Producing a satellite symposium: the AV brief for sponsor sessions

Medical conference programs are built in layers. The scientific sessions owned by the organising society sit at the centre. Wrapped around them are sponsor-funded activities that run under a different set of permissions, a different branding regime, and often a different room. The satellite symposium is the most common of those activities, and it carries more production complexity than its compact format suggests.

If you are planning medical and pharma conference production for the first time, the satellite symposium is usually the component that surprises clients most. Small room, tight schedule, restricted to one sponsor’s program. Sounds simple. The AV brief is not.

What a satellite symposium is

A satellite symposium is an industry-sponsored session that runs alongside (not inside) the official scientific program of a congress or society meeting. The sponsoring company funds the session, nominates the topic, selects the speakers, and often manages the program entirely. The organising society approves it and gives it a time slot, but does not own the content.

The timing is almost always a meal break. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Delegates are offered attendance (and the meal) in exchange for 60 to 90 minutes of sponsor-selected content. The program typically includes one or two presentations by key opinion leaders, a panel discussion, and moderated Q&A. At larger congresses, 10 or 15 satellite symposia can run in parallel across different rooms during the same break slot.

That parallel structure is part of what makes the AV brief specific. The session is physically and programmatically separate from the main event, which means a separate crew, a separate technical setup, a separate run sheet, and a separate recording pipeline. The satellite does not share the main room’s infrastructure. It stands entirely on its own.

The scope is compact but exacting

A satellite symposium usually seats between 150 and 400 delegates. The room is often a hotel ballroom, a smaller congress breakout space, or a dedicated satellite venue adjacent to the main convention centre. It runs for 60, 75, or 90 minutes with a hard stop, because the next break slot or session follows immediately.

That hard stop is not flexible. If the session runs over, delegates miss their return to the scientific program. The congress schedule does not wait. The show caller’s job in a satellite is partly time management, and the technical setup has to support that: a clear confidence monitor showing the run sheet, a clock visible to the speaker, a stage manager with authority to signal.

The technical scope for a typical Sydney satellite:

• Screen and projection. One large format screen (or two in a wide room), rear or front projection, or an LED wall if budget permits. The screen has to carry both sponsor content and speaker slides without a visual switchover that reads as unprofessional.
• Lectern and panel. Speakers usually present from the lectern and then move to a panel position. The microphone plan covers both positions per speaker: a lectern mic and a panel lavalier, with a clean handoff between them.
• Audio. FOH mix for the room. Broadcast-grade mix for the recording and stream. Those are two separate mixes from the same sources; sharing one mix for both is the shortcut that most visibly degrades the recording.
• Presentation system. Sponsor sessions often bring their own slide decks, sometimes built by a medical communications agency in branded templates. The operator needs the files in advance, confirmed on the show day machine before the room opens.
• Breakout lighting. Conference default lighting is almost always the wrong starting point. A modest rig (key light on the panel, wash on the screen surround, controlled back light) separates a polished recording from footage that looks like it was shot in a hotel meeting room because it was.

The crew count is smaller than a main room but the senior crew requirement does not drop. A satellite symposium with a recording and a stream needs an audio engineer, a vision switcher, and a show caller at minimum. Reducing to one person covering multiple roles produces problems that show up in post-production, not on the day.

Branding is allowed here (contrast with scientific sessions under the Code)

This is the most important operational difference between a satellite and a scientific session. The Medicines Australia Code and your event AV covers this in detail, but the short version: sponsor branding that is prohibited during scientific sessions is permitted in satellite symposia, because the satellite is explicitly a sponsor-funded, sponsor-controlled event.

In a satellite, the sponsor logo can be on the screen surround, on the lectern fascia, on the breakout room entrance, on the holding slide between segments. The event title can include the company or product name. The slide deck can follow sponsor brand guidelines. Roll-in video content from the sponsor plays in the room before and after the session.

What does not change is the content integrity requirement. The speakers presenting at a satellite symposium are clinical experts presenting data and clinical perspective, not reading promotional copy. The Medicines Australia Code still applies to what is said from the stage, even in a satellite. The production team’s responsibility is the physical and technical presentation layer, not content compliance, but the crew should know the difference: a sponsor logo on a slide background is a design choice; a speaker reading from a product detail aid is a compliance issue. Those are different problems.

