Orange County Youth Environmental Summit
This April marked the first ever virtual iteration of the Orange County Youth Environmental Summit (YES). Orange County Water District (OCWD) hosts YES annually for up to 8,000 Orange County 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, OCWD engaged Empire to help produce the week-long summit virtually this year. Empire partnered with BuzzCast to develop a safe and secure platform where students and teachers could tune into daily live presentations, meet with their class online, watch educational on demand content, download worksheets and lesson plans, and view sponsor booths to learn more about OCWD and their partners.
The mission of YES is to educate students about environmental issues, water-related and beyond, that support next generation science standards. The platform hosted on demand content and sponsor booths all week, in addition to two live streamed sessions each day from Tuesday through Thursday.
To support the live content, Empire built a broadcast studio at the Orange County Water District facility in Fountain Valley to capture kid-friendly science experiments, demonstrations about the groundwater replenishment process, and the animals that make up the ecosystem of the water district. The week included live segments with OCWD, the California Science Center, and Emily Calandrelli, The Space Gal from Emily’s Wonder Lab on Netflix.
Interactive program features engaged students with quizzes and polls throughout the duration of each session, as well as live Q&A segments with speakers to close. Corresponding worksheets and lesson plans were made available for download for each live session, as well as for On Demand video content. Over 60+ educational On Demand videos or Grab & Go worksheets with lesson plans were made available to the students of Orange County for the duration of the week.
Empire is a leading producer of thought leadership events and virtual events of every kind, and has been proud to serve leading environmental and cause-related organizations for nearly three decades.
Guests received their first taste of technological innovation at registration, where they were welcomed by name on a reactive LED screen installation covering the full width of the entry wall. A large lunch café was created with a décor scheme that incorporated custom-built, ceiling-high steel LED frames draped with foliage to create smaller, intimate restaurant-style spaces that displayed both technology and nature.
A series of breakout sessions presented content targeted to attendees’ varied interests, while imagery displayed throughout the venue showcased real-life applications of how products designed to empower developers help to unleash the power of data and reimagine possibilities that will improve our world.
Every element of Microsoft Connect(); from registration, breakfast and keynote, to lunch and evening cocktails, were custom-designed to communicate exacting brand messaging and to deliver a high-touch guest experience to this important audience. The keynote and breakout sessions were livestreamed through an onsite studio built for this purpose and content was watched online by millions around the world.
Empire is proud to collaborate with Microsoft on this annual, top-tier business communication event.
To view excerpts of Connect(); 2017, please visit https://www.microsoft.com/connectevent
