Advancing Dialogue in Finance: Coordination Support for the 2nd Somali Banking Conference

In October 2024 the Somali Bankers Association hosted the 2nd Somali Banking and Finance Conference in Mogadishu, bringing together participants from finance, regulation and economic development over two days. Veynuus was brought on to provide coordination and communications support across the event: layout and session planning, agenda development, audiovisual coordination, live social media coverage and branded visuals, coordination with service providers and venue management, and an entry system built around an attendee registration app.

A banking conference is a different proposition from a public event. The audience is small, senior and professionally sceptical, and it judges the occasion by whether the discussion was worth the two days rather than by its production values. At the same time, an association hosting its flagship event has to demonstrate organisational capability, because the conference is also evidence of what the association can do. Both standards apply simultaneously and neither forgives visible improvisation.

Two days is long enough for problems to compound. A first day that runs late reshapes the second. A registration process that is slow on the first morning sets a tone that persists. Sessions that overlap awkwardly with prayer times or meals lose their audiences regardless of the quality of the panel. The sequencing decisions that determine all of this are made weeks before, in the agenda and the room layout, and are difficult to correct once delegates are in the building.

Live coverage added a parallel operation. Producing branded visuals and social media output during a conference means a second team working to its own tempo inside an event that is already running, requiring access to sessions without disrupting them and turnaround fast enough that the material is published while it is still current. That, in an environment where connectivity cannot be assumed to hold steady across a full day.

Veynuus approached the engagement with a focus on precision and professionalism, working so that every element of the conference reflected the significance of the occasion. In practice that meant starting from the room. Layout and session planning were treated as the foundation: how the space would be configured for plenary and panel formats, where registration would sit relative to the entrance and the main hall, how delegates would move between sessions and refreshments, and where side conversations could happen without competing with the programme.

Agenda development ran alongside the layout, in consultation with the association, so that the programme and the space were designed against each other rather than in sequence. The team supported the development and refinement of the official agenda, aligning operational and communications activities with the event's strategic goals so that the running order served the discussion the association wanted to have.

Audiovisual coordination covered stage, panels and audience engagement. Panel audio is the part most often underestimated: a plenary sound design that works for a keynote will not carry a four-person panel with audience questions, and a room that cannot hear a question cannot participate in the answer. The setup was specified around the formats the agenda actually contained.

The registration app was developed and managed specifically for the conference rather than adapted from a general tool. Building the entry system in-house meant it matched the association's own delegate categories and could be operated by staff who had been briefed on it, with on-site management throughout. Coordination with service providers and venue management was maintained as a single point of contact across the two days, so that suppliers were not each negotiating separately with the host.

Across the two days the team ran coordination as a continuous function rather than a series of interventions. The agreed layout was set up and adjusted between sessions where formats changed. The agenda was held to, with the audiovisual desk, the moderators and the venue working from the same running order. Service providers and venue management were coordinated through a single channel, which is what keeps a two-day event from accumulating small unresolved handovers.

The registration app carried entry throughout, with the desk staffed and the system managed on site so that arrivals on the second morning were as orderly as on the first. Live social media coverage and branded visuals were produced during the conference itself, drawing on sessions as they happened, so that the association's audience outside the room could follow the discussion while it was under way.

The conference succeeded in prompting substantive dialogue on Somalia's financial future, with senior participation, serious discussion and significant media attention. Two days were delivered with full coordination coverage, one registration app was built and operated, more than one hundred finance leaders were convened, and the association's flagship event was supported end to end.

Veynuus's role was to ensure the environment matched the stakes. That is a modest description of the work and an accurate one: the substance belonged to the association and its participants, and the contribution here was to remove the friction that would otherwise have competed for their attention over two days.

Conference support is often bought as a set of separate services, with one supplier for audiovisual work, another for registration and a third for social media. The cost of that arrangement appears at the seams, where a change to the agenda fails to reach the audiovisual desk or the registration categories do not match the programme. Handling coordination, communications and the entry system together is what allows a two-day event to hold its shape.

It also shows the value of building rather than buying where the requirement is specific. A registration app written for this conference matched the association's delegate structure exactly, and the people running it on the door were the people who understood it.

• Event layout & session planning
• Agenda development
• AV coordination
• Social media coverage
• Venue management
• Attendee registration app