SigFox Virtual Connect 2020

Agency twogether approached us to virtualise Sigfox’s annual conference: A one-off event that in previous years has been a large, physical conference, held in various locations around the world.

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.

Objectives.

Sigfox wanted a virtual conference that was interactive and easy to use, and be available to thousands of attendees as they had a high calibre of speakers from world renowned companies including Google and Microsoft. The requirements for the event included a registration system, presentation software, a virtual live agenda, and an area for sponsors to interact with attendees and showcase some content from their business.

What we did.

This event was different to a normal live streamed virtual conference because all of the presentations were pre-recorded and played out as live during the open days. Our Project Management team combined the 50+ pre-recorded videos with the matching presentations, ensuring the slides were in the right order. All of the video content was put into our EckoEnterprise software as on-demand individual presentations, and stored in the backend of EckoEnterprise within the Sigfox website we built.

Our development team built the Sigfox website from scratch, starting with a holding page of Sigfoxconnect.com and integrating our registration page within an iframe. Agency twogether created the web designs for each page which we used for the interactive page builds. We provided a link on the login and registration page back to the Sigfox website where ticketing took place.

The first day of the event was a private, closed day for the agents and internal partners of Sigfox. Specific pre-recorded content was played out live with live Q&A at the end of each session. Other content was made available to the participants to watch at their leisure. At the end of the day, we removed about 60% of the content from the on-demand section in the back-end so it could play out as live according to the conference schedule and mixed through the platform for the following two open days, with a live Q&A afterwards with the people who did each presentation. We then put the pre-recorded presentation on demand straight away as they finished for users to download immediately after. If presenters ran out of time at the Q&A, they could invite attendees into the spatial break out rooms we created to continue their discussions. There were 5 categories in the on-demand catalogue. In each one of those was a spatial break out room, or networking rooms. For example, if someone was interested in the security platform, they could choose the security break out room to interact live with people who are interested in that specific topic.

On the Sponsors page, we also integrated text chat for the platinum sponsors, so they had a text chat window in their room that people could use to talk with them directly. In the live area, on the live days, there was also an active agenda on the right hand side, which told the user what’s currently live and what was coming up next. They would link directly to the live presentations if clicked on. The personal event agenda tab in the left menu also linked directly to the presentations. We created the personal agenda so users could select specific presentations they wanted to attend, and it would be added to their “My Connect” tab.

The biggest challenge for this project was building the entire website platform from scratch and managing all of the pre-recorded presentations. We blocked out 3 full weeks to complete the recordings withe a dedicated project manager and engineer assigned to that hefty task.

“We are so grateful for your help and support in making this happen. All of you have worked very hard to engage with our SOs, partners and sponsors, get good content and deliver it in the most engaging and professional way.”

Cecilia Monti, Marketing Director, Sigfox.

the results.

On the first day, which was their private partner day, they had a total of 184 unique visitors and averaged 80 viewers consistently throughout the day, which the client was happy with. All of the content was available on demand for this first exclusive day.

On the first open day, there was a total of 1,159 unique attendees with a peak live view of 455 at one time, averaging around 300 consistently throughout the day. Over 150 questions were submitted throughout the presentations, with an average viewer duration at 2 hours, which is fantastic for an online conference with this many attendees.

On the second open day, there were a total of 615 unique attendees, with a peak live view count of 240 at one time, averaging around 160 consistent users throughout. The average viewing time was 2 hours 36 minutes with over 173 questions sent in throughout the day.

Agency twogether and Sigfox were brilliant clients to work with, which was really helpful in making this really large and complex project enjoyable for our team who worked tirelessly for the lead-up to this event.