Digital Accelerator Workshop

Digital Accelerator Workshop + Mentor Program

Destination Riverina Murray is one of six Destination Networks set up by the NSW Government through Destination NSW, the state’s tourism and major events organisation. Destination Riverina Murray is an industry facing organisation who provides projects and programs to support organisations who operate in the Riverina Murray visitor economy (tourism).

The 2021 Digital Accelerator Workshops + Mentoring Program, held in Whitton and Deniliquin, included a series of workshops followed by a three month Mentoring Program designed to assist 51 tourism operators in the Riverina Murray region build skills and capacity to help turbocharge their digital presence online.

Client

Destination Riverina Murray NSW

Service

Hybrid

Date

26 & 27 October 2021

The Challenge

Due to COVID-19, the workshops pivoted to a hybrid format. The challenge involved maintaining the energy and ideas of a highly interactive workshop format when the primary facilitator wasn't in the room.

The Riverina Murray region can have connectivity issues with patchy service causing the internet to drop out repeatedly and venues typically lack the specific technical knowledge to remedy this.

Our Solution

As this was the first time the event had been run using a hybrid model, we attended the initial planning meetings with the project team and facilitators to mitigate concerns and provide technical solutions from the ground up
We liaised with the venues independently to confirm their technical set up and diagnose where we would need to bring additional kit to ensure zero connectivity issues
Use of a bonded channel internet system which proved invaluable when the internet dropped out five times during one event. Our failovers kicked in, there was no gap in delivery and the audience and facilitator experience was maintained

Results

We’ve had very positive feedback from participants at the workshops, and have since almost completed the Mentoring Program where 18 selected participants have been kicking some major goals with their online presence to better reach and retain customers
The engagement into the Mentoring Program all starts with the quality of the workshops, which Pyrus Event Services helped us to achieve

Working with us

‘Generally speaking, tech and AV is quite daunting. It can be a complete barrier to an event's success or something that really brings the event together,’ said Sarah Hope, the Business Development Manager for Destination Riverina Murray. ‘We also felt hesitant to pivot to this new format as we felt it would be technically messy.’

'However, Adam really took care of everything and by the time of the event, despite our initial reticence around running a hybrid format, we had full confidence it would go off without a hitch.’

We’ve used different contractors in the past and not all of them take the time to understand who we are and what we're trying to achieve.

Adam really understands branding and how to present a business, providing proactive suggestions on small, but important, details such as background music and branding slides. It’s these details that all contribute to fostering trust with our audience.

Sarah Hope
Business Development Manager, Destination Riverina Murray