Case Study

TEDxHappily Countdown Vol. 1

Virtual

•

October 2020

Climate change is not a single crisis. It's an interconnected crisis.

Ava Duvernay

Filmmaker

Key Results

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The Challenge

We happily joined the countdown

When TED announced Countdown, their global initiative to activate ideas into climate crisis solutions, we immediately knew this was for us. Sustainability is a huge focus for Happily, plus, Sarah Shewey, our CEO and Founder, is a former TEDTalks Producer. So we dove eagerly into the challenge of creating a virtual conference the Happily way.

TED had called upon independent event producers to create TEDx events on 10/10/2020 to signal the world's commitment to a carbon zero future within 10 years. With about 1 month to plan and prep, we drew upon Happily’s core values to centre the conversations around four pillars;

REDUCE; Ideas and resources about reducing emissions and waste in our community
REPRESENT; Climate change requires equity and justice
REINVEST; Reinvesting in local and forgotten spaces and communities
RESPECT; World peace is possible in our lifetime

The values that we set forth in TEDxHappily, are parallel to the mission and values for the company. We genuinely hope to see a more diverse, peaceful and carbon-zero reality in the near future - and are taking steps as a company to get there.

Lindon Chen

Growth Marketing Director, Happily

The Solution

Combating the climate crisis the Happily way

We built everything from the ground up for this event to demonstrate Happily's full suite of virtual event and digital marketing capabilities.

From event design/production, registration, talent curation and web design to creative/marketing services, day-of-show management, and streaming/broadcasting - we did it all!

We leveraged Happily's diverse network of specialists to take on all these functions based on their previous experience and their appetite to make an impact with sustainable events.

We wanted to demonstrate how Happily would produce our own Countdown virtual event, share our company mission and values with our community, and show our commitment to a carbon-zero future. We poured our heart and soul into this event. The end result, a cinematic broadcast that combined live and pre-recorded content from over 26 speakers.

A slick event microsite that livestreamed the broadcast, directed audiences to produced watch parties and share speaker info. We also integrated additional interactive tools to galvanize and unite our communities during and after the stream.

We built everything from scratch for Countdown and entirely on a volunteer basis. Across all levels of seniority, everybody donated their time and expertise pro bono! We had a team assembled for the main stage and each of the breakout experiences - which included a producer, tech director, show runners, timers, streaming engineers, and other supporting functions to keep things running smoothly.

On the executive level, we also brought in project managers, talent wranglers, marketing, graphic designers and video editors to ensure to ensure a coordinated recruitment and promotional strategy. In true Happily fashion, our team of 25 was located remotely across all different timezones from Asia to the Americas, all of us working non-stop in the lead-up.

We're excited to demonstrate climate solutions that we as community organizers, culture shifters, and event producers can act upon right now.

Sarah Shewey

CEO and Founder, Happily

The Results

This is what we're all about

The chemistry on the team was infectious. Everyone was so excited to contribute their hustle and heart into the event, and proud to have achieved a successful in-house Happily livestream together.

Audiences were impressed and engaged by the cinematic flow of video content, live and pre-recorded elements that introduced them to myriad perspectives across sustainability, the events industry, diversity and solidarity, innovation, and world peace. The speakers were also super psyched to share a roster with many iconic and inspirational leaders in their spaces.

The whole day was an absolute success! Happily was able to align our mission and values with the event, and make a commitment for a sustainable future. We were also able to shine as a team, and proudly demonstrate what we can offer when we employ our full suite of tech, tools and teams to plan and play with virtual experiences - as well as experiment with new ones to push the boundaries for virtual event production and interactivity.

The event was kicked off with a main stage broadcast, with following breakout rooms that represented each pillar. Breakout producers held roundtable discussions on each topic, hosted interactive exercises and white-boarded ideas, in the platform Circle, that would advance us toward achieving our goals for each value.

So much to celebrate and be proud of;

We committed that all of our virtual events will be carbon-zero thanks to our partnership with Forest Nation
Participates from 16 cities, across 6 countries
26 varying speakers across professions, including filmmaker Ava DuVernay, actress and activist Nat Kelley, and former NBA player Metta World Peace.
4 simultaneous viewing parties for participates to choice from
A real team effort: 25 Happily staff and specialists donated their time and expertise front and center
It was a proudly zero-carbon Happily event

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