It’s Kidscreen Time!

We spoke with Jocelyn Christie, VP & Publisher, Kidscreen and Maggie Wilkins Events Sales Manager, about the virtual show…

How have you adapted during this year of very uncertain times, and when did it become clear that you would be running a virtual event?

We held out as long as logistically possible on making the decision to move forward with a virtual event because we were initially hopeful about the pandemic situation improving in time to host a live event in February. But by August/September, it had become clear that a second wave was playing out, and that is when we changed direction. Luckily, some of our company’s other brands had been pioneering virtual events since May, so there was a lot of learning that we could take advantage of around producing webinars and running virtual networking sessions successfully. And we fortunately had time to talk to our industry about their new business needs, and what they liked and didn’t like about some virtual events they had already experienced.

It must take an enormous amount of planning and redirection – how have the team coped with the changes? 

Brunico has always been a streamlined and nimble company that’s able to adapt quickly to new opportunities that develop in the markets we operate in. But we’ve reached a whole new level of doing that this past year. Each and every person on the Kidscreen team – and everyone on the other teams they work with internally – has risen to the challenge and come up with really creative solutions that allowed us to do things differently this year. I’m so proud of them, and happy to be a part of such an innovative and hard-working group of people. 

And tell us a little about the platform you have built, and how you have made it user-friendly?

Our revamped kidscreenXchange platform houses the full Kidscreen Summit experience. Our goal was to provide our attendees with an event environment where they could easily connect and meet with each other, share their projects, attend conference sessions and meet new people through business networking – all in one place. All delegate meetings take place within kidscreenXchange, eliminating the need to share account info to access external video conferencing software, and the platform has been designed to be really straight-forward and user-friendly. We know not everyone is comfortable with new tech, though, so we will have an info desk in the delegate lounge where people can come and get help anytime during Market Week. And there will also be a help chat feature on kidscreenXchange and a Customer Support team that attendees can email if they have questions about navigating the platform and the event.

How many attendees do you anticipate?

We are on track to welcome approximately 1,500 delegates to Kidscreen Summit Virtual. 

How easy will it be for visitors to attend screenings?  

All of our conference sessions (keynotes, fireside chats, research presentations, panel discussions, master classes, buyer briefings) will be easy to access through links on the agenda in kidscreenXchange. And they’ll also be recorded and posted online for on-demand catch-up viewing until April 2.

Attendees are also able to check out videos for projects that have been uploaded into the Kidscreen Summit Virtual screening library. These projects can be filtered by genre and by the phase the project is in (i.e. development, production, completed), and reaching out to start a chat with the teams behind them is an easy, one-click process.