Dartmouth Presidential Leadership Event

On April 1, 2020, Dartmouth College hosted its first-ever virtual gathering of the President’s Leadership Council, Board of Trustees and core community. The purpose of the event was to share how Dartmouth’s leadership, faculty, staff and students are navigating the impacts of COVID-19, and to showcase how Dartmouth is holistically addressing this complex global challenge. Working together, Empire and Dartmouth swiftly reimagined this previously scheduled in-person meeting as a highly-engaging, informative virtual event that would deliver high-caliber production value to over 100 participants in locations around the world, despite the requirement that all participants would be separate in their homes and offices. Using a Zoom Webinar technology platform, the virtual event was managed by the Empire team from a secure control room designed with redundant network connections, master and backup computers for graphics and videos, and a production team that could direct the program similar to a live news broadcast. A broadcast switcher outputted the Zoom event and recording devices captured the content and speakers. Empire set-up a separate communication line between the control room, production team and presenters to create a direct line of communication for timing and cueing for all remote participants. In conjunction with Dartmouth, Empire provided Zoom credentials to delegates (presenters) and participants (guests) to enable secure log-in and to control access to the event.