2016 International AIDS Conference Deploys EventsAir as Technology Solution

This week, more than 18,000 medical, social and government leaders from around the globe are in Durban, South Africa for the 2016 International AIDS Conference. Managing one of the world’s largest events is a challenging one, especially when facing the large influx of attendees for registration and onsite check-in.

The management team supporting the International AIDS 2016 Conference turned to Centium Software and their flagship technology EventsAir to handle the massive scale of self check-in, staffed check-in and collateral collection. Designed around the highly robust and scalable Microsoft Azure Cloud, EventsAir was more than able to handle the thousands of conference check-ins that occurred on opening day.

Mr Arnab Bose, Special Projects Manager from Centium Software and working onsite at the conference with the conference team was able to scale up EventsAir to handle the massive influx of registrations experienced in the first 10 hours of registration.

“With the flip of a switch, we were able to quadruple the server capacity,” Mr. Bose said. “The system performed flawlessly and EventsAir never experienced any slowdown or lag time at any point of the busy registration.”

Meeting organizers used EventsAir for advance registration, self check-in, staffed check-in and onsite collateral collection. With over 60 workstations deployed, organizers were able to add additional self check-in stations as needed to assure that attendees never had to wait a long time to check in.

Along with 10 members of the conference organizer team, all other personnel were students and volunteers from the Durban area. Because the technology was so intuitive and easy to learn, all volunteers were fully trained and operational in very short time frame.

“Volunteer training was extremely easy,” said Mr. Bose. “We had students and volunteers from area universities, and we were able to get over 60 volunteers fully trained and operational in a few hours.”

Another area of concern for the International AIDS Society was ensuring solid Internet connectivity. Relying on a cloud based technology, organizers wanted to make sure onsite check-in could continue even in case of an Internet outage.

Two backup systems were deployed. The first was an automated instant switch from the venue Internet connection to the Internet via 3G/4G mobile network, which would cut in if the venue Internet failed. In case there was a complete Internet failure, a complete offline version of the EventsAir system was on hot-standby at all times. With data being constantly synchronized from the Microsoft Azure Cloud, this offline capability could be instantly accessed in case of a total Internet failure and all onsite services would be able to continue.

Fortunately, no Internet failures were experienced at the venue and all check-in processes were handled with ease.

With over 25 years’ experience in providing technology for world government and sporting events, AIDS 2016 was another huge success for the Centium Software team.

EventsAir has been at the forefront of Event Technology and Innovation for over 30 years, continually pushing the boundaries of what an event management platform can do. Built by event planners for event planners, EventsAir is a secure, scalable, cloud-based solution that can manage everything from in-person, virtual to hybrid conferences, meetings and events in a single online platform – anywhere, anytime and on any device. In use in over 50 countries by multi-national corporations, professional conference organizers, government departments and tertiary education institutions, EventsAir is also used in global congresses such as G20, APEC, CHOGM and ASEAN, as well as sporting events like The Olympic Games, World Rugby, Commonwealth Games and Pan Am Games. EventsAir is trusted by event professionals around the globe. For further information, visit www.eventsair.com