The prestigous event Future Investment Initiative used nanoStream Cloud to receive live feedback from a large audience

To deliver a large business conference that took place in Saudi Arabia with world leading experts via interactive live streaming to 10K international participants, Damien Denoeud found nanoStream Cloud to be the perfect solution.

Damien Denoeud is an IT engineer and, since 1998, consultant through his own company Logiquali for large corporations e.g. Sanofi, Renault and Publicis Groupe when it comes to events, visualization of projects and websites. He partnered with nanocosmos to live stream the XXL size event, the Future Investment Initiative. The forum for government and public affair purposes was to discuss economical topics with a large audience, leading experts, worldwide. It was produced by Richard Attias and Associates.  

Damien: Like other events we do, this event discussed trending topics for public affair purposes to work on. Here are examples of topics we come across for such events e.g. economical issues, or to develop economical communities, work on future interests, summits about AI, cyber security, discuss Crypto related issues, environmental and climate change topics, Education and Healthcare.

The event was executed in close partnership and cooperation to cover everything from the initial idea, to the technical requirements, to production, nanocosmos’ interactive live streaming solution nanoStream Cloud and execution of the actual event by Damien.

Streaming Of Hybrid Event With Interactive Elements

The economical forum required a live streaming solution. While regular events can be streamed successfully with a 30-60 second delay, this event was laid out as a hybrid event to take place over several days and with simultaneous interactive presentations in up to 4-10 rooms to offer a dialogue with as little latency as possible.

About the Setup

• 3-day conference, format: hybrid event, set up with partners and sponsors from different countries and continents 
• Presentations in 4-10 rooms with simultaneous translations for up to 5 languages
• Live stream to be made available in many countries all over the world
• Approximate number of physical attendees: 10,000
• Approximate number of virtual attendees: 15,000
• Dialogue to be offered to virtual attendees via chat
• Presentation took place on stage but also via live feed of a remote stream e.g. Zoom-Meeting or Microsoft Teams into the actual conference rooms
• Audience joined the global forum via a virtual platform and an interface with 3D simulation in the form of a website.
• The audience was able to interact via chat in almost real-time.

Distribution Challenges

• While many major platforms were blocked and could not be accessed e.g. from China, stream with nanoStream Cloud was possible
• On the execution side for the hybrid event, interactivity elements were applied. Features like stream switching and security via IP authentication proved to be essential

Streaming Workflow – An Insight

Damien: The ingest we used went via a director that produced a program which was then sent to our live stream machines. We had the final cut over the program and used RTMP, SRT and WebRTC technology. 

As failure was not an option, we always run a cluster of main and backup systems. On those machines we operated a dedicated software we had created on-purpose to also livestream to the media partners. Each machine could stream up to 40 destinations at a time whatever the protocol. We were also able to deliver sessions in realtime to media partners in MP4 format. Due to optimisation of human and machine ressources, we could keep a tight budget considering the goals.

Takeaways

ULL streaming solution – Critical Elements

Stream Security
Damien: We worked with nanoStream Cloud’s token security. For the delivery of the stream to Saudi Arabian countries this was an important point. On site MAC filtering and IP filtering on the nanocosmos side ensured great security, so our streams could not be hacked as some competitors have experienced.

Latency and Player
Damien: As we did multi language live streams (parallel streams but different languages), we offered to switch from one language to another. Two aspects were critical in this regard: Latency being extremely low and being able to switch between streams easily- nanoStream Cloud delivered this perfectly.

Integration and usability: 
Damien: The integration of the white label nanoStream Player was extremely easy. We had no difficulty at all when it came to coding. We also liked the part about Adaptive Bitrate Streaming and switching to adapt to every audience all over the world, whatever their connectivity.

Reliability 
Damien: We found in nanoStream Cloud 100% reliability and robust technology – which was a must have requirement.

Takeaways

Damien: The solution nanoStream Cloud proved to be the perfect match. For one, we could apply a wide range of certain measurements that were specific for the setup e.g. related to secure streaming and access in countries worldwide. When it comes to the partnership, the fact that nanocosmos offers full control over the live streaming process from end-to-end was essential. 

Chris Strijbosch, nanocosmos: For instance, once the production was in progress, involved parties stayed in close touch with each other. We were informed close to the event and could whitelist the IPs with access to certain streams. “Whitelist” means that we secure the ingest to prevent hijacking. This was followed by tests and extended measurements that were taken on the server side to ensure the maximum security. 

Making live streaming happen with parties being involved from all over the world and spread over several time zones, technical support needs to be available 24/7/365. Yet, our support does not stop where the live stream starts running. Our Analytics team looks at possible issues during the event to monitor stream performance and to optimize quality of service and quality of experience. Tight collaboration is essential to make sure the overall user experience is perfect. We take responsibility for end viewer satisfaction – right rendition, ABR to achieve 100% satisfaction on our clients’ and their end users’ end.

Additional Information

Streaming with ultra-low latency successfully does not end here. To stay competitive with ultra-low latency streaming we believe a 360 degree approach is what takes it up with the whole live streaming workflow. Taking affiliated factors into consideration is how to achieve the best Quality of Service and Quality of Experience:

• Monitor and optimize performance: Analytics for low latency streams
• Secure your streams: Secure Playback Tokens & nanoStream Cloud Security
• Easily stream directly from your browser: nanoStream Cloud Webcaster & sample code with WHIP Ingest

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