The AV brief should confirm with the organiser and sponsor what branding elements are pre-approved. At large congresses, the society may have specific rules about signage dimensions, logo placement, or screen content even within sponsored sessions. Getting a written confirmation before the build is standard practice.

Recording and reach

Most satellite symposia are recorded. The recording serves several purposes: post-event distribution to delegates who could not attend, content archiving for the sponsor’s medical communications library, and sometimes CME/CPD submission (where the program has been accredited).

The recording scope should be agreed before bump-in:

What is captured. Presentations only, or panel discussion too? Audience Q&A included or cut? If Q&A is included, does the recording pick up the delegate asking the question (which requires a roving mic and an operator to position it quickly)?

What is delivered. A clean ISO recording of each camera feed, a cut master, or both? File format, naming convention, delivery deadline. Medical communications agencies often have specific templates. The production team needs the spec before the recording begins.

Live streaming. Many satellites now run a simultaneous live stream for registered remote delegates. The stream is usually access-controlled (HCP-only, login required), which is an IT and registration function, not AV. But the production team has to deliver a broadcast-quality feed to the streaming platform in real time. That means a dedicated broadcast mix, a vision feed optimised for a small screen (more close-ups, longer holds, less IMAG-style cutting), and a latency buffer that the show caller accounts for when managing Q&A from remote attendees.

The stream and the room are two audiences with different needs. A director cutting for the room (where IMAG confirms the speaker identity to delegates who can see them live) will make cuts that look disorienting to a remote viewer watching on a laptop. The decision about who directs for which output should be made before the session, not during it.

Hybrid satellite production, where in-room and remote attendees both ask questions and both experiences are managed in real time, adds another layer. It is achievable in a compact format, but it requires the moderator to be briefed on managing remote Q&A alongside in-room Q&A, and the technical operator to have a view of the remote question queue that does not depend on the moderator holding a phone.

Common pitfalls

Slides arrive late or arrive unconfirmed. Satellite symposia are often produced by external medical communications agencies on behalf of the sponsor. The agency sends the deck; someone on the sponsor side approves the deck; the final version arrives the morning of the session. If the production team is not chasing confirmation 48 hours out, the first confirmed view of the slides is at bump-in. This is how font problems, embedded video that won’t play, and wrong aspect ratios become show-day issues.

The run sheet does not enforce the hard stop. The moderator runs long on introductions. The first speaker goes to time but the Q&A panel spills. The session finishes eight minutes late, delegates are eating dessert during the sponsor’s closing remarks, and the room has to turn for the next session before the crew has cleared. The run sheet needs specific cue times, not just segment durations, and the show caller needs permission (given by the client, in advance) to call time.

The recording pipeline is assumed, not confirmed. A senior engineer records to a dedicated machine. The recording is not the broadcast feed to the streaming platform, because that feed is lossy-compressed for delivery and is not an archival master. The storage is confirmed before the session, not discovered after. This sounds basic. It is regularly not done.

The branding build is done on the day. Sponsor content, including the screen surround graphics, the holding slides, and the breakout room signage, should all be confirmed and loaded before bump-in. A 90-minute session with a 30-minute bump-in does not leave time to rebuild a lower-third template because the logo file arrived as a low-resolution JPEG.

Acoustic isolation is assumed. A satellite running in a hotel ballroom adjacent to another satellite gets noise bleed if the dividing partition is not conference-grade. This is a venue issue, not an AV issue, but the AV team will own the problem on the recording. Check the partition specification at the site visit. If isolation is poor, a cardioid microphone pattern and careful gain structure reduce (not eliminate) the problem.

A well-produced satellite symposium is compact and controlled: polished on screen, clean on the recording, done on time. Getting there takes more pre-event work than the session length implies.

For any satellite symposium scoped as part of a larger congress engagement, or as a standalone session, send us the brief and we will scope the recording, stream, and staging requirements from the start.