Diageo World Class Shanghai - Case Study

Competitors from 50 countries all around the world competed to be Mixologist of the Year. Watched on by thousands of thirsty audience members, judges and partygoers.

Full venue takeover including over a hundred screens, competition control system with central coordination of both competitor and audience participation.

Audio and video presentations from all competitors including a silent-disco-style experience across multiple rooms, floors and simultaneous performances.

The Challenge

Create a comprehensive technology infrastructure for a global competition spanning multiple venues, floors, and simultaneous events. The system needed to:

Coordinate over 100 screens across the entire venue
Manage competition flow for 50 international competitors
Enable audience participation and voting in real-time
Handle audio/video presentations with silent-disco style distribution
Provide judges with seamless scoring interfaces
Operate flawlessly with zero tolerance for failure during live competition

The Skills Needed for the Project

UX and Design

Design of the entire event coordination and control system involving hundreds of devices across lots of different user types: competitors, judges, audience members, and event staff.

Software Development

Development of multiple tablet apps, server and network architecture with risk mitigation and redundancy. Building systems that could handle concurrent streams, real-time voting, and competition management.

Project Management

Remote support interface builds and coordination of multiple international delivery teams. Managing complex timelines with teams across different time zones.

Live Events Expertise

Deployment and support for a mission-critical system in a high-pressure international environment where failure was not an option.

The Solution

We designed and built a comprehensive event management ecosystem that brought together hundreds of devices into a single, coordinated experience.

The system included:

Central control system managing over 100 screens throughout the venue
Competitor management platform with scheduling and presentation tools
Real-time audience participation system with voting and engagement features
Judge scoring interfaces synchronized across multiple locations
Silent-disco style audio distribution for simultaneous performances
Redundant network architecture with failover capabilities
Remote monitoring and support infrastructure

Critically, we designed the system with extensive risk mitigation, allowing a tiny onsite team to deliver a bewildering array of technology without requiring a large international crew to fly to China.

Results

1,000s Drinks mixed against the clock

100s Presentations and tracks played

0 Downtime or failures

An incredibly smooth delivery and amazing to know we have a lot we can reuse to grow the future experience. A great investment.

Richard Pollock, Production Director, NVE Experience Agency

Key Takeaways

Comprehensive Systems Don't Have to Be Expensive

With experience, you can prepare for all of the common eventualities so you don't have to fly everyone out to China. A tiny team onsite delivered a bewildering array of tech for this event which went off without a hitch.

Redundancy Is Essential for Live Events

When thousands of people are watching and there's no opportunity for a "take two," your systems need bulletproof redundancy. We built in multiple failover systems to ensure continuous operation.

Remote Support Can Work for International Events

By building robust remote monitoring and support capabilities, we enabled smooth delivery without requiring the entire team on-site, dramatically reducing costs while maintaining quality.

Reusable Infrastructure Is a Smart Investment

The modular, well-architected system we built could be reused and extended for future events, providing ongoing value beyond the initial deployment.

Planning a global event with complex technology needs?

We've proven we can deliver mission-critical systems for international events. Let's talk about your next project.

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