EVENTEX AWARDS 2023 WINNER: VIRTUAL EVENT PLATFORM VIRTUOZ

Concept

At Kenes Group we don’t want to just sell our societies a virtual platform for their event; we want to partner up their team with ours to envision an end result together and exceed the limits of our creativity to deliver the experience as closely as we can by researching, designing, strategizing, testing and implementing the best-of-breed software in a way that fully integrates the educational component at the core and the human interaction journey.

So throughout the last couple of years, members from our IT, Business Development, Association Management, Online Education, Digital, Marketing and research teams have gathered into clusters by virtual event to work together with our clients to develop something unique and according to their audiences.

In the front end, we develop web designs that connect the venues with the virtual experience, enable networking halls connected to the social media channels of the events, and come up with initiatives such as photography contests to connect the room where the attendees are connecting from with the collective digital experience.

Now, in the backend, our IT team has developed multiple platforms from which we want to highlight today the V-Reports where we can track all sorts of information such as registrations, countries, exhibition booth visits, and on-demand content consumption, among many others.

A few of the most solicited features we provide with VirtuOz have been:

The design of the entrance and lobby accurately reflects a physical venue.

– Our exhibition platform with multiple customisable branding, video embedding, product theatre opportunities and an in-house developed back end for exhibitors ready and easy to use and track data.

– V-Reports access for client view, exhibitor and sponsor view, live statistics updates, on-demand for 3 months post-event.

– Speaker training and rehearsals pre-congress by our experts to ensure smooth execution of all talks,

– AI-based networking opportunities including a custom matchmaking solution designed to connect your delegates to their talks of highest interest and to other delegates worldwide.

Our most unique selling point is that, if the solution that our client is seeking is already out there in the market, we will integrate it. If it doesn’t, we will develop it.

Always delivering excellence no matter what is at the core of our values.

Creativity & Innovation

At Kenes Group we have been talking with our partners and clients about virtual solutions for events for over ten years, but it was the circumstances of the pandemic that raised the project of developing our own platform for digital learning meetings to the top.

In the midst of a crisis and with our value of always delivering excellence, no matter what, our incredibly professional and committed IT team executed the first stage of the development of VirtuOz through sleepless nights of research on best-in-breed technology and its integration in just six months, while at the same time, creating and migrating the content of our most closely upcoming events to external platforms to mitigate the affectation to our client societies.

It has been over a year since then and we have continued to develop VirtuOz and its data-driven back-end as a result of a learning curve that looks more like a learning roller coaster. Every department of Kenes Group has been involved, from our research professionals to Business Development, from Association Management to, of course, IT.

This is how we have delivered both virtual and hybrid events since then, each one of them with different components and combinations of factors, using the knowledge of 58 years of experience in the meetings and associations sector and the trust of our partners and clients.

Some examples of creative approaches are:

– Virtual event inside of the Roman Colosseum! In collaboration with an Italian partner, we put together our best digital designers to bring the Roman experience to the virtual attendees.

– Connecting Mexico with the world! We couldn’t bring the attendees to the venue so we brought the venue to the attendees, including lots of visual footage and even Mexican drinks and meal recipes for the virtual participants to feel the venue’s vibe while attending a conference digitally.

– Attendees could virtually transport themselves in Cape Town’s signature cable car from one session to another.

Achievements & Results

Talent Growth

Uzi Drori became the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Kenes, joining the management in June 2021, after the successful development and implementation of VirtuOz.

Numeric evidence +150 events with a virtual component, either 100% or partial, between 2021 and 2022. +300,000 virtual participants in the last two years. +15,000 hours of on-demand and live-streamed education

Website www.virtuoz.online (July 2021 – January 2023)

+32,000 users 1213 countries 100 languages

Testimonials

“Those who joined on the virtual platform enjoyed a seamless experience with dynamic learning and networking opportunities.” – ICCA

“It was really imperative that we worked with a group that would listen, immediately understand where we were coming from and signed on to that vision. What is so great about Kenes is that they would put something out and if it didn’t meet what we needed they would come on board and we would talk it through and then we would make it and that is a unique experience. Shared visioning is difficult but the collaboration and the trust allowed us to do that”. – American Academy of Neurology

Media coverage

VirtuOz: The virtual factor of the hybrid formula at ICCA Congress 2021: https://www.iapco.org/news/virtuoz-the-virtual-factor-of-the-hybrid-formula-at-icca-congress-2021/

El congreso mundial de ICCA se extiende a una ambiciosa experiencia online: https://www.eventoplus.com/casos/el-congreso-mundial-de-icca-se-extiende-a-una-ambiciosa-experiencia-online/

Shift to virtual recognised as organisers scoop industry awards: https://amimagazine.global/News/Shift-to-virtual-recognised-as-organisers-scoop-industry-awards