Defence Space 2020

Agency Curate42 approached us to create a bespoke virtual conference: Defence Space 2020. A paid event for audiences around the world, showcased their partnership with International Space Pitch Day.

We built the entire conference as a website, with our corporate presentation software, EckoEnterprise, embedded within it to create a seamless branded experience for attendees. There were a lot of elements involved, including managing the onboarding and presentations of over 50 speakers, the release of on-demand content, creating graphic overlays and delivering a compelling attendee and sponsor experience.

Objectives.

The ASPA wanted an interactive virtual conference that spanned two days, combining an array of space related live sessions as well as the first International Space Pitch day: A government backed initiative to find, fund and fast track innovative technology in the space domain. They also required a networking space for sponsors and media to be built into the platform.

“Defence Space 2020 will be a timely demonstration of the UK’s ambition in the Space Domain: our future programmes; the opportunities as well as the challenges to our national interests in space; and a showcase for our world-class space industrial sector. Our inaugural Conference in 2018 was a huge success; the 2020 Conference will be even better.”

Mike Wigston, Air Chief Marshal

What we did.

This conference was a bespoke build using our EckoEnterprise software to create the online platform, accessible from the Defence Space 2020 website and designed to be a seamless extension of their brand. We worked with Air & Space Power Association for user registration, to ensure users were registered externally and incorporated into our platform which ensured smooth sign-ins. The conference consisted of sponsors’ pre-recorded content as well as live video content from various speakers. We worked with the Curate 42 team to onboard speakers for both live and on-demand sessions, as well as bespoke graphics for the webcast to elevate the event’s branded experience.

The International Space Pitch Day was incorporated into the event, which allowed audiences to see the pitches for a prize of £800,000 from the UK and US governments. This part of the conference consisted of 3 hours of live streamed pitches, where we created a presentation within a presentation where over 15 firms gave a 10-minute pitch with slides. The live panel of judges was also displayed for users on screen throughout the stream. We streamed these presentations both within the online platform as well as to YouTube for the duration of the three-hour International Space Pitch Day. The second day consisted mostly of live panels with the UK National Space Academy, Ministry of Defence and senior scientists of major organisations like AirBus. At the end of the conference, there was a direct address from Ben Wallace MP, the Secretary of State for Defence.

All of the live sessions from the conference were made available to watch on demand shortly after each presentation was completed and continue to be available for those who registered until the 17th of February 2021. We also embedded a QR code into the streams which allowed participants to scan it which linked to a specific mobile app where they could ask questions to the host of the International Space Pitch Day. The host then chose from the questions sent in and asked those questions to the finalists at the end of the day.

The biggest challenge for us was managing the large number of international speakers (50+) across different time zones and ensuring the connections worked between them, their hosts, and their correct presentations were streamed to YouTube and EE in real time.

the results.

The conference was a huge success with 651 registrations, 397 unique live viewers on Day 1 and 334 unique viewers on Day 2. ASPA and the Ministry of Defense were very happy with the high interaction as well as the branded experience of the online platform that fit perfectly with the MOD website.