How Canalys Hosted Their Annual Event Series with Canapii

About the Event

Canalys is a channels-focused IT research firm that hosts their Canalys Forums conferences every year across EMEA, LATAM, and APAC. When the pandemic hit, they needed to pivot to virtual and bring the qualities of their renowned physical events into the digital world. The platform needed to be globally accessible, drive high levels of engagement, and host both simulated-live sessions and live roundtables for 1,500+ registered executives per region.

The Challenge

Canalys required a simple-to-navigate interface that enabled attendees to curate their own schedules from an agenda of 30+ sessions across three days. The platform needed to host a mix of simulated-live sessions and live workshops, each with up to 15 speakers and audiences between 90 and 120 people. They also needed an auto-breakout option on each live session to encourage interaction.

On top of the content, they had 30+ exhibitors in each region, so they required a comprehensive exhibitor zone with the ability for sponsors to build their own pages.

The Solution

Simulated-live content

Canapii's simulated-live content option allowed organisers to upload pre-recorded videos and have them play at specific times, giving attendees the feeling of a live event while eliminating technical risks from live production.

Live workshops with auto-breakout

For live workshops, speakers joined via the Chime webinar integration to engage in industry-topic conversations with the audience. The auto-breakout feature split audiences into smaller rooms with speakers for 10-minute deep dives before bringing everyone back to the main discussion.

Sponsor zone

Canapii's built-in sponsor zone gave exhibitors admin rights to build their own pages with banners, videos, PDFs, presentations, and podcasts -- saving the organisers significant time while giving sponsors full autonomy.

Results

With 4,350+ attendees globally, the events were a resounding success. The flexibility of content and session types made it possible for Canalys to host a range of sessions ensuring high-level engagement. AI translation and time zone features ensured global accessibility, while the gamification leaderboard tracked over 1,400,000 engagement points.

Canalys also kept their traditional morning run alive with a 5KM run page where attendees could upload their activity and compete on a leaderboard -- a fun interactive element for a very busy event schedule.

"The Canapii platform is extremely intuitive, and with the help of the Canapii team we were able to bring the Canalys events to the industry in 2021. Without Canapii and its unique features and flexible team we couldn't have pulled this off!"

Gemma Edwards, VP of Events, Canalys