JATO Dynamics Global Conference: Hybrid Platform, Streaming and Stage Design
A global hybrid conference where the website, stream, stage, LED wall, voting, awards and speaker content had to behave like one event, not five vendors taped together in the dark.
Global
Audience incl. China
2
Workstreams: platform + stage
Unreal
LED wall scenes
Livery
Low-latency streaming
THE BRIEF
JATO needed an event that worked for the people in the room, the wider business and a global audience, including viewers in China. That immediately ruled out the lazy version of hybrid: a generic webinar link, a few speaker bios and a hope-and-pray CDN.
The brief needed:
A branded event platform, not a rented webinar skin.
Live streaming inside the JATO experience.
Agenda, speakers, awards, voting, polling and social wall content in one place.
Global access, including China.
Remote presenters treated as part of the show, not video tiles floating above the stage.
Stage and LED visuals that matched the platform and the live production.
The hard part was not one feature. It was the joins. The platform, the stream and the room all had to agree.
THE APPROACH
I worked across two connected streams.
Platform architecture and build lead. I defined the platform shape, data model, integrations and delivery approach, then led the build with Munib Quzabi and a small development team.
Stage and LED visual design. I designed the stage concept, LED wall content, Unreal Engine scenes, motion graphics and supporting visual language. Mitch Jones and the d&b solutions Reading team led the physical stage and screen build.
That producer-engineer overlap is the point. I was not designing a site in isolation and hoping the live team could use it. I was designing the system the show had to run on.
The platform was built in Next.js with DatoCMS as the CMS for that specific historical project. New Nicolae.tech builds now use Payload CMS, because it gives better control for custom, producer-owned systems.
The important decision was to keep the event experience inside JATO's own world. The stream was not sent out to a generic page. The audience came into a platform built around the event.
The wall content used Unreal Engine, motion graphics and curated footage. The physical build was led by Mitch Jones and the d&b solutions Reading team, so my job was to design visuals that did not only look good in a render, but actually worked on the wall being built.
One late creative ask came from the CEO: moving vehicles needed to be lifted from footage and placed into the branded wall environment. That meant rotoscoping, shot prioritisation and finishing under show pressure. Glamorous? No. Useful? Very.
Remote presenters were also designed into the wall language. They were treated as on-stage talent, not as a video-call inconvenience.
DELIVERABLES
Project imagery
Stage and LED wall · Unreal Engine scenes
JATO-branded hybrid platform
Remote presenters as on-stage talent
Motion graphics and curated footageWHAT IT PROVES
The event ran as one connected hybrid conference:
The branded platform served the global audience, including China.
Streaming, speakers, agenda, awards, voting, polling and social wall content lived inside one event experience.
The stage and LED wall gave the room a visual identity that matched the online platform.
Remote presenters joined the show as part of the live programme.
The CEO's vehicle rotoscoping request was delivered and ran on the wall.
This is the work that shaped how I now think about EventBlok and custom event platforms: the live show and the digital layer cannot be designed separately.
