At Going Live Events, we help some amazing organisations to host fantastic events. As we often get asked afterwards, “What were the challenges” or “How did you manage this behind the scenes”, I’d like to share some of the details for this online conference, held on 15th and 16th April 2021.

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/dsc-translator-2021

Hosted by the utterly fabulous, Amelia Mink, this 2-day event featured an ambitious schedule of spectacularly qualified speakers, who were all very well known and respected in the data science field. The line-up was an international array of great speakers, mostly in the USA, but often in other timezones too. Equally, the audience for this event (around 2,000 attendees) were tuning in from all corners of the globe.

The logistics of the show were this:

1. The full event was hosted on Crowdcast.
2. 49 speakers over 2 days
3. Multi-session event, giving choice to the attendees.
4. This means the audience would be split, and can only be “pulled” to a session which didn’t clash with others (such as when the host was addressing the attendees, or the panel sessions). 
5. Multiple sessions happening at the same time.
6. Sessions did not end at the same time, so keeping tabs on the clock was vital.
7. Some sessions were very short.
8. Some sessions had prerecorded content, from and RTMP feed, and others with looping video from Vimeo.

Here you can see a copy of my show schedule, with my notes and ticks as I progressed through the event. >>

Whilst the first day of the event was entirely linear, with one session leading to the next, day 2 was much more of a logistical challenge.

My Setup

Altogether I had 6 screens to use:

1. My main Windows PC has 3 screens which really helps to spread things out.
2. I used 3 separate browsers, to separate out the instances of my mic and camera being connected to each – Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Comodo Dragon.
3. On my PC, I used Manycam, which means my camera and mic can be connected to multiple browsers at the same time.
4. My Windows laptop was also logged in, to manage more sessions. Between the pc and laptop, I could prep 2 sessions and speakers to go live, and also be ready to end 2 sessions that were finishing.
5. I have an android tablet logged into the event as an attendee, for monitoring purposes.
6. My iPhone was logged into the event via the Crowdcast App, as an attendee.
7. I was balancing 3 x headphones on my pc, laptop, and iPhone.