Tag: user conference

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Multilingual Virtual Sessions & Live in NYC

The past three months working with Agency J on two high-profile, external-facing events for Client M have been an incredible experience. The agency’s account team trusted me with client communications and ensured I had all the resources needed to succeed.

The first two months were dedicated to a virtual event that featured 60-minute content from a dozen presenters, enhanced with motion graphics throughout. This was far more complex than traditional slide presentations, but we were fortunate to collaborate closely with the client’s content lead and the agency’s graphic designers in a series of brainstorming sessions. The result was a dynamic, visually stunning presentation, with floating graphics complementing the speakers. Adding another layer of complexity, the event was live-streamed in five languages, with subtitles and native speakers introducing English-speaking presenters. That’s five hours of content (5 languages @ one hour).  I personally QC’d the Japanese translation.

Sipping coffee after the NYC event on a hotel rooftop

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Disneyland for Video Game Enthusiasts

It was fun to work for this agency for the first time in six years.  I was asked to play an assistant stage manager role for this video game publisher’s fan festival event in Long Beach.   It took me a while to figure out the show flow and my exact responsibilities because the 200-page script is complicated and rehearsal schedules were tight.

A couple of thousand avid gamer attendees had a lot of fun. Katy Perry, who sings the theme song for the game, made a surprise cameo appearance. She was beautiful and super engaging with the crowd. Check her out at 5:33:00 into this link.  Also, the 17-person orchestral ensemble did an amazing performance of the game songs. That’s at 9:00:00.  Music is indeed a beautiful part of this game.

Setting up props on stage.  I was trying to be invisible.

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San Francisco Hotel Strike

It was my privilege to work on one of the biggest enterprise user conferences in the city.  While this event finished successfully, the city of San Francisco displayed the reality of the wage discrepancy between the tech industry and others.

This city-wide hotel strike has been going on for weeks.  It is ironic that the conference brings in so much revenue to the local hospitality industry, but its 60,000 attendees were not getting the services they deserved.  When I was at a Union Square hotel (one of the venues for the event), I could not locate some equipment because the hotel personnel misplaced it, which probably would not have happened if their regular workers were on staff.

Moscone Hall D

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Kudos to Simultaneous Interpreters

I have worked on this huge enterprise user conference in San Francisco since 2011. My role changes every year from an interpreter to a webcast producer.  This year, I was assigned to setting up translation booths. It was interesting to find out every location has its logistical challenges, and they are all scattered throughout downtown San Francisco. The technical director and the producer for each venue were super cooperative even though some sites were managed by another agency.   Luckily, Client O has been providing this translation service and hired the same group of seasoned simultaneous interpreters for a number of years. Agency I also had an established conferencing equipment vendor who utilized the same audio techs every year.  It turned out that I was the only newbie, but the executive producer downloaded me all the nuances of my role.  The receivers were available to a fraction of attendees out of 60,000.  However, this segment of the audience was very important for Client O, and a lot of efforts were made to provide this service.

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Live Streaming from Orlando

This is my first time for me to work for Client S.  Agency I booked me six months ago, but the majority of my work happened a month leading up to the event.  My role was to manage live streaming and video-on-demand for the 3-day general sessions.  Managing two new vendors took me a while to figure out their process.  Because the venue (Orange County Convention Center in Orlando) is huge, I chose comfort over fashion and wore running shoes most of the time.  Who cares?  I was in the dark backstage as you can see.

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Live Streaming from Tokyo International Forum

The venue was Tokyo International Forum which is very impressive architecturally. This is my fifth time working as a live-streaming producer for Client O. I had already visited the venue for a location scout last summer, which was a big help. Unlike a similar event I did for the same client three years ago in Tokyo, we had good pre-production in place as some lessons were learned from past experience. Live streaming went well without any technical glitches thanks to my supervisors, John and Tim as well as the client and the local production company on the Tokyo side.

The only disappointment is that I missed cherry blossoms by one week.

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