Event: Sun Life Financial Investor Day

Location: Boston

Event Profile
Flying in 60 top institutional analysts from around the continent would be challenge enough for one meeting. But for Sun Life Financial's first major investor day in November 2002, that was just the beginning. The Toronto-based corporation planned to hold the event in Boston.

Technical requirements were extensive: staging rental, services and lighting, data projection, teleprompters, presenter and audience audio support, audio recording for fast-turnaround transcription and a media feed.

Additionally, to reach an internet audience on 4 continents, Sun Life Financial also required a webcast - one that could meet eastern media deadlines by archiving each speaker's presentation immediately after it was finished.

And then there was the venue: a brand new facility in Boston still grappling with power and connectivity problems.

Mediaco Solutions

• The Staging team designed a logistical and technical plan integrating all system and equipment elements, and drew up an equipment list that included a 12K generator to deal with the power issue. Venue, transport and Boston-sourced labour logistics were coordinated down to the minute.



• Crew and equipment arrived in Boston 3 days in advance to allow for power installation, staging rental services setup, full system testing and webcast checks. Job one? Install the generator and run feeder cable up to the second floor meeting room. If a brown-out occurred, the client was assured of automatic back-up and an uninterrupted event and webcast.



• The equipment scheme consisted of two 6 x 8 "built-in" projection screens, a PowerPoint data projection system, audio recording system, a podium, presenter and table microphones, media feed system, seamless switching system console, webcast capture equipment, and teleconference bridge to facilitate the remote encoding and internet feed.



• Audio with Synchronized Slides was determined as the webcast strategy. To keep costs down, and minimize the meeting-room equipment footprint, encoding would take place remotely, at the Vancouver network centre. Prior to the event, a custom branded webcast player was produced with a specialized lobby and agenda function. This allowed the online audience to either join the real-time event, or select an earlier presentation which had been archived by a streaming media technician within an hour of its completion.



• Transcription was outsourced to a fast, accurate, reliable service that turned in a 93-page transcript in under 36 hours.