Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brian Cole. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Brian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

A recent project that edgefactory worked on that I would consider an amazing success was our project with the Special Olympics USA Games.

In 2022, the Special Olympics USA Games were held in Orlando, FL, and they came to edgefactory for help with logistics and support for the Special Olympics Healthy Athlete Experience.

The Healthy Athlete Experience helped to provide free health screenings and education to Special Olympics athletes as part of the check in process. Despite the perception that those with intellectual disabilities have the same or better access to healthcare, many often struggle to access the medical care they need.

The Special Olympics USA Games was expecting to complete about 12,000 athlete screenings over the course of the 7-day games, with 600 doctors participating. edgefactory helped to implement a queue system that allowed athletes to complete these critical health screenings in a fun and welcoming environment.

We integrated digital signage, creative media elements, physical signage and markers to make wayfinding in the Healthy Athlete experience intuitive and simple. To keep everyone’s energy and moods high, edgefactory produced its own TV “channel” that played custom content like different health, sports and fitness announcements on various TV screens around the venue, as well as having music playing throughout the whole event. All videos were captioned and the text displayed was large, clear and easy to read.

After the games were finished, edgefactory was awarded a gold medal for its work on the queue system, and for making healthcare accessible to the athletes who needed it. It was an incredibly rewarding project and amazing customer success!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My appreciation for brand and themed experiences started when I was a kid, and I spent many vacations at Disney World. Later on, I would end up moving to Orlando and working for six years with Disney. While I was working as an entertainment event manager for Disney, I noticed that all these lavish events that were put on had decor and amazing audio visual technology—but then used a basic PowerPoint slide for the main screens to display content and information.

Seeing this lack, I was inspired to start a company that just dealt in creative visualization for events. I never wanted to leave screens blank or with a boring, static slide that didn’t match the effort put into the rest of an event. Since 1999, edgefactory has done visualization for events all over the world, for some of the largest companies on the planet. Today, we even produce creative for at least two dozen shows and events each year through edgefactory as a partner with Disney Event Group!

The team at edgefactory and I are always aiming to break out of the “death by powerpoint” experience that is seen at so many meetings and events. Our mission at edgefactory is to bring brands to life through multimedia experiences with energy, emotion, and edge. I want to integrate creativity with multimedia to enhance event experiences all around the globe. The team at edgefactory is full of creative individuals coming together to share, collaborate and inspire each other to tell stories with purpose and meaning; a factory team that fuels the gears of imagination!

Have you ever had to pivot?

Back in 2020, when Covid initially shut down all in-person meetings and events, many organizations began pivoting to live virtual events, so we also needed to pivot and figure out how we could use our creative works to make a virtual event as exciting and engaging as an in-person one.

​​We have done over 400 virtual streams and events since 2020, so we now have a lot of experience in making a Zoom meeting not feel like a Zoom meeting.

Through creative works, we package a virtual meeting more like a TV show. These meetings can have music, transitions, TV loops that play on breaks, etc. There are many things done in the live event world to enhance the experience that often were not getting translated into virtual events

We have seen a lot of clients feel relieved when they work with us on a virtual event because we use the same formula you would see in at in in-person event— a voice of show, music, funny videos, interactive games and more to make a virtual audience more engaged than they would even be at a live event. We’re working now to reverse engineer virtual engagement and apply these best practices to hybrid events. Hybrid events are here to stay, so allowing for a virtual audience to interact with a live audience can really be a great way to make all feel more connected.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The thing I love most about doing creative for events, is actually watching the audience experience our creative from all angles. With film and video production, many times you deliver a product online, or to another company doing distribution. With events, you are seeing a conference center branded with creative works, seeing the dynamic digital signage, and seeing our dynamic animated show look loops playing on screens throughout a meeting site. Getting to see an audience react to the video content we make is one of the most rewarding parts of being creative.

At edgefactory, we are artists that manufacture Creative Works for events. It’s our goal to take any opportunity to help audiences be immersed in audio and visual design. Even in a breakout room we can have stylized music and an animated slide playing on the screen before the session PowerPoint begins.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://edgefactory.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edgefactory/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edgefactory
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edgefactory
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/edgefactory

Image Credits
edgefactory