Digital Summit 2020

Since 2006, the Digital Summit has been held as an annual congress with a frequently changing focus. Following on from digital education, digitalisation of healthcare, artificial intelligence and digital platforms in the previous years, in 2020 the subject of “More sustainability by means of digitalisation” was the focal issue of the two-day, entirely virtual event on 30th November and 1st December. Together with the process over the course of one year, the conference organised by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is intended to act as the central platform for shaping digitalisation and the digital transformation of business, the state and society in Germany. In ten fields of activity dedicated to different issues and in corresponding focus groups, representatives from business, science and society develop projects, events and initiatives – and present their results, point out trends and discuss possible courses of action during the summit.

The Digital Summit 2020 was once again planned and implemented by the well-known agency Vagedes & Schmid, who engaged us to realise the technical side of the event. Peter Altmaier, Germany's Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, welcomed over 7,000 registered participants, which is many times more than the usual summit audience that previously travelled to alternating locations accommodating a limited number of attendees. The year before, the Digital Summit had already been planned as a hybrid event and in the corona year of 2020 stood out as a virtual format one hundred percent in line with the subject matter of digitalisation.

The two days of the conference offered panel discussions, an exhibition zone and a virtual tour of the exhibits with German chancellor and patron Angela Merkel. Participants used extended reality technology – an immersive technology and therefore a digitalisation topic in its own right – to submerge themselves in three virtual studios programmed by us, to participate in panels and to stroll through the exhibition. We also provided a series of interactive elements – Q&A sessions, voting and visualisation of audience opinions as a word cloud – to engage the audience. We linked up over 100 external interview participants and speakers to the streaming sessions via the Webex conference system.

During a planning period of a mere ten weeks, we developed and implemented a sophisticated redundancy concept for media servers, streaming and networks – including Internet connection and website hosting – to ensure the virtual conference ran without a hitch. A total of three Digital Summit websites plus the foyer and exhibitor websites were incorporated and hosted via our “come2join” services.