Architex produces a multi-venue production in the theater district of Los Angeles: historic theaters, parking lots, office spaces, and more.
SUMMARY
Architex has designed and implemented the tech for Summit’s annual flagship event for ten years. Summit’s last in-person flagship event was in 2019 in Los Angeles, CA. Architex was the technical design and management department for this 3-day, 2,500 attendee, multi-venue event. With some venues focused on keynote speeches and panels, some focused on entertainment and activities, and others spanning both areas, designing the tech for this event required creativity, flexibility, and an extremely detail-oriented approach.
BACKGROUND
Summit is an ideas festival. Each year their flagship event is a multi-day production that takes place in unusual locations such as cruise ships, mountaintops, and city-wide takeovers. This one happened to be in Los Angeles, spanning multiple theaters, various transformed non-event spaces, and five parking-lots-turned-venues of outdoor activity.
Summit brings together innovators from many industries and verticals to engage in thoughtfully designed community-oriented experiences. Their high caliber talent and attendee base requires great attention to detail and a high caliber production at every moment throughout pre-production and the event itself.
EVENT SPECIFICS & DELIVERABLES
Designed and managed technical production across 4 theaters, 5 parking lot build-outs, and 4 non-event venues, each with multiple simultaneously operating spaces, for a total onsite-production span of 14 days.
Architex event team size: 15
Produced 105 event sessions across the 3-day event.
Delivered production designs, schedules, asset lists, crew assignments, recording logs, cue sheets, and other production information all on a live-updating online portal for the hundreds of crew and staff to access at any time.
CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS
- Almost every space used for this event is not a space normally used for events and was utilized for multiple event types throughout each day.
- With numerous site visits, many detailed floor plans to scale, and triple checking every part of the plan before a single truck was loaded, we knew before load-in that we anticipated and prepared for most of the issues if they were to arise.
- Any challenges arising while on-site were handled by the individual(s) of our production management team who were scheduled and assigned to specific responsibilities to be ready for anything unexpected. This team is designed to allow everyone to be focused on their own obligations while not being overwhelmed with the responsibility of the entire production.
- Many A-level talent and A-level attendees.
- We aim to treat every person walking on stage and every attendee with the same regard as any other important fellow human we are sharing the space with at that moment. This approach often leads to good rapport with crew, guests, and talent alike which helps to overcome any challenges.
RESULTS
Summit, their attendees, and their talent were overjoyed with the experience of the event. A podcast that was produced during one session in front of a live audience was even nominated for a Webby Award. This large, complex, and intricate production is one we are immensely proud of.
More information about Summit can be found at https://summit.co/