September 14, 2020, Biogen announced that it would invest $250m USD in a 20-year initiative to eliminate its use of fossil fuels and improve public health. After achieving carbon neutrality in 2014, Biogen further bolstered its action against climate change with the goal to become fossil fuel free by 2040 and initiated research collaborations with global leaders to help address the effects of fossil fuel-driven air pollution on health.
Event Manager Peter Jack, Chief Creative Architect & Founder at JACKRIDDELL commented, “The brief from Biogen was clear: our aim was to develop an interactive virtual experience which was anchored in an online event venue, making the company conferences, training sessions and other events held there as close to carbon neutral as possible.”
The resultant venue was built in partnership with the V-Ex platform operations team, its 3D creative team and event management team. It was first used for a 4-day sales kick-off event in February 2021.
The V-Ex event platform hosting is carbon neutral, so, on top of all the obvious fossil fuel / energy savings made in reduced travel and occupying a large physical venue, there was an additional contribution from the virtual venue. V-Ex servers are hosted exclusively by a provider that has achieved PAS2060 Carbon Neutral standard, enabling V-Ex to offer a venue that is operationally 100% carbon neutral.
“After the de-brief the feedback across the board has been hugely successful, so big thanks [to V-Ex]. Part of our initial concept was to use the kick-off event as an experiment to understand how the team would use and interact with the platform and how it would function for our live TV concept, to then be able to build out a case to extend and use for other events.”
The result is that it has helped both teams to understand the user journey and experience from arriving at the venue, moving through registration and the expo, then into the main plenary room. Also, how to split off teams to various group sessions. The world will now stay live and be used throughout the year as the main hub for team gatherings, business updates and mid-year cycle events.