Bpifrance rises to the big challenge of organizing its BIG event in hybrid format
« Bpifrance has chosen inwink to orchestrate all of its events. The platform’s versatility and its powerful set of features enabled us to have our first 100% online events in optimal conditions, and to tackle the challenge of BIG, our first hybrid event of such extent. »
Julien Noronha, Events and Content Director Bpifrance
Bpifrance is a French investment bank specialized in the financing of innovative enterprises, start-ups and SMBs. Bpifrance’s mission is to boost the French economy and help increase its competitiveness.
To achieve this goal, Bpifrance regularly organizes events to bring its communities together to share experience and expertise in all matters about innovation, and network.
One of Bpifrance’s flagship events is the Bpifrance Inno Generation (BIG). This year, BIG took place simultaneously at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris and in the home offices of 400 000 people, by means of a hybrid format.
1) Showcase the quality and quantity of speakers
2) Make hybrid format a key success factor
3) Leverage the event’s immense notoriety
With over 930 speakers, including 2 heads of state and several French ministers, one of BIG’s main objectives was to showcase the richness of content.
Bpifrance’s teams deployed several levers of actions to achieve this goal:
The hybrid format turned out to be an essential factor in covid time.
Bpifrance’s teams were able to host a significant part of the audience at an in-person event, with prestigious conferences such as the one led by the French and Kenyan presidents, at the Accor Hotels Arena in Paris.
At the same time, millions of participants could watch these conferences live from their home offices, without taking any sanitary risk.
To make the most out of their sponsoring of the event, partners were able to schedule business meetings with participants either in person or in videocall, 2 weeks ahead of the event.
BIG is an event for which communication has been extensive, weeks ahead of the event.
In addition to these communication campaigns aimed at increasing registrations, Bpifrance’s organizing team leveraged the inwink platform to communicate with registrants and speakers. Over 280 000 email communications were sent with inwink to participants and partners.
A record number of participants attended BIG. In addition to in-person attendees, 19 million people were reached, and 400 000 video sessions were viewed.
The online part of the event enabled Bpifrance to broaden significantly the event’s reach, bypassing geographical constraints, and going beyond the limitation in the number of people allowed at one physical venue.
The hybrid format was not a hindrance for participants to engage in networking. The 400 partners of the event were able to schedule on inwink over 1000 business meetings in videoconference, with a reminder email sent from the inwink platform 10 minutes before each meeting.
