International conference: IEA’s “Reaching Across”
Many international conference planners resonate with the International Enneagram Association‘s (IEA) goal of “Reaching Across” the world, bridging culture and language gaps. A key part was making the event available in the five languages their audience needed most: Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean, and English. However, organizing an event of this scale meant dealing with dozens of challenges. To achieve this, they partnered with the virtual event platform vFairs as well as spf.io.
vFairs integrates spf.io to make four concurrent Zoom sessions accessible in multiple languages
This global conference included 49 pre-recorded videos and 40 live sessions. Practically, this meant generating and uploading 245 individual caption files before the event. Additionally, it involved live-captioning 15 hours of speakers a day, many running at the same time. Beyond that, their goal was to upload all the sessions to Vimeo – complete with captions in all five languages – within a few hours. This was made possible by spf.io’s popular fastSRT feature.
At its core, spf.io’s Team Management capability enables a tight collaboration with all parties involved. For example, we worked closely with IEA to generate transcriptions for the pre-recorded video SRTs. This was followed by volunteers reviewing the transcripts, spf.io generating high-quality translations, and finally sending them to vFairs. We also scheduled dozens of professional captioners for their live events. To shorten turnaround time further, we even implemented a new feature to rapidly generate SRT files from those transcripts. As a result, we could download the SRTs, sync them with the recording, and send them to vFairs within a few hours. vFairs and spf.io worked closely to monitor this process and provided IEA with on-call support for translation-related hiccups.
Unleash the gifts within your community and activate them to help make your events more accessible
Any international conference is complex and organizers oftentimes run into unexpected issues. For example, a miscommunication led to two live sessions not having human captioners ready when they began. However, spf.io staff immediately took measures to provide the highest quality service possible. With a click of a button, the operator enabled spf.io Autopilot to start captioning and translating to 4 other languages simultaneously.
With one click, Autopilot substituted for the Arabic captioner when she faced technical difficulties
Spf.io also tracks the number of concurrent connections per session, which provides great insights into the level of interest from each language group.
High performing partnerships increase global impact
The successes from this event aren’t only limited to the 800+ attendees and those who will benefit from this material in the future. Nearly 50 members are now equipped with a tool that can accelerate IEA’s vision of going global.
vFairs and spf.io’s close partnership in this event paved the way forward for future projects together as well. The power and potential of lasting relationships for international conference endeavors cannot be overstated.
Talia Guerrero González, IEA Insights and Languages Chair, expresses her excitement: “spf.io has been a great strategic partner for IEA to unleash the gift within our community and remove language barriers. We are making history!”
No matter the size of your event, spf.io would love to help you meet your captioning and translation needs. Our platform integrates with Zoom, Hopin, OBS, Restream, StreamYard, YouTube, Facebook Live, Vimeo, and more. We’re also actively building partnerships with all players within the industry. Please contact us to discuss how our partnership would benefit your business! If you’re interested in captioning and translation services for your next event, click below to request a quote.