Austrian Standards – Construction Roundtable (High Number of Speakers)

Overview

The Austrian Angel Investors Association in combination with Austrian Startups decided to join the Startup World Cup and bring the competition to Austria. Their goal was to uncover the new, upcoming startups across the country while promoting entrepreneurship throughout Austria.

The Challenges

For this project, there were 3 main challenges:

Challenge 1, the technical setup. Due to the nature of their format, Startup Demos or Competitions are particularly complicated because there are 5 different groups of people that need to interact with one another at different levels.

• The Moderator, need to see, hear, and talk to the startups and the jury. Sometimes also read questions from the audience.
• The Jury/Investors, need to see, hear, and talk to each other as a group but also to the startups and the moderator.
• The Startups, need to be able to present to the jury and the moderator. Once their pitch is finished, they need to join the audience to network and answer questions directly.
• The Audience, needs to be able to see and hear what the startups, moderator, and jury are discussing; as well as, chat with one another, network, and interact with the sponsors.
• The Sponsors, need to be able to interact with the audience, and also see and hear the main content.

Challenge 2, stakeholder preparation. Making sure so many different stakeholders are properly prepared and setup for a smooth performance. That means that they have the right equipment, the software has the proper authorizations, and they know how to use it once they are live.

Challenge 3, production workflow and project management. Making sure that a group of people who has never worked together before, with different levels of knowledge, experience, and perspectives on the vision, from different cultural backgrounds, all working remotely, with different organizational cultures and processes, how to make sure everybody is on the same page, knowing what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

The Solution

Challenge 1. We grouped the moderator, startups, and jury into one group and called very creatively Group A, and the participants and the partners were grouped into... you've guessed it, Group B.

Because of the complexity of the relationship between the Group A and Group B, as well as the need to have dedicated spaces for networking, sponsor booths, stage for the main content, it was decided to use the virtual event platform called Hopin (our go-to platform)

This platform allowed Participants and Sponsors (Group B) to watch the competition from "the stage," network with one another, and engage with the startups once their pitch was ready and they had joined the platform.

As for Group A, they are not in Hopin, they are in MS Teams. Now, because the jury needs to be able to discuss individually without anybody else hearing them, they were in their own MS Teams call. This means that the startups had to be in a separate MS Teams call.

So finally, with the speakers and the jury each in a different MS Teams call, we virtually embed their video, slides, and audio into a professional live streaming software, add brand-aligned graphics, pre-recorded videos, background music, timers, and covers to produce a professional virtual event experience.

With the event signal combined, we broadcast the content into Hopin where the participants were able to watch the event.

Challenge 2. was solved by developing a short training speakers go through to ensure they know how to work the system and how to improve the quality of their content, an individual 5 minute tech check, and lastly, a second tech check happening 1 hour before going live.

Challenge 3. was solved by increasing the ongoing communication levels; as well as, the level of knowledge support provided to ensure key elements relevant to the production don't fall through the cracks. With a combination of training and our Project Management tool, knowledge is increased while communication becomes transparent to every member involved.

These solutions are all elements of the webinarPRO System, BSEEN's proprietary process to consistently ensuring a high-level production quality, excellent customer experience, and valuable event participation. 

Click here to learn more about the webinarPRO System

The Results

When the organizers of the competition came to us, they were struggling to figure out a way to professionally bring all stakeholders together in a way that is expected of their brand. 

Both the Austrian Angel Investors Association (AAIA) and the Austrian Startups (AS) are well recognized organizations across the country, and will they thrive through innovation, production simply has to work from the start. 

And it did.

Resulting in a series of 3 hours long startup competition events, where top startups from different regions across Austria were selected, came together to a final showdown in Vienna, and the winner went on to compete internationally for the big prize.

With the series completed, we went ahead to produce 2 more events for them; as well as, an upcoming conference happening in October, 2021.