Summary

The Alberta Deans of Business (ADB) Case Competition is an annual business pitch competition typically hosted face-to-face by an ADB member post-secondary institution. Past Case Competitions involved students travelling to the host venue for the multi-day event, beginning with a networking dinner and a keynote address. As is routine for business pitch events, students were then presented with the business case and given a day to plan their pitch to be judged, with awards given to the best presentations.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting safety measures, the 2021 ADB Case Competition was delivered in a virtual format. Hosted by Red Deer College (RDC), the event took place over three days, involving an opening event presentation, the dissemination of the business case, students working on their pitches in Zoom breakout rooms, judging of these pitches in separate breakout rooms, and an overall awards ceremony.

Our Role

BUKSA was hired to provide overall virtual event management and technical execution services to the RDC team. Our role involved choosing a virtual platform and building it out to fit the requirements of the ADB Case Competition, which include strict privacy and anonymous judging guidelines. We also managed pre-event training for the RDC moderators, ADB judges, and participating student teams, as well as hosting dry-runs with the event team.

During the events, our team managed full technical support over three days including on-call support for the teams working in private breakout rooms; the presentation of the recorded pitches; management of the judging process; and the awards ceremony technical aspects, including the slides and audiovisual effects. We also provided real-time platform management, technical support, video compilation services, and rolling slides.

Value Adds

Pivot to Virtual

We were tasked with assisting the RDC team in executing a Case Competition in a virtual format, which necessitated strict attention to privacy, team confidentiality during the judging stage, the ADB Case Competition format, team collaborations, and selecting a platform that would allow for these and be accessible to attendees across Alberta that are accustomed to different platforms from their own post-secondary institutions.

We built team breakout rooms and separate judging breakout rooms, managing the business pitch videos by creating anonymous compilations. Because some of the participating campuses were operating remotely while others were remote, the RDC team chose this entirely virtual collaboration method to ensure equal access to the event. Overall, extensive brainstorming and platform management made the execution of this specific event type in a virtual format a huge success!

Training Sessions

Because of the first-time virtual format for the ADB Case Competition, thorough preparation was needed to ensure that valuable teamwork and pitch judging and presentation time was not lost to platform navigation and technical issues. Our team planned and executed training with the RDC moderators, ADB judges, and student teams, making sure that all questions about the platform, virtual format, and event requirements were answered. We also hosted several dry-runs of the event with the RDC moderators to ensure the seamless flow of the event over the three days.

Participation from 11 different institutions meant that only some of the participants were familiar with Zoom; we created platform guides for both the students and the moderators with instructions for pre-event system checks, platform navigation of the main room and breakout rooms, and the file submission process. All training sessions involved practice navigating Zoom, using breakout rooms, and virtual speaking skills. Moderator training also involved troubleshooting basic platform issues.