The Ergon Annual Lenders Meeting project was one that had compound challenges. The time frame, the need for airtight security, gathering and creating video for the speakers, and working toward a delivery system that could handle large numbers of concurrent users while streaming 4k and HD video.

In the early project planning, Ergon's internal Communications group and Provis ran multiple scenarios together to determine the best approach and created a plan that could be confidently executed jointly in-house,  leveraging the strengths of both teams. Once approved, the teams meshed and began work. Provis tackled the daunting technical aspect while Ergon coordinated creation of needed content from their internal executives and luminaries.

For the Provis components, some of the major developments were:
Security: This meeting was for internal Ergon employees, so the security of the content was a major concern to everyone involved. How do you have a virtual event and specifically control who gets in? Provis developed a component that was a site-based multi-factor authentication involving custom databases which ensured that each audience member was handled as a unique individual, allowing full control over access. It was also painless to the end user, something that was a concern given a wide variety of user technologies and skill levels.

Clarity: There were over 20 videos produced for the event, all by C-level and Executive level speakers, and it was important to all involved that they would be delivered cleanly and at a much superior resolution to standard web video. They also had to deliver this resolution while on mobile devices in multiple countries and constitute essentially no stuttering. Provis used the technology of our sister company, Trireme, which allows for full HD1080p EMPEG-H.264 standard video stream using only 1 Mbit/s bitrate or EMPEG-H.265 standard video stream using only 0.5 Mbit/s bitrate with no latency or buffering and without any degradation of quality. This guaranteed that the video delivery would be rock solid and of utmost quality. Provis also developed a video player that would help partition content, requiring videos to be seen in a consecutive order and remembering where individuals were in that order in the event they had to leave their browser and return.

Stability:  This event was going to have a wide variety of companies, all in different locations with different setups, hitting the destination simultaneously. This meant that everything had to be tuned to handle the load, from concurrent authentications to video streams. Provis created a flexible code base that bound these technologies together and delivered a solution that just plain worked.

Control and Tracking: Ergon required complete tracking on user experiences, such as who logged in when and what was their video consumption. They needed on-demand reporting across the board, and since this was all outlined in the planning stages, Provis developed a methodology to deliver this.

The event was a resounding success, impressing managers all the way up to the CEO level. So much so that even when Covid 19 is brought under control the event itself may potentially remain virtual or at the very least incorporate virtual components. The Ergon Communications team was highly lauded, deservedly so, and Provis was thrilled to be a partner in this endeavor.