THE OPPORTUNITY

The year 2020 was challenging to say the least for clients and partners intent on maintaining a sense of community within their organizations.  Messages and strategies needed to be communicated, relationships fostered and day to day business operations needed to continue more than ever.  While online events are not new to the production industry, the buzz words "Virtual" and "Hybrid" were all the talk as safety concerns changed the world's focus from live, in-person events to a variety of online experiences.

Event Partners, Inc. (www.eventpartners.net) - the Production / Meeting Planning Agency of Record and long-time partners of Office Practicum (www.officepracticum.com) - an industry-leading Pediatric Practice software / solutions provider began investigating a flexible, fully-customizable networking and virtual event platform.  Event Partners, Inc. was briefed by Office Practicum on their "must have's" as they considered a foray into the virtual space. 

The ability for attendees, Office Practicum staff and partners to network was a must.  Fostering a sense of community and connection was critical.  The OP team and clients truly embody the term "work family" and as such - a typical ZOOM meeting would not suffice.  Custom Branding, Sponsorship Opportunities, Keynote Speeches, Wellness Sessions (even a cooking segment that originated via remote location by Cell Phone during a power outage) were on the agenda.  Office Practicum didn't simply want to REPLICATE an in-person event - OP wanted to EXCEED participant's expectations.

Event Partners, Inc. set to work on applying the perfect solution for their partners at Office Practicum and when 4Wall had the opportunity to present their Virtual Event Pro (VEP) to the EP Team - Everything came together.

"Event Partners, Inc. isn't simply invested in technologies, equipment or off-the-shelf processes - we seek to find the most reliable, flexible and purpose-built solutions for each and every one of our client/partner's needs.  All clients are different - just like all events are different - all having unique objectives.  When we saw what 4Wall's VEP (and the team behind it offered) - we knew we had found the PERFECT solution for OP Engage 2021." - (Stephen Beck, Sr. Account Director, Event Partners, Inc.)

THE PROCESS

The team at Office Practicum agreed and so…. The work began!  The 4Wall team and EP went to work on two separate workflows: 

1. The Front of House / Participant Experience - 4Wall Lead:  Luke Lytle
   • The User Experience and virtual portals needed to adopt Office Practicum's corporate branding and appear as an in-house extension of their corporate web site.  The site needed to flow easily, navigate quickly, and include the ability for all participants to create their own, personal avatar and online persona.  
      
   • Custom tutorial videos and online training immersions for the OP team who would work behind the scenes and serve as the content and "energy engine" for the event were held.
      
   • Push notifications, custom countdown timers, music beds, networking lobbies, chat rooms, custom polls supporting a three-track agenda were developed.
      
   • The Event Partners, Inc. approach was to apply time-tested live-event processes into the virtual space - maintaining rigorous production standards across all elements of pre-production.  The 4Wall Team was there every step of the way.
      
2. Production Engineering 4Wall Leads:  Cory Froke & John Keating
   • The event required that 98 remote presenters - all in different locations - needed to create content and pre-record each and every presentation prior to the event.  The 4Wall team facilitated each one seamlessly within a 2-week recording schedule, providing records, remote switching, PowerPoint support, Teleprompter, IFB, Multi-channel intercom, discreet messaging systems, remote (customizable) Multiview monitors for the Event Partners, Inc. team as well as recording portals for every presenter in 28 different sessions within the 2 weeks.
      
   • The media was then transferred to Event Partners, Inc. for Post-Production and prep for live broadcast.
      
   • The live event agenda required three separate production teams and equipment as OP Engage 2021 had three unique agenda tracks.  4Wall provided all the equipment, personnel and technologies to partner with and facilitate Event Partners, Inc.'s 3 Stage Manager's, producers, event docents and technical triage teams all while facilitating show calls and presenters loading into the presentation portal before going live for each session's Q&A.

THE EVENT

Online / Virtual Events can be as intense as live, in-person events and OP Engage 2021 was no small venture!  As hundreds of event participants, sponsor groups and corporate executives flooded the 4Wall / VEP experience came to life, so did the event team's improvisation skills and production expertise.  Presenters were swapped out due to illnesses in which some could not attend, and all were facilitated seamlessly to the attendees.

While attendees watched the sessions, they were able to use Virtual Event Pro's "Ask A Question" feature to submit questions that would be answered live by presenters during the session, along with a real-time generated graphic overlay that displays select information from the profile of the person who submitted the question. The rooms also included a comments section unique to each session and polls. 

In between the live sessions, attendees were given time to interact with the event's 15 sponsors. Sponsors had a branded space to generate leads and interact with attendees through text or video chat. VEP's meeting scheduling system allowed exhibitor reps to schedule attendees to a secure video or audio call that would happen directly through the platform. Other features included an image gallery, video, company bio, resources section, contact form, and link to the sponsor's website. The top-tier sponsors also got to use a brand-new feature of the platform to send platform-wide messages that all attendees would see. 

One of the highlights of the virtual event was the Lounge. The Lounge is VEP's networking hub where attendees can see everyone who is attending, search for other attendees, participate in private and public group chats, and interact with each other via text, video and audio chat. The Lounge was setup with public group chats on various relevant topics that would see tens of thousands of messages come through over the 2-day event. 

When the 2-day event concluded, the VEP team quickly turned around 1.8TB of data from the recordings for attendees to go back and view for another week On-Demand.  

IN SUMMARY

The Office Practicum team were thrilled with not only the live virtual-event itself, but also the team that served their event needs for OP Engage 2021. 

"I feel like you were actually the people behind us helping the whole way - it was all so phenomenally set up.  We received feedback that even when events return to in-person, we want some form of hybrid experience available going forward." - Meredith Cheryba, VP, Sales & Marketing, Office Practicum

"Our relationship with 4Wall and Event Partners Inc., is a true partnership. They are trusted, vital members of the OP team who exceeded our expectations." - Carrie Sjogren, Director of Marketing, Office Practicum

The data and analytics captured by 4Wall/VEP ensuring participants, presenters, sponsors, and corporate executives alike received maximum, data-driven return on their investment.  The 4Wall/VEP and Event Partners, Inc. Teams were ALL IN with Office Practicum for OP Engage 2021!