. If you’re not sure how you will use particular data, it’s probably not a good idea to ask for it. Be mindful of sensitive personal data (such as age, gender, sex, disability, religion, etc). If you’re asking for some of this data, why? If it is to ensure that the session is inclusive, you can leave this up to the person registering to decide what to share with you. For example, include more general question, such as asking them to share if they have any access or dietary requirements they would like you to be aware of.
• Make sure you include a privacy statement, link to a privacy notice and information on how to opt out of further communications in both the event description and any registration forms. If you’re not sure where to find your organisation’s privacy notice, a good place to start would be the person who is responsible for GDPR: the Data Protection Officer. They should be able to share relevant statements and links with you to include in your event promotion.

If you have any questions, or would like to chat about submitting an event, contact Louise in Q’s communications team: Qcomms@health.org.uk .

Complete our short form to tell us everything we need to know to publish your event.