Case study
ncat ‘Accessible Transport Summit’ 2024
A research arm of Coventry University, the National Institute of Accessible Transport, was awarded a £20M grant from Motability in 2023 to improve transport for people with disabilities. 18 months on, they held their first Summit conference to report their latest activity and pathfind for the next 18 months.
CUOL supported with a full hybrid event provision, ensuring any and all people who couldn’t access the event in person (validating the very purpose of the ncat organisation) were still able to be included with an equal experience.
CUOL worked in close collaboration with the ncat team, as well as a market reseach company called Thinks Insight. Our client required support in four areas:
– Designing the strategy for a hybrid event, including audience viewing, engagement and contribution methods,
– Managing the hybrid platform for all online attendees, including providing induction training and materials
– Live streaming all presentation content both into the hybrid platform, and onto YouTube for a one-way consumer audience
– Creating a full-loop conversation system so that online participants could talk into the physical room, and vice versa
Hybrid event management
A hybrid event needs a carefully designed camera and microphone system to act as the eyes and ears of the online audience. CUOL provided this system through a broad spectrum of cameras, vision mixers, video matricies, audio equipment, processing units and more! This came together as a ‘portable TV studio’ to produce a livestream worthy of broadcast!
Virtual event platform
We selected Engageli as the hybrid platform for this event because of its rather unique function of having virtual tables for participants that run concurrently to the content of the main room – like having breakout rooms in Teams or Zoom, whilst still being able to see the main presentation content. This meant virtual tables could hold their own conversations without broadcasting to the whole room, but without being cut off from the main presentation content.
Full-loop conversation
As part of our livestream systems planning we included the opportunity for members of the virtual audience, including key speakers and facilitators, to talk to both online and physical audiences. But we took this further, and even had the Presenter stood on the main stage in London, talking to someone from Canada in seamless back-and-forth conversation!
“CUOL were tirelessly supportive, effective, and collaborative throughout the process, and were never less than highly professional and proactive, which was very much appreciated as the day itself was very important to ncat from a PR and participant satisfaction perspective.
As the lead event organiser, I cannot state enough how reassuring it was to know, and be able to rely on, the knowledge that whatever issue arose Paul and his team would deal with it and get the best outcome for all involved.
I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending them as a fantastically professional and committed team who I’m sure bring added value to every project they undertake.”
Cathryn Thompson-Goodwin
– Centre Manager, National Centre for Accessible Transport