Case study · In progress
International Chinatown Conference
The first international gathering of Chinatown leaders, researchers and advocates — convening in Edmonton this September. We're building the identity, the delegate platform and the communications that get them here.
Full-service · 53.5461°N 113.4938°W · Edmonton AB
01 · The case
Every Chinatown is fighting the same fight alone.
Chinatowns and urban ethnic enclaves around the world face a common set of pressures: redevelopment and gentrification, racism, and economic and political marginalisation. They also share a record of resisting those pressures through partnership, investment and invention — but almost always in isolation from one another.
The briefConvene the first international conference of its kind in Edmonton: a working gathering of Chinatown stakeholders, researchers, professionals and advocates, built to move solutions between districts rather than to produce a communiqué.
The constraintA first-of-its-kind event has no delegate list, no reputation and no precedent to point at. Everything had to be built from nothing, in a district still contending with the very perception problem the conference exists to discuss.
Edmonton's Chinatown is midway through a coordinated renewal — a City strategy, a capital gateway project, a business improvement area adding net new businesses, and a visitor programme that won its category at the 2026 Edmonton Tourism Awards.
A district with something working is a more useful host than a district with a theory.
Funded by Chinatown Vibrancy FundSupported by the City of Edmonton under neighbourhood vitality and resilience.
02 · Our role
Getting people in the room.
The programme belongs to the hosts. Our job is that the right people know it exists, believe it's worth the flight, and can register in under two minutes.
A working conference for people who run districts, not an academic symposium about them. That decision shapes who is invited and how it reads.
A visual and verbal system that carries across three host organizations without belonging to any one of them.
Registration, ticketing, programme and delegate management. Built and run in-house as an authorized PheedLoop partner.
Reaching Chinatown organizations, BIAs, researchers and advocates across North America and beyond, most of whom have never heard of us.
Three hosts and a funder, telling one story. The most underrated work on any multi-partner file.
Check-in, sessions, wayfinding and delegate support across six days in the district itself.
03 · The work
In build.
04 · What we'll count
Agreed before it runs.
A convening is easy to declare a success afterwards. These are the measures set with the hosts in advance, and we'll publish them here either way.
How many distinct Chinatowns and enclaves send someone. Reach matters more than headcount at a first convening.
Against a target set before outreach began, not adjusted afterwards.
The only real test of a first conference is whether there's a second one, and who volunteers to host it.
Six days of delegates in a district is an economic event as well as a professional one.
This page will be updated after 30 September with what actually happened, including the measures we missed.
05 · Credit
Whose conference this is.
The district's oldest institution, and the reason an international invitation carries weight.
Programme, partnerships and the renewal work the conference exists to share.
The businesses hosting six days of delegates on their street.
The conference is theirs. The agenda, the invitations that matter and the relationships that made an international gathering plausible all belong to the hosts and to the City, which funded it through the Chinatown Vibrancy Fund. We built the identity, the delegate platform and the communications.
06 · Next
Running a convening?
Conferences fail on registration and partner alignment far more often than on programme. If you're convening a sector, that's the part worth getting right first.
Full-service destination branding · Churchill Strategy · Edmonton AB