Amazon’s Annual Design Symposium Leans into the Hybrid Experience With Incredible Success

Amazon partnered with Brandlive to power its high-impact design event, Conflux 2021, built for their hybrid workforce.

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The Event

  • 2 Days
  • 16 speakers
  • 1500+ attendees

The Success

  • Expanded inclusivity reach
  • Distraction-free engagement
  • Invigorated, inspired attendees
  • The Challenge: Create an impactful, elevated show for the Amazon design community, no matter where they’re tuning in from.
  • The Solution: Work in tandem to produce engaging video content with a seamless, branded digital experience that exceeds accessibility standards.
  • The Impact: More than 1500 attendees from around the world were able to partake in a showcase with innovative design experts.

A Better Platform for More Engaging Content

With an MC leading Amazon’s annual design symposium, Conflux, from their Seattle headquarters, the two-day event expertly blended pre-recorded segments with live moments to produce an engaging show and seamless backstage experience. During the transitions between speakers, there was breathing room for folks to take a break, and to participate in convos with each other using the chat feature – a notable highlight, as it allowed audience members to share their excitement during the talk without distracting the speaker.

A virtual platform allows people to essentially jump out of their seats and throw emojis, where you can’t really do without being disruptive during a talk. The chat is totally a space for that engagement to happen, which is awfully neat.

-Corey Dangel, Amazon Design Community Leader

With Brandlive, Amazon was able to use forward-thinking features to guarantee a smooth event for everyone in their hybrid audience. Outside of the inclusion and engagement wins, Amazon was particularly impressed with the ability to quickly and easily build pages for their many speakers, showcasing their bios and supplemental resources. And as a trusted partner, Brandlive was behind the scenes building a run of show that would create an easier backend experience for their presenters, as well as a flawless viewing experience for the crowd.

Reinventing the Hybrid Workplace to Connect Everyone

Our new normal of hybrid work is shedding light on emerging challenges, including around user experience during important events. In an effort to prioritize community within our hybrid teams, it’s crucial to develop content that drives connection and engagement – and to be able to effectively showcase that content, too.

One of the biggest blockers for large orgs in becoming a thriving, sustainable hybrid space is having tools that support creating elevated content – like closed captioning, chat functionality and straightforward page building. By having the right platform to produce incredible events, it ensures that everyone on the team can hear the org’s messages and be included in what’s going on.

As a company, we’re trying to figure out how to reinvent the workspace, and how we evolve into the next realm. There's a strong push to figure out ways to have this blended work experience, a reason for people to come together. And that is hybrid; I don’t think that’s going anywhere.

-Corey Dangel, Amazon Design Community Leader

As Amazon was planning Conflux, they knew that bringing together the entire Amazon design community was just as important as creating exceptional content in ensuring the event would be a success. This standard of inclusion wasn’t just for teammates strewn across the globe, but also for those who may not be quite ready to hang out in a large room with hundreds of other people.  

Amazon knew what they were looking for in finding the perfect streaming partner, and having certain accessibility requirements was a non-negotiable to accommodate their hybrid workforce. Brandlive met these requests with open arms, and worked tirelessly to make them a reality. Including these new features was a benefit to the entire Amazon community, and was also an incredible value-add for customers and attendees of all events going forward by ensuring that everyone would be able to experience any meeting or show.

Finding Success Through Inspiration

Conflux is one of the most beloved events thrown by Amazon every year; the creatives who attend express how much it inspires and invigorates their work, and helps to develop improved design processes.

People find the talks and presentations engaging, and that it’s a good use of their time. They recommend the event to other colleagues and say they can’t wait to attend next year.

-Corey Dangel, Amazon Design Community Leader

Outside of the positive satisfaction scores from the event itself (which were better than some previous in-person events) the anecdotes from the crowd is what made the hybrid event a massive success. Attendees walked away feeling invigorated and inspired, connected to others in the Amazon design community, and emotionally driven to create change – all bigger markers of success than most other data points could suggest.

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