The American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) has been held every two years for the last four decades. Ocean-focused scientists from around the world gather with the goal of advancing our scientific understanding of the ocean and its impact on the planet.
The 2026 meeting, the first to take place in Europe, was the largest gathering to-date, with 6,500 attendees representing 88 different countries, and nearly 2,500 presentations in 17 different session rooms. Notably, the location shift drove a significant rebalancing of attendance. While the event typically draws the majority of attendees from the U.S., that ratio flipped in 2026, with roughly two-thirds of participants traveling from other countries.
AGU has partnered with Projection for its meetings across the U.S. since 1987. With the transition across the pond to the SEC in Glasgow, Scotland—a world-class campus that’s welcomed millions, hosted icons, and helped shape Scotland’s global reputation—AGU wanted to bring Projection along to run their presentation management system.
A New Environment at Unprecedented Scale
An unfamiliar venue in a different country is already a new challenge. This particular event was even tougher to plan due to the unexpected attendance surge. As the event drew nearer and the numbers climbed, the AGU and SEC teams had a lot of adjustments to make. Things like adding rooms, reworking session formats, and scaling infrastructure helped meet the demand in the final stretch.
In a meeting this large and with this many moving parts, the reliability of the presentation management system is paramount.
SEC staff, who regularly support conferences using a wide range of third-party systems, often encounter platforms that lag, crash under heavy file loads, or require manual workarounds, such as physically moving presentation files between rooms.
Heather Nalley, Director, Strategic Meetings, AGU
It is also common at other conferences for long queues to form in the speaker ready room on the first day, as presenters rush to submit materials and teams work quickly to distribute and verify files across multiple rooms.
As a result of the record-breaking attendance, the on-site tech team and the AGU event team had their hands full with the introduction of large-scale silent sessions, requiring thousands of wireless headsets to work in sync with presentation delivery. In a new venue with different workflows, infrastructure, and teams responsible for AV and network systems, having a trusted partner familiar with the demands of high-volume presentation management helped bring stability.
“The first question we asked was if we could bring in our long-term partner to run the speaker ready room. If I had my way, we would use Projection for every meeting that I do. For me, it was a no-brainer.” Heather Nalley, Director, Strategic Meetings, American Geophysical Union
Managing Presentation Delivery at Scale
To mitigate the risks of a high-volume, high-pressure technical environment, AGU made an early decision to bring Projection’s presentation management system, ProjectionNet, into the SEC. It was a deliberate choice to rely on a trusted platform and partner to manage the complexity of presentation intake, organization, and delivery.
ProjectionNet provides a centralized system for both in-person and virtual presenters to upload, review, and manage their content. With support for multiple file types across PC and Mac, as well as the ability to scale to thousands of presentations, the platform brings structure to what can be a fragmented and time-sensitive process.
Critically for the Ocean Sciences Meeting, the ProjectionNet system allowed presenters to submit materials in advance, reducing congestion on-site. Presenters could easily locate and launch their presentations from a user-friendly interface, while built-in support features like a real-time help button, gave technicians immediate visibility into any potential issues.
Tony Edwards, Technical Manager, SEC
ProjectionNet also integrated seamlessly with SEC’s infrastructure. The venue provided the network and laptops, and the Projection team configured the presentation management platform to deliver an exceptionally smooth presenter experience. Instead of long queues, missing files, or last-minute scrambles, presentations were where they needed to be, when they needed to be there.
For SEC’s technical team—who regularly work with a range of presentation management systems—the difference was noticeable:
“It was a far more seamless experience than what we’ve had with other events and other speaker preview systems, I must admit. The Launcher meant our technicians weren’t having to help presenters find their presentations. It was very intuitive as to how it was all set up.” Tony Edwards, Technical Manager, SEC
Reliable Execution Across Thousands of Presentations
At any event, large or small, the best possible outcome for presentation management is that no one notices it at all. And that was the experience for attendees and presenters alike at the Ocean Sciences Meeting.
Across thousands of presentations and multiple session rooms, ProjectionNet performed reliably from start to finish. In contrast to the common challenges seen with other systems, there were no major disruptions, no delays, and no need for workarounds.
Nalley continued: “We work so well together. The Projection team anticipates our needs before we even know them. They know our people, our attendees, and how to best help them. We will feel much more confident of success with a trusted partner like Projection being on the team for OSM’s 2028 meeting in Vancouver.”
At a scale where even small failures can ripple across an entire program, the ability to reliably manage thousands of presentations across multiple rooms proved essential. At the Ocean Sciences Meeting, that foundation allowed both AGU and SEC teams to focus on delivering the event, not troubleshooting it.