Creative Technology: A look into one of the world’s leading event technology companies

For long, innovation has been at the heart of technology. It has been the lifeblood for many new technological innovations, & has lead to some of the greatest discoveries of all time.

Innovation is a need for almost every industry, especially more so for the event industry considering the volatile times being faced by it currently.

With the COVID-19 pandemic severely hitting all major & minor physical events, it looked like the event industry had come to a standstill.

But that didn’t last long, & very soon, many event agencies adapted to Virtual Events as a way to keep their operations running.

Just like it was in history, some companies adapted to the challenge in a much better way than the others, owing to the same innovative spirit we discussed earlier in the article.

Today, we are going to be opening up the floor to one such event technology company that adapted to the dynamic world of virtual & Hybrid Events pretty quickly.

We are going to be looking into their services, their offerings, case studies of some of their most successful virtual/hybrid events, along with their motivations & success mantra.

Creative Technology: Who are they?

Creative Technology is among the world’s leading event technology companies, delivering world class innovation & technological solutions to a vast range of industries.

Their clientele includes Film & TV, Sports organizations, Corporates, Exhibition, Entertainment, & the music industry, to name a few.

Their services focus on bringing together world-class design, advice, support, & technology to make possible anything from gigantic screen displays to content creation & delivery platforms.

What do they do?

Creative Technology is a part of the NEP group, which is the world’s premier provider of outsourced technology, staging, & production to brands, event planners, & content creators around the world.

With 25 offices in around 15 countries, & a full-scale operations office in London, Gatwick, Creative Technology provides high-quality event production & Virtual Event services to their clients.

Alongside a global network of dedicated offices & facilities, they also have considerable in-house resources spanning broadcast, media solutions, & live events.

What makes them successful?

Their collective passion, innovation, integrity, & a one-team-approach is behind almost every success the company has had in the past years, & continues to have currently.

Their USPs include the ability to provide permanent virtual event facilities to clients around the globe & the diversified technological solutions they provide.

Right from green screen set to an xR sound stage, & much more, no virtual event production technology is out of their league.

With full-fledged inventory offices in the Europe, the USA, the Middle East, & the Asia-Pacific regions, Creative Technology is well-equipped to give their clients 360-degree virtual event production help.

What works best in their favour is also their focus on enriching the quality of the event content & the human connection element.

They seem to understand well that events work best when the content & connections are high-quality, & are fully leveraged to derive the most benefit from it.

Their Virtual/Hybrid Event production services include:

• xR stages
• Live Event Spaces
• Production Studios
• Streaming Platforms

Virtual/Hybrid Event Examples:

Creative Technology, owing to their deft technological solutions suite, has been a part of many successful Virtual & Hybrid Events.

We take a look at some of these events below.

The Annual GCCA Conference 2020: Creative Technology (CT) worked in close coordination with the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) to help deliver its 3rd annual Conference from Riverside Studios Hammersmith. The virtual event was live-streamed to a global audience on the 6th and 7th October, 2020.

The initial challenge faced by Rob Day (Senior Project Manager) and Emma Rössl, (Project Manager), was finding a suitable venue with the required internet bandwidth, the key to establishing a high-quality connection. It is also vital in delivering a successful online event.

To add to their problems, all spaces at CT’s Crawley facility were fully booked. However, they were able to receive help from the Riverside Studios, as they provided them their Studio 2 for the two-day event.

Virtual Event supplies:

• a curved LED screen,
• relay/comfort monitors,
• PPU,
• video switching,
• cameras and comms for the studio set up.

Besides these, CT also provided full lighting and rigging, along with scenic backgrounds and furniture to create a professional stage environment.

In addition to this, CT also pre-recorded and edited a three-camera shoot with LCD backdrop, lighting, and audio in a separate studio present onsite for inclusion in the main event.

Pre-Event Testing:

As with any virtual event that heavily relies on remote contributors, link testing and pre-records were integral. One week prior to the show, CT performed remote link-up tests to each of the speakers and a number of pre-recording tests. These included the show Producer and GCCA’s Communication and Policy Director, Paul Adeleke, who joined these records via a separate Zoom link. It gave them the ability to watch & give feedbacks on the pre-recorded presentations in real-time.

Marantz AVS combined webcam, ring lights, and microphone kits to bring in the 26 remote contributors from across the globe. CT also sent 26 kits along with headphones to the contributors to use with their own laptops. CT also installed NEP Home Studio Software in all the event systems to ensure consistent quality from each connection and speaker throughout the event.

They also installed a complex show comms system onsite that was crucial to the success of the show; the system helped to connect over 40 people. They also devised an intricately engineered video and audio routing system to give the team the flexibility to react and change routing and signal paths from control surfaces as and when required.

Impressed & in awe of the efforts that CT had put into making the virtual event a success, Paul Adeleke, GCCA Communications & Policy Director said “We were very happy with the programme and execution. It was a very important conference for us to showcase the industry’s sustainability commitment and bring our members together in a compelling way online. The feedback from our members was very positive. It was professionally delivered and whilst not without its challenges on site, the overall production was very smooth when you consider the geographical spread, volume of remote contributors and the myriad technical issues to overcome.”

BK Events

In June 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Creative Technology (CT) took on the challenge of delivering a virtual event for a long-term client, Bernie Kearns of BK Events. The client was an international blue-chip company, which raised the bar for the virtual event expectation even higher.

Over the weeks leading up to the event, CT worked closely with Bernie to find the best technical solutions to deliver their vision for this virtual event. Achieving the final brief would be no mean feat, running three simultaneous 90 minute live virtual shows twice over one day in six different languages!

CT set up multiple control rooms in the remote production suite ‘The Bridge’, plus two additional Covid-secure spaces across their offices in London, Gatwick — each containing Carbonite and Grass Valley Korona PPU switching systems.

They used Quicklink software links and NEP Home Studio boxes to link remote presenters back to the control rooms, ensuring low-latency, high-quality streams.

Chris Greetham-Ellis, Senior Project Manager at CT commented, “As we start to deliver more virtual events, we are continuously improving our workflows and processes. With this event, all six Producers and the Executive Producer from client side were based remotely. This was challenging for us in new ways and led us to relying heavily on remote multiviewers and IP comms.”

CT also used Artist and Unity IP comms to securely link all the crew on-site, remote producers, and show callers, allowing for effective, real-time communication. This also allowed Chris Greetham-Ellis, CT’s Senior Project Manager, and the remote Producer to communicate with The Bridge from their respective homes, where they were able to view the production on multiviewers over low latency links.

Bernie Kearns commented, “With all aspects of what we have done in the past, now is a new way of working and an extremely steep learning curve for all. I have to say, working with all the highly skilled and knowledgeable team at CT made it a lot easier.”

Do you know any such brilliant Virtual Event Technology agencies that over-delivered in 2020–2021? Let us know their names so that we can give them the recognition & praise they deserve through this space.