World Procurement Congress
Event Production
By Joseph Hall
World Procurement Congress

The Brief
The World Procurement Congress brings together the world's biggest and best when it comes to procurement on a global scale - and for it's 20th anniversary year they wanted to go bigger than ever.

PYTCH were briefed to provide a full AV setup for the main stage and breakout rooms, a full content package, and some very unique set pieces - whilst still in-keeping with the clients branding.

The Solution
A full AV package was supplied for the two breakout rooms, this included video walls backing 2 custom designed, on-brand stages, speakers at various points around the rooms to surround the audience, and a number of repeating TV's for presentation and sponsor content.

Digital signage was used across site, with TV's hosting our custom signwave software being utilised as directional signage, as well as supporting sponsor content in the exhibition space. Custom branded print was produced to adorn the venue's walls, pillars and desks.

The clients strong brand was incorporated into the main stage design in a number of different ways, from the construction of 3.6m acrylic rings to the tiered, curved stage. The stage was stepped up in 4 shrinking circles leading the eye up towards the prominent central set piece - a custom 4 ringed Acrylic circle with pixel tape installed inside to allow full integration to the lighting design.

The staging closely follows the main design elements, and from above mimics the rings featured throughout, lined with PixNet LED tape on each tier, this highlighted the curves of the stage and brought the structure into the performance ensuring guests could see the scale of the design.

The 3.6m ring structure was custom built to match the design of the brand. This was an engineering challenge requiring steel box section being hand bent into shape and CNC cut acrylic pieces cut out of a specialist acrylic to ensure the LED tape diffused through-out it with a capturing glow. To top off the design, it was engineered to be self supporting using a custom piece of steel deck to fix the sculpture into the stage design.

A complete content package was produced to support both the congress presentations and awards shows, this included everything from supporting speakers with producing presentations, to designing and building a motion graphics package to bring the shows to life. The wow-piece of both awards and congress shows were two individually branded and fully time-coded opening sting pieces - these were integrated with the stage through the PixNet LED on both the custom steel rings, and the stage surrounds, as well as out into the audience with custom acrylic printed table centres placed over Astera AX3 light-drops.

To support this, a completely unique fusion of LED video wall and laser technology was conceptualised for this show, where lasers at the back of the room were fired onto the vidoe wall to create a seamless integration of motion graphics and lasers.

All combined, this created a totally immersive and one-of-a-kind visual piece that spanned the entire room and was unlike anything seen in regular awards shows. This same technique was then used throughout the awards shows to create moments of excitement for winners by illuminating the stage, set-pieces and audience tables in rhythmic patterns of light.

The Result
A truly incredible 2-day show with some one-of-a-kind technologies and immersive spectacles that really solidified the 20th anniversary celebration of the event. The stage design and lighting design was some of the most impressive for a show of this scale, and the content package provided delivered on every expectation and the opening time-coded sequences blew audiences away.