Milwaukee-based American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy saw its Annual Meeting attendance grow exponentially the past few years. That was a great thing for the membership organization but a roadblock when it came to finding space in the venues to accommodate everyone.
“About 2,600 people attended our 2017 meeting,” said Alex Wendland, digital communications manager for ASGCT. “We expected growth for our 2018 event, but we were surprised when we grew by 30 percent in one year.”
ASGCT, with a membership base of clinicians, medical researchers, graduate students and patient advocates for gene and cell therapy, first turned to streaming video at its 20th Annual Meeting last year in Washington, D.C.
“Quite frankly, we didn’t have enough space in some of our session rooms. We book our meeting spaces so far in advance that we weren’t necessarily able to keep up with the demand. Having a live streaming service was suddenly going to be a necessity,” Wendland said. “We needed a service that was easy to use, reliable and worked out of the box.”
Mediasite Connect, Mediasite’s latest event-based offering, had everything ASGCT needed.
Connect is an out-of-the-box solution that provides turnkey event streaming services to conferences and events of all sizes. It’s designed to be a one-stop shop – a secure online YouTube-esque portal where attendees can register and pay for, watch and engage with and share video content.
The Mediasite Events team streamed select sessions at the 2017 and 2018 meetings, live and on-demand so that attendees were able to see all the sessions, even if they weren’t able to be in the room in-person.
After the meetings, ASGCT works with Mediasite Events to share the recordings with its members for review anytime in a secure Mediasite video portal. Powerful search lets members filter and sort for a customized viewer experience to easily find the content that they need.
“Mediasite’s team made the entire experience easy on our staff from set-up to delivering final session recordings the week after the meeting,” Wendland said. “Our attendees had few questions about using the service and our analytics showed viewership grew throughout the week, so people clearly liked using the service.”
Learn more about Mediasite Connect.
Photo credit: Michelle Kanaar Photography/ASGCT