Seoul Discusses the Post-Corona Era!<br/>‘CAC Global Summit 2020’<br/>/Hybrid Event
Hybrid event (online+offline) audience-free event operation ‘CAC Global Summit 2020’
Speaker management & on-site operation by Chris & Partners
From June 1 to 5, over 5 days, the Seoul Metropolitan Government held ‘the Cities Against COVID-19 Mayors' Meeting for Cooperation and Solidarity in COVID-19 Response’, namely ‘CAC Global Summit 2020,’ as an online international conference. The convention industry—a gathering industry whose core was in-person networking—met the unprecedented situation of all event holding being halted due to COVID-19. Amid this situation, the Seoul Metropolitan Government held, in terms of scale, an online international conference that could be almost the first domestically, or perhaps even the first worldwide.
Usually, when you say online meeting, you can easily think of an online video conference run on a video-conferencing platform like Zoom or Webex. This CAC Global Summit 2020 set up a set inside Seoul City Hall so that domestic speakers came to the set in person to attend the meeting, and overseas speakers unable to attend due to COVID-19 and domestic and overseas audiences connected online to attend—run as a hybrid-event-format event.
There's a video that summarizes the event short and sweet, so we share it. :)
Source: Seoul Metropolitan Government YouTube
As you can see in the video, it boasts the largest scale ever for a contactless, audience-free event. Over a total of 5 days it ran 15 sessions, with a total of 156 speakers (86 overseas speakers) taking part, conducted over a total of 23 hours.
We at Chris & Partners handled, at this event, speaker invitation and management, and on-site operation. Amid the trend of converting from offline meetings to online meetings (webinars), if there's something evaluated as one of the most important competencies, it's exactly the ‘speaker invitation and management' area.
Online meetings let you attend the meeting anytime, anywhere as long as you can connect online, so in terms of speaker invitation, the work has become considerably simpler than before. There's also no logistics management like flights and accommodation, so there's a considerable cost-saving aspect, and from the speaker's standpoint too, the burden has greatly decreased since there's no consuming several days before and after the event crossing continents and overcoming time differences.
But on the other hand, the part that requires even more vigilance is exactly the invited-speaker management area. By the nature of an online meeting where everything is conducted live, the speaker's online-connection management came to play a very important role.
The photo above shows an advance technical rehearsal with Professor Jared Diamond, one of the most important speakers at this event. The figure in red on the far-right screen is exactly Chris & Partners' director Kim Song-yi, checking through the rehearsal, taking meticulous care of every single part mentioned above.
Chris & Partners, based on its many webinar/online video-conference operation know-how, built a ‘video-conference speaker management manual’ and takes every precaution—down to meticulous parts such as technical connection, the speakers' filming angle as shown on screen, lighting brightness, audio quality, gaze handling, and presentation-material sharing—so there's not the slightest difficulty or awkwardness.
Since it was an audience-free meeting, all viewers could watch every session via YouTube; they could comfortably watch every session flowing like water, but please remember there were also staff who worked through the night for several days for those sessions. :) Lastly, we'll close the post with the dialogue session between Professor Jared Diamond, whom we at Chris & Partners invited, and Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon. The author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Professor Jared Diamond is also well known as a representative friend of Korea. He's someone who truly loves Korea, even saying he'd love to come to Korea again. Inviting such a celebrity is also a very important part of running an online video conference. Rather than coming to Korea and attending a meeting as a one-off and ending, as before, the advantage—and disadvantage—of an online meeting is that the session keeps remaining online, and the checkpoint directly tied to this is exactly the copyright issue. Don't forget that if you don't thoroughly coordinate copyright from the time of invitation, disputes could arise later. While preparing a webinar/online event, if you have anything needed regarding speaker invitation, please inquire with us at Chris & Partners anytime. We always provide the best solution for our clients. By the nature of an online meeting, since it runs in real time, unpredictable sudden situations can arise, but Chris & Partners' professional technicians are stationed on-site from before the event starts until it ends, so they can always be prepared for any eventuality. Chris & Partners—if you start together from event planning, you can hold a successful on/offline event.