Seven Sisters Festival, VIRTUAL EVENT 2020

Background

The Seven Sisters Festival is an annual women’s festival, usually run in-person for 7 consecutive days. The Festival brings together like-minded women from around the country for workshops, inspiring presentations, interactive activities, and a large marketplace where attendees can purchase different festival offerings.

This year, due to COVID-19 the festival was not able to run physically. The Seven Sisters Founder and her team still wanted to create an inspiring and life-changing experience for their audience but did not have expertise in running virtual events. This is where Phoenix came in…

The Brief

The Seven Sisters Team engaged Phoenix to manage all the logistics, speaker communications and training, technical/ AV requirements, virtual platform management and on-the-day support for the very first virtual Seven Sisters Festival.

Many of the Festival speakers had never attended or presented at a virtual event and so a key requirement from the Seven Sisters Team was detailed briefings, technical rehearsals, and dedicated Stage Managers to assist with each session.

With just three weeks until the Festival was due to take place, they wanted an expert team who could hit the ground running.

The Solution

The Phoenix team developed and executed an extensive plan to ensure the success of the Seven Sisters Festival. This included:

• Creating platform links for each Virtual Stage.
• Management of the Virtual Event Platform – Zoom.
• Developing technical run sheets.
• Hosting individual and group speaker briefings/ technical rehearsals.
• Securing and managing Virtual Stage Managers.
• Collecting, collating, and managing all Speaker Assets including videos and presentation slides.
• Regular WIP meetings with the Seven Sisters Team.
• Development of a Sponsorship Prospectus.
• Sponsorship recruitment drive.
• Management of 10 Virtual Stage Managers.
• Management of pre-recorded speaker content.
• Recording each virtual presentation for post-event use.
• Development of Audience Technical FAQ documents.
• Managing all technical questions both live in sessions and through the dedicated tech email address.
• On-the-day logistical support and management of each of the virtual stages by a dedicated Stage Manager.
• Risk analysis on all potential issues.
• Post-event debrief meeting with brainstorming for future events.

The Results

3 days, 5 virtual stages, 70+ speakers and over 500 virtual attendees.

Phoenix was thrilled to work with the Seven Sisters team on this inspiring, interactive, and thought-provoking Festival. From virtual dance classes to interactive workshops and live music, the Festival provided the audience with a diverse range of content. The response was overwhelming with many members of the audience never having attended a virtual event before, particularly one of this scale and duration.

Both in the lead up to the event and over the live 3 days, the Phoenix Team worked tirelessly to ensure the seamless delivery of the Festival. With 5 concurrent virtual stages running back-to-back sessions for over 15 hours each day, this Festival was an online event like no other!

The Seven Sisters Team were thrilled with the outcome of their first virtual event and received extensive positive feedback from both the speakers and the audience.

Client Testimonial

The impacts of Covid meant my live 3000+ attendee multi-day Festival had to pivot to survive. Looking to transition online, I discovered Phoenix Creative Management who had already successfully transitioned to hosting events in the online space.

Their experienced team took on the challenge of managing our 70+ presenters, multiple zoom rooms, various logistics, timetables and execution resulting in a successful event. Their support and experience removed a lot of stress of my shoulders and provided an opportunity for our event and community to survive.

Lauren Woodman

Festival Founder & Director

Seven Sisters Festival