The Seven-Day Livestream Challenge
One week. A global workforce. No established process. Challenge accepted.
Leadership needed to deliver a confidential acquisition-related announcement to employees around the world.
There were offices across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Leadership also wanted to wake up Asia-Pacific, including Australia, so those employees could hear the announcement at the same time.
We had seven days to figure it out.
At Research Now, now Dynata, leadership typically traveled from region to region to deliver town halls. They repeated the same presentation multiple times and spent considerable time and money bringing executives to employees around the world.
For this announcement, that approach wasn’t going to work.
I suggested livestreaming the event.
Then I volunteered to figure out how to make it happen.
Project Snapshot
Company: Research Now / Dynata
Purpose: Deliver a confidential acquisition-related announcement to a global workforce
Timeline: Seven days
Audience: More than 1,200 employees across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, including Australia
Setting: A staged leadership event in a theater without an established internet connection
Initial setup: Multiple WebEx logins, screen shares, a video switcher, microphones, a camera, lights, long HDMI cables, and a jerry-rigged Wi-Fi connection
Recognition: CEO Award
Why This Announcement Required a Different Approach
Leadership already knew how to communicate with employees across regions: get on a plane, gather people together, deliver the presentation, and do it again somewhere else.
That process took time. It also required significant travel and repeated effort.
An acquisition announcement introduced a different level of urgency. The information was confidential, timing mattered, and leadership wanted employees across multiple regions to hear the news directly, including offices on the other side of the world.
Leadership wanted Australia and the rest of APAC included.
We had WebEx, but a standard online meeting didn’t translate to the staged production leadership had planned.
The event would take place in a theater with an in-person audience, executive speakers, presentation slides, lighting, microphones, and a camera. Remote employees needed to see and hear that same event, even though the experience on their screens couldn’t be identical to what the audience saw in the room.
There wasn’t an existing process for putting those pieces together.
I thought we could build one.
Seven Days to Build the Broadcast
Not 7 work days, 7 days.
The first setup involved several WebEx logins, multiple screen shares, a switcher, microphones, a camera, lights, and some very long HDMI cables.
I had to combine the presentation and the video feed coming from the switcher into a picture-in-picture-style view so remote employees could follow the slides and see the speaker on the same screen.
At the same time, the screen shown to the live audience needed to work a little differently from what virtual employees were watching. The room had its own presentation needs, while the remote audience needed a view that brought the separate production elements together.
That meant figuring out how to route different feeds, manage multiple screen shares, and keep both versions of the experience moving together.
Then there was the theater itself.
It didn’t have an internet connection in place.
So, in addition to assembling the production, I had to jerry-rig a Wi-Fi connection capable of getting the broadcast out of the room.
None of it was a neat, self-contained system. It was a combination of available equipment, improvised connections, production experience, and the determination to make the whole thing work before the deadline.
And the deadline wasn’t moving.
Five Minutes Before the Doors Opened
We lost the audio signal.
The event was about to begin. Employees were getting ready to enter the theater, leadership was preparing to make a confidential announcement, and colleagues around the world were waiting to watch.
Suddenly, the audio wasn’t reaching the broadcast.
There wasn’t time to rebuild the setup or postpone the meeting. I needed a workaround immediately.
I opened another WebEx login and used it to send the audio separately.
The result wasn’t beautiful. The video and audio danced around each other, and the timing wasn’t perfect.
But everyone could see.
Everyone could hear.
Leadership delivered the announcement to employees across the company, including the APAC offices that had been asked to wake up and join.
The first broadcast wasn’t polished.
It worked.
The Part I’m Proudest Of
This wasn’t a project somebody handed me with a clear set of instructions.
The idea was mine. I volunteered to make it happen, knowing it would stretch me and knowing there wasn’t much room for error.
The first version required long cables, multiple WebEx accounts, a jerry-rigged internet connection, and an audio rescue five minutes before the doors opened.
It still accomplished what we needed it to do.
The CEO was so impressed with the result that he gave me the CEO Award.
That recognition meant a lot because it reflected more than the final broadcast. It recognized the initiative it took to propose the idea, the willingness to take responsibility for it, and the ability to keep solving problems when the original plan stopped cooperating.
What Happened Afterward
The first broadcast gave us a foundation we could improve.
A few months later, the theater installed a wired internet connection for us, addressing one of the biggest limitations of the original production.
I continued refining the broadcast process, production equipment, speaker preparation, presentation materials, recording, and replay distribution.
The workflow went on to support quarterly town halls, leadership updates, and other executive communications. Some events included multiple sessions to accommodate employees across regions, and recordings gave people another way to access the information when they couldn’t attend live.
Over time, the wider production work included tools such as NewTek TriCaster, YouTube Live, WebEx, PowerPoint, and professional video and audio equipment.
What began as an improvised solution for one urgent acquisition announcement became a repeatable way for leadership to communicate with a global workforce.
Supporting the Leadership Message
The technical production was only one part of my role.
I designed and refined executive presentations, developed data visuals, supported CEO and CFO talking points, prepared Q&A materials, and helped speakers get ready through rehearsals and production run-throughs.
I also created executive committee and board-facing materials, including quarterly presentations, KPI slides, graphs, and reusable templates.
Supporting materials such as event graphics, lower thirds, email templates, and presentation layouts helped future broadcasts become easier to prepare and more consistent.
But none of that existed as a finished system when we started.
First, there was a confidential announcement, a global audience, a theater without internet, and seven days.
I volunteered anyway.
And we pulled it off.
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