American College of Cardiology (ACC)

Challenge:

For over 70 years, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) has been holding in-person conferences offering meetings, lectures, and opportunities for networking to strengthen participants’ cardiology knowledge. The ACC is a worldwide cardiology organization that thrives on being able to offer engaging conference experiences that cannot be found anywhere else.

When pandemic restrictions prevented the ACC from holding their annual in-person conference in 2021, they quickly pivoted to a virtual format. It was their first time offering a virtual event, and they feared that participants would miss the hands-on experience they were familiar with from past in-person events.

Solution:

Preparations for the virtual ACC.21 conference began in early March when ACC pre-recorded many of their sessions with the help of Mediasite Events. The conference was scheduled for May. Pre-recording sessions helped the ACC ensure that all of their content was ready in time for the event and also helped alleviate some day-of pressure for conference organizers. In just a few short months, the ACC was able to host a very successful conference with over 250 sessions and extremely positive feedback from attendees.

“Mediasite did a great job. Throughout the entire conference, there were no hiccups in terms of the sessions. The Mediasite Events team was a critical part of ensuring this whole conference succeeded,” shared Chung Lee, Senior Director IT. “They were so helpful not only from a capture and streaming standpoint but also in pulling together all of the elements of our event from recording, taking care of our presenters, offering simulated live streaming, addressing security concerns, and providing very specific post-production editing.  They also helped to coordinate interactions between the ACC and their virtual platform provider.”

At in-person conferences, networking happens organically. The ACC, like many others, was concerned they would lose that important networking component with a virtual event. However, the ACC was able to implement virtual spaces for participants to network as well as other interactive elements to enhance the virtual conference experience thanks to the Mediasite Events platform.

“Our attendees need to be able to engage with other members, faculty, and presenters,” Lee says. “We’re a worldwide cardiology organization. Attendees come to the ACC to hear the most innovative research and current approaches to heart disease and cardiovascular health from the top cardiologists in the world. We knew we had to offer a networking aspect to the conference.  We set up structured virtual networking where folks could pop into a breakout room and select tables, or they could chat within the platform,” Lee explains. “This created a more open space for participants to meet each other and feel welcomed at the conference.”

ACC.21 also offered multiple viewing options, including live streaming and on-demand viewing. This allowed participants to watch the content both during and after the event, making the event more accessible for all attendees, regardless of their location and busy schedules. The ACC partnered with Mediasite Events to implement the simulated live streaming portion of the event allowing participants to join sessions in real-time and connect with other attendees and to re-watch or catch up on sessions they missed after the conference.

Results:

The ACC has worked with Mediasite Events on large-scale conference events for many years. Even though this was their first fully virtual event, planning and implementation was smooth and efficient.

“We have spent almost 10 years working with the Mediasite Events team, and they continue to execute events at a high level,” Lee shares. “When we’ve worked with Mediasite Events, there has never been a difference in delivery no matter who we work with. The high level of execution has remained the same, and that speaks volumes on how the Mediasite team approaches everything they do.”

The ability to re-watch sessions has resulted in long-lasting engagement with conference content. The ease of connecting and viewing content provides members, physicians, and others in the industry an opportunity to easily stay up-to-date on all aspects of cardiology health.

“To me, working with a partner for this many years is really important and valuable,” Lee says. “It just shows the level of professionalism that Sonic Foundry continues to deliver. The Mediasite Events team continues to help lead our team to success when it comes to our conferences and they are a pleasure to work with.”