Sophos

BRIEF

Cybersecurity specialists Sophos run an annual customer and partner conference in regions across the globe but, owing to COVID-19 restrictions, were looking to translate it from physical to virtual whilst still incorporating the market specific content and user-driven interactivity created at individual in-person regional events.

Sophos’ physical events have extremely high production values and, as regular users of Zoom, they were looking to create something that was unique and a step-up from their webinar series run through the platform. They were unsure of the benefits of live vs pre-recorded content and wanted to adopt a low risk strategy for the delivery of the event. Sophos were also keen to explore ways they could manage the array of international speakers from within the company and industry experts from third-party organisations to deliver over 40 sessions.

SOLUTION

In collaboration with our partners, Distant Object Productions, we created a series of virtual events scheduled over 4 weeks targeting each region with specific content tailored to their market and in their native language.

With a dedicated host, each unique event was divided into 1-hour segments featuring a blend of pre-recorded and live content in the format of a television broadcast, delivered via a secure platform developed and hosted by First Sight Media.

The innovative format enabled:

• A look and feel of a TV Show, creation of a virtual stage with custom layouts for every view – whether single host with slides or multi-panel discussion. This format was applied to the pre-recorded content too in order to ensure consistency and recreated the‘as live’ feel.
• 15 shows of 3-5 hours with each session featuring a tailored agenda with a blend of international experts and region-specific speakers.
• Shows to be scheduled at times to suit regions, plus centrally hosted in the UK. Broadcast was at all hours of the day and night ensuring optimal timings for each region.
• Events delivered in 7 languages by multilingual hosts and with subtitles added to the pre-recorded sessions where appropriate.
• Sli.do embedded for all to engage, polls, word clouds and Q&A were accessible to the hosts with live contributors to respond to and interact with. Furthermore, we used tickers (scrolling text along the screen) to deliver messages of promotion and information to the audience live.
• ALL presentations pre-recorded for all regions. Employing hybrid techniques (from state-of-the-art, real-time, remote recording to directing presenters for setting up home environments for self-recording) this ensured we could deliver a fully post-produced video, expertly crafted by the Distant Object team.
• High-profile speakers’ content was available for transcription, translation and subtitling (in a variety of languages) alleviating any concerns of the client.
• Utilised two vMix instances, we were also able to create a virtual ‘green room’ for live speakers to connect and discuss poll results or questions whilst the pre-recorded content was playing back.
• Use of our dedicated content delivery network to stream the sessions through our portal ensured smooth delivery to all users across the globe.