Rising Above (and to the occassion!)
Insperity has partnered with OVATION to bring their sales kickoff and user group conferences to life for the last several years. In September of 2020, the teams began planning for Insperity’s annual sales kickoff, Rising Above — which would be held be live in 2021 (or so they thought).
The challenge
The pandemic forced a quick pivot to the original plan (sounds familiar, right?). After way-too-many-to-count hours dedicated to planning and designing a stage set that could accommodate 600 in-person attendees and adhere to COVID-19 protocols, Insperity made the tough call to switch to a hybrid event format six weeks before kickoff.
The solution
The OVATION team had to quickly pivot to redesign the General Session stage set to now be a high-end TV-like studio and reformat the entire event.
“The complexity of this particular convention is like no other, but due to their leadership, their tenacity, and creativity, they were able to rise to the occasion to truly create a first-class event.”
— Bryan Pawlik, Managing Director, Marketing Operations, Insperity
The results
- 1300 virtual attendees (largest attendance in history!)
- 50 live attendees
- 9 live streamed general sessions
- 7 live streamed breakout sessions
- 127 awards presented live via Zoom
- 9 major award winners live-streamed across 9 locations
— John Dubios, Eastern Region Vice President, Insperity
“We might have the smallest room, but we have the biggest audience we’ve ever had.”
“This is by far the very best production I’ve ever been on.”
— Jeb Blount, Globally Recognized Sales Expert and Event Keynote Speaker