Community Psychology Competencies and Onlife Participatory Team Building: The 9th Conference of Community Psychology (9ICCP) Case Study

Abstract

Modern social ecosystems have become increasingly complex due to the sanitary, political, social, cultural and technological transformations they are dealing with. This also requires professionals working within these contexts—such as community psychologists—to adapt by acquiring new and updated skills in order to properly address the challenges they pose. Therefore, this paper unpacks the experience of planning, organising and managing the 9th International Conference of Community Psychology (9ICCP) as a case study showing how onlife social contexts require the development of specific professional competencies and at the same time take advantages from psychologists' relational skills. Indeed, the conference hosted participants from all over the world, yet it was to be organised when the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian–Ukrainian war represented threats to participants' mobility, safety and health; therefore, it was managed as an onlife, hybrid event. Dealing with this meant that the organising committee had to face unprecedented challenges, which required the team to rely on the core competencies of community psychologists, and also on digital and technical skills as well as on models and competencies typical of other professional fields (e.g., social marketing principles). We will describe and discuss the strengths as well as the pitfalls of this process, with the aim of highlighting the main challenges required by dealing with hybrid, onlife settings and how they can be enhanced and updated. We will propose guidelines and key issues to be tackled, based on the relational and participatory community psychologists' competencies to be developed in onlife settings.