Member Article

Stone’s Throw Media livestream prestigious international conference for hundreds of delegates

Leading video, animation and livestreaming agency Stone’s Throw Media has broadcast one of its most prestigious productions to date, a four-day international conference for the International Association for Hydrogen Safety (IA HySafe) and the Scottish Government.

The Wolverhampton-based digital agency worked with leading event technology specialist Evessio to deliver the ninth International Conference on Hydrogen Safety (ICHS 2021), which saw a mix of live speakers located worldwide plus pre-recorded content brought together for a large global audience of over 400 delegates watching online.

The conference, which had the theme of “Safe Hydrogen for Net Zero”, saw Stone’s Throw Media simultaneously stream three parallel sessions of plenary presentations by global leaders in hydrogen as well as technical papers from the most eminent hydrogen safety experts within government, research organisations, industry and academia.

In total, Stone’s Throw Media, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary year, shared more than 200 online presentations by experts from the hydrogen energy industry speaking from the UK, mainland Europe, China, America, Canada, Australia and Japan.

The presentations were controlled by a Stone’s Throw team based in Wolverhampton, who used hi-tech graphics to ensure the event looked superior to standard video calls.

The ICHS, which is usually held in-person every two years, moved to an online platform because of Covid-19. The organisers say that with hydrogen expected to play a greater role in the transition to “clean, safe and sustainable energy systems” and in a year that sees COP26 hosted in Scotland, it was more important than ever for the international hydrogen safety community to come together to share their knowledge and work together to ensure that the transition to a hydrogen economy to meet global emissions targets is safe.

Throughout the conference, speakers addressed hydrogen safety topics in sessions shared over the internet to paying delegates by the digital agency, based on Wolverhampton Science Park.

Marketing manager Ed Potts said the livestreaming team were delighted with the results. He said: “We now have a strong working relationship with the production team behind the prestigious ICHS conference, so it was a fantastic opportunity to be part of an event which attracted a large international audience.

“With environmental concerns moving to the top of the political agenda, we were able to support dozens of knowledgeable speakers share their expertise on the future direction. From a technical perspective it was a complex event to co-ordinate but one that we have the skills in-house to deliver from wide experience.”

The conference was the latest work delivered in partnership with West Sussex-based Western Business Media Limited. CEO Mark Sennett said: “We benefit from a strong working relationship with Stone’s Throw Media, who deliver high quality livestreaming services which meets the needs of our clients such as IA HySafe.”

Dr Stuart Hawksworth, President of IA Hysafe said: “Our objective is to develop the state-of-the-art in hydrogen safety to improve public awareness and trust in hydrogen technologies.

“Events such as ICHS bring together the hydrogen safety community to better understand and manage the hazards and risks associated with hydrogen. Since the ICHS focuses on the safe introduction of hydrogen as an energy carrier technology, it is unique in that its format and contents are different from other general hydrogen conferences.

“With Covid-19 impacting our ability to run the event in the traditional way, it was important to have a trusted partner able to deliver an online conference to our distinguished international audience. Stone’s Throw Media had the credentials and the capability to showcase every speaker and their presentation, bringing together an engaging four-day conference for our audience.”

The Wolverhampton-based agency team have grown their credentials in livestreaming over many years, investing in new technology in 2019 before the pandemic and successive lockdowns disrupted live events around the world.

Successfully delivering the ICHS conference comes shortly after Stone’s Throw Media founder Mike Chinn was named as a finalist for Online Event Producer of the Year at the CN Agency Awards, organised by leading events industry title Conference News.

The Stone’s Throw Media director was named as finalist for the team’s achievements in staging prominent online events during the Covid-19 pandemic and successive lockdowns, including the digital opening ceremony of the University of Wolverhampton’s new Springfield Brewery learning centre and the 2020 staff awards for the University.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Chris Leggett .