Bright Vision embraces SSG support to adapt to the future...

As they pivoted to combat the potentially devastating effects of the pandemic, Bright Vision Events, based in Fenny Compton, received vital business support and funding from Warwickshire County Council's Sustain, Survive and Grow programme.

SSG consultants identified the challenges the business faced due to COVID and the need for them to adapt to deliver more and better virtual events. This guidance was accompanied by an SSG grant which helped the company to purchase the required technology. Bright Vision Events managing director Ben Hull explains...

Bright Vision Events has been streaming conferences live for some time but demand has now rocketed. So, what changed?

We've been streaming live conferences for several years and always had a virtual option available for clients. Uptake was steady as businesses slowly adapted to the platform, but the first lockdown from March 2020 was a game changer. We now deliver far more virtual conferences than traditional ones...which means we have had to adapt to that demand.

Live streaming is now the new normal for us. This is the world we are operating in...a world where digital capabilities allow us to have everything we need instantly and where virtual conference providers must combine meeting clients’ needs for instant answers with an understanding that planning is crucial to the success of any online event.

Since the first lockdown in March 2020 what changes have you noticed in terms of client expectations?

Back in March, clients were scrambling around looking for any solution to allow their event to continue. Almost overnight, conference streaming, which had been relatively niche, suddenly had a demand for which the market wasn’t prepared. For example, the volume of our events that had a virtual element rose from under 10% to 100% of our events in a matter of weeks.

We were lucky, we already had experience in the field, but it was still a huge period of adaptation for us. The word ‘pivot’ has been over-used recently, but it really does explain what we, and so many other production companies, went through. We did pivot from traditional to virtual almost instantly, and the range of options/solutions now available to clients is staggering.

Bright Vision Events had to adapt to the new challenges. And the business support from the county council was invaluable...

We have been very fortunate in receiving backing from Warwickshire County Council as part of their Survive, Sustain and Grow Programme. As I mentioned, we have always offered live streaming as an option for our conferences, but the streaming was hosted on external platforms. In March 2020 we took the decision to launch our own in-house streaming platform, a dedicated platform for hosting our clients’ events in a secure and bespoke way.

The SSG programme enabled us to fund new technical equipment to expand our technical studio capacity. This has been vital to support the growth of our virtual event capacity. To date we have delivered over 100 live shows on the platform, and it has been fantastic to see the variety and calibre of events delivered to date.

We are extremely pleased with how professional it looks and how well it has been received by our clients and are so grateful to the county council for their guidance and support.