Event Technology
Utilize Technology To Best Meet Your Needs
Technology needs will vary based on the complexity of the event. It is important to understand that the technology infrastructure will also vary venue to venue or by hotel, based on the available equipment and bandwidth. Advance planning and careful implementation can ensure the most complex technical event sessions succeed.
Livestream Logistics
It is important to evaluate the combined bandwidth capacity required by all the simultaneous live streams during each hour block of the conference, including the number of breakout sessions generating livestreams.
Work with the production company to understand the amount of dedicated bandwidth required for the speaker livestreams.
The speaker livestream connections should be hardwired/ethernet connections, if possible.
Smaller breakouts connected to a hybrid meeting may require a minimum of 10mbps each to support the livestream.
Expect higher-production livestreams for keynote speakers in larger venues to require up to 25mbps. Your event manager should work with the video production teams to determine the minimum bandwidth requirements.
Consider keeping your livestreaming to a minimum and pre-record as much content as possible in order to mitigate connectivity issues, as well as decrease internet costs if broadcasting in a hotel.
Advice from the Experts
Collaborate With Your AV and IT Partners
You aren’t alone in planning the technical details of your event. The hotel’s IT team, who is responsible for overseeing IT preparations and execution, will evaluate and control several components for you:
- Deploying Wi-Fi access points to ensure sufficient Wi-Fi coverage
- Providing pre-event planning and real-time IT support to production teams overseeing the livestream feeds.
- Establishing network and IT security
- Coordinating power drops needed for more complex events
Work with your IT team through every step of the planning process. Based on complexity, your event may require access to several network and port settings in order to operate at optimum speeds. Hard-wired connections might require additional planning and labor, which may take extra time to troubleshoot.
Bandwidth Fundamentals
Understanding the hotel’s bandwidth capacity to support your event both virtually and in-person comes down to infrastructure and the bandwidth pipe, also known as the WAN circuit bandwidth size.
- General bandwidth questions can be directed to the event manager.
- For complex events, the hotel’s IT team or vendor should perform an analysis that views WAN bandwidth consumption from two sources to ensure sufficient capacity.
- If you do not have a historical usage report, work with the IT provider to review your requirements. It is recommended that you separate the livestream sessions from general conference usage.
- The in-house attendees of the event will generate the typical bandwidth demand (mostly via wi-fi) when using email, social media and other popular business/personal apps.
Audiovisual (AV) Equipment
Based on complexity and size of the event, the hotel’s in-house audiovisual provider will supply you with the appropriate AV equipment. Most virtual platforms do not need special equipment to provide a seamless production. Run tests for equipment and internet stability to ensure your back-ups and contingency plans are working properly.
