The week-long event featured pre-recorded and live-streamed content, a 24-hour online platform and physical events in multiple locations. Photo Credit: SingEx
The Singapore FinTech Festival x Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SFF x SWITCH) 2020 was the world’s first week-long, round-the-clock, hybrid event — ushering in the future for meetings and conventions.
The week-long event (7-11 December) pulled off numerous components — from pre-recorded videos and live online streams to physical events in multiple locations — not to mention an impressive line-up of more than 2,000 speakers including Bill Gates and New Zealand PM, Jacinda Ardern.
Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, it also stands as testament to the enabling aspects of a digitally-connected world. Despite Covid torpedoing the global business events industry, SFF x SWITCH in 2020 scaled beyond its previous editions, attracting a record number of speakers, and attendees from more than 160 countries.
Creative Ideas
“The business environment has changed drastically, but it also gave us the opportunity to increase our understanding of customers’ evolving needs. These critical insights resulted in a hybrid approach allowing us a broader spectrum from which to design multidimensional engagements, further enabling the SFF x SWITCH communities to learn, network and collaborate,” James Boey, executive director, events business, SingEx, told M&C Asia.
A 24-hour online platform allowed attendees to visit locations on the map by navigating to various ‘landmarks’.Out of this, the Online City was born — a 24-hour virtual event platform that allowed participants to navigate a digital map, zoned according to different needs and themes including international, early stage and growth stage FinTech, talent, technology showcase, and networking. It also gave 1,300 exhibitors a platform to display their solutions online.
Moreover, the event platform was framed in a way that simulated participation in a physical exhibition. “Attendees could visit locations on the map by navigating to the various ‘landmarks’ and via a searchable and interactive directory of organisations and activities,” Boey explained.
In terms of content, the event spotlighted pertinent themes that focused on driving cross-border commercial activity to support pandemic recovery, and how financial institutions should position themselves in 2021.
On the SFF Global-Common Channel, five global summits were staged based on themes of economics, infrastructure, impact, investor, and talent. Meanwhile, the SWITCH Connect Channel connected participants to global trends in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.
This gave participants access to market knowledge, opportunities, insights and tips on business culture from more than 42 cities across Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
Execution
“These are unprecedented times where travel and physical event participation has been curtailed for safety and health reasons… SFF x SWITCH has historically had a huge global participation and travel footprint, and to keep engagement high, we had to put the customer first and redesign the event experience on a hybrid platform so that we can digitally connect with the audience; and stage on-site events where they are permissible,” Boey summarised.
In addition to creating a digital exhibition experience through Online City, the team also leveraged the platform’s business matching functionality, ultimately helping facilitate more than 4,400 one-on-one business meetings.
Boey continued: “Despite the circumstances of the global situation, the conference team were able to assemble an even bigger power-packed line-up of speakers from all over the world [due to the digital format], most of whom wouldn’t have had the time to fly down to Singapore for the physical event.”
As part of SFF’s Infrastructure Summit for example, Bill Gates touched on financial inclusion projects spearheaded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and their work to spread the benefits of the digital revolution to those communities most lacking in access, including through open-source work.
An impressive speaker line-up included Bill Gates, Jacinda Ardern and Singapore's deputy PM, Heng Swee Keat.Another highlight of SFF was the opening by Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s deputy Prime Minister, coordinating Minister for Economic Policies and Minister for Finance. It was here where the minister announced the launch of a trio of initiatives — the Asian Institute of Digital Finance, the Singapore Financial Data Exchange (a first-of-its-kind platform that enables Singaporeans to consolidate their financial information for more effective financial planning), and the S$12 million Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme.
These various examples have shown how digital tools are unlocking new possibilities in both scale and engagement. Boey added that participants were able to easily access content via live-stream and on-demand.
As for physical satellite events, the organisers collaborated with in-country partners in cities around the world, allowing attendees in different locations to network face-to-face with local government and industry leaders, learn about the country’s key government initiatives and local early-stage startups or access closed-door roundtables.
Whether online or offline, another important takeaway from pulling off this large-scale event was the importance of partnerships and networks. “2020’s edition has given us an opportunity to work with a more extensive network of global partners across industries to enable new experiences, share, learn, network and collaborate,” Boey said.
“While the pandemic greatly impacted the MICE industry, it has also accelerated the digitalisation of the business and catalysed hybrid platforms for continued customer engagement... The hybrid format is very likely going to be the way forward for future events until such a time a vaccine is administered globally.”
Health and safety were front and centre at Singapore EXPO, the main broadcasting hub, and at all satellite event venues.Key facts
- 5 days
- 40+ satellite events
- 60,000 attendees from 160+ countries
- 2,000+ speakers, over 1,300 exhibitors and 27 international pavilions
- More than 3.5 million views online
- 4,400+ meetings
Key learnings
- Work with a network of partners to create multi-hub events that connect global audiences
- Customer centricity is key when (re)designing a hybrid event programme
- Event and venue experiences will continue to evolve in the post-pandemic world
- Collaborate and co-create to enable new experiences