BuzzCast - Best Educational Event

Company: BuzzCast
Company Description: BuzzCast Powering the world’s most buzzworthy events BuzzCast is the premium virtual event platform, delivering a production-quality experience with zero downtime. Trusted by global brands and event production agencies, BuzzCast is highly secure and can engage hundreds of thousands of attendees with complex tracks and formats.
Nomination Category: Event Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Conferences & Meetings - Educational Event

Nomination Title: National Academy Sports Medicine 'Optima' 2020 (The BuzzCast & The Buzz Lab)

The date on which this nominated event took place: This event took place from: October 13-16, 2020

For 6 years NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) has hosted their ‘Optima
Conference’ presented by AFAA (Athletics and Fitness Association of America), bringing
together the biggest names in the sports science industry to explore the latest insights and
trends.

Prior to the pandemic ‘Optima’ was an in-person, week-long event, with more than 700 sports
and fitness professionals, 30+ sponsors and exhibitors, with over 75 education sessions.
When 2020 went into lockdown NASM faced an existential challenge: How to re-create a
conference built around physical, live workout sessions and hands-on demonstrations - in a
virtual setting?

● How to effectively transition live workout sessions into video streams or pre-records, with
instructors across the US and Europe with no centralized gym/facilities… and make it
engaging?
● How to reliably track and attribute CEUs (Continuing Education Units) to attendees in a
way that would satisfy strict industry standards?

NASM fully committed to going 100% virtual with no roadmap for how to do so. They engaged
The Buzz Lab to help them produce the event and the BuzzCast Platform to host it. The teams
worked together to help Optima 2020 not just go virtual, but to “Go even bigger!”

● Sessions were increased from 75 to 120 with 4 simultaneous tracks to choose from.
● Attendance was targeted to increase from 700 to 1,000, but a week and a half before the
event, registration had swelled to 4800.
● A week before the event, a decision was made to widely open up the event, resulting in
an additional 120,000+ registrations, making it what we believe to be the largest online
fitness event of 2020.
Challenges needed to be addressed on both the production side (The Buzz Lab) and technically
(BuzzCast Platform) to deliver high quality sessions, social interaction, and a stable platform
experience that would still be engaging and exciting.
● In collaboration with partner Creative Technology, 120 hour-long sessions were
coordinated and shot over 6 weeks, across 70 remote locations (both pre-records and
live sessions) planning shots, directing presenters and quality controlling recordings.
● 70+ camera kits were designed, built and shipped for control via remote.
● BuzzCast created a custom gamification system to track attendee engagement across
all sessions, with prizes awarded daily to the leaders in each category.
● BuzzCast successfully added 120,000+ registrants and stress tested the system to
ensure it could handle the sharp increase in traffic, in less than a week.
● Leveraging its in-session analytics tools, BuzzCast also created a method to ensure that
attendees completed enough of each session (60%+) to qualify for and receive CEUs.
The result:
● At peak, there were over 35,000 simultaneous attendees with zero platform downtime.
● 120 high-quality, engaging training and workout sessions over the 4 day event.
● The final winner of the engagement leaderboard attended over 40, hour-long sessions,
averaging an engagement score of over 80%.
● Over 4800 people were able to earn CEUs in a 100% virtual environment.
Most importantly, the conference exceeded all expectations and reached more people than ever
before.
● When asked “How satisfied are you with the technology of this platform” 90.42% of
attendees answered either ‘Very Satisfied’ (68.19%) or ‘Satisfied’ (22.23%).

CREDITS

NASM:
Client: NASM (the National Academy of Sports Medicine)
Client Art Director: Cynthia Flores
Client Production/Coordination Lead: Sarah Van Wyk
Client Sessions and Programming Leads: Christopher Miller and Aprile Peishel
Production Company/City: The Buzz Lab / LA
Technology Platform: BuzzCast
A/V Partner: Creative Technology
Creative Director: Ryan Byrne
Producer: Mitch Kirsch
Platform Producer: Karoline Mikkelsen
Project Technical Manager: Derek Ytreeide
Designer: Oleh Horpynych
Director(s) - Pre-recorded segments: Jacob Hadley, Chris Bradley, Mitch Kirsch, Joe Smith,
Sarah Ullman, Quin Cabalquinto, Justin Paul
Programmer: Matthias Thoemmes
Web Development Firm/City: BuzzCast / Los Angeles

SUPPORTING MATERIALS
Google Analytics: 35,000 simultaneous attendees
User Feedback Data
NASM Booth Analytics
NASM Letter from CEO
'Welcome to the future of fitness' blog - Laurie McCartney NASM CEO
NASM - Recap - Podcast “What We Learned at NASM Optima 2020”
SGB Media - NASM Optima 2020 Press Release

Event URL: nasmoptima2020.buzzcast.com
Login: nasm0@buzzcast.com
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