September 23, 2021
The Data-Centric Engineering Summit
BY London Filmed
September 23rd, 2021
Overview
Event type: Virtual
Event platform: Hopin
Workflow: Studio/Zoom > vMix > YouTube > Hopin
In the making: 4 weeks
Date of event: 22.09.21 > 23.09.21
Duration: 2 days
Company: The Alan Turing Institute
Speakers: 81
Attendees: 200
The Project
The UK’s national institute for data science and AI, The Alan Turing Institute, runs the data-centric engineering programme in partnership with the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. They held a two-day global summit with media partner Cambridge University Press Data-Centric Engineering journal to bring together world-leading academic institutions and major industrial partners from across the engineering sector.
This was an international conversation with over 25 sessions bringing together over 80 speakers, including Dr Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist & Vice President, Google, USA, and Professor Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning, University of Cambridge, UK.
The key objectives of the event were to connect the global data-centric engineering community for dialogue, idea generation, benchmarking, and networking. They wanted to create a slick broadcast feel with two MCs hosting the event from our studio – Kate Bellingham and Declan Curry.
The Alan Turing Institute contracted Southbank Events Consultancy to manage the large, international list of speakers, with whom we developed a solid working relationship to ensure the event ran without a hitch.
Challenges
- We were working to a packed and tight timeline with a large volume of international speakers with mixed technical understanding and experience of virtual events, as well as Southbank, an external company who were managing the speakers
- There were several highly notable speakers at the event and stakeholders at the institute
- It was a complex setup with two MCs in our London studio, and a second technician in a separate studio managing the incoming virtual speakers
Solutions
- We worked closely with Southbank to create a workflow to ensure all parties worked to time and the same objectives
- We spent time educating all parties involved on the process and functionality of the Hopin platform, including Professor Mark Girolami, the Chief Scientist of The Alan Turing Institute
- To manage language barriers, we simplified our technical instructions and speaker briefings
- We utilised green screen technology in our studio and ran several tests to ensure the talkback setup was optimised so that the two MCs could hear the remote speakers fluidly. We made sure there were no time lag issues with latency testing and we ran extensive audio tests to make sure there was no unwanted sound bleeding into the live stream
- We utilised the breakout room and networking functions within Hopin to facilitate the one-to-one meetings and networking opportunities that were key event objectives
Result
“Given the volume of speakers and the two MCs in the studio, who did no dry runs, we ran the event with no tech issues, and no speaker issues. It had a really slick broadcast feel with super-efficient timings according to the agenda. Through the event, we helped The Alan Turing Institute connect with a global audience and brought some of the biggest names in the industry to the Alan Turing platform, so we feel it was mission accomplished!”
Tom Mahon, Co-Founder London Filmed
