HIMSS Global Health Conference Broadcast

Las Vegas 2021 and Orlando 2022

In 2021, one of healthcare’s largest conferences transitioned back to in-person programming, though much of its community could not return quite yet. The pandemic kept many attendees home, and HIMSS needed a way to bring the event to those remote colleagues. upLIGHT designed the broadcast studio that connected them, at the Wynn Las Vegas in 2021 and again in Orlando in 2022.

The design idea was community. For people watching from home, the studio had to feel like the place where the conference gathered, not a booth at the edge of it. We designed it as three connected areas: an interview area for conversations, a news desk for the anchors, and a position for standing reports. The hosts could move from one to another as the program changed, which gave the broadcast the rhythm of a television show and let them speak to the audience directly.

upLIGHT’s contribution

Working with Sean Gannet of SFG Productions, upLIGHT served as production designer for the broadcast, designing both the scenery and the lighting. Before any scenery was built, we modeled the full studio in Unreal Engine. The producers and directors could walk through the set virtually, try camera positions, and work out together how they wanted to shoot the event, which gave the whole team confidence in the plan before the real studio went up. When the broadcast returned in Orlando in 2022, the same set came back in expanded form.