To mark its 20th anniversary, the French Public Railway Safety Authority (EPSF) organized a hybrid conference in Paris focused on the challenges of railway safety, interoperability, and technological innovation. For this anniversary edition, the EPSF entrusted Wisembly, a digital solution from the Mediactive Group, with the design and facilitation of an event featuring a mix of roundtables, expert presentations, and live Q&A sessions.

The goal was to celebrate twenty years of work while bringing together industry stakeholders around strategic themes: artificial intelligence for safety, system interoperability, and the evolution of railway standards.

The event brought together 450 people, combining in-person and remote participants. Thanks to live Q&A features, polls, and digital interactions, everyone was able to share expertise, feedback, and perspectives on the evolution of the railway sector in a structured and engaging hybrid format.

Such an event required a platform capable of managing the complexity of the hybrid format, communicating with multiple audiences, ensuring continuity between in-person and remote participants, and transforming the roundtables into genuine spaces for dialogue. Wisembly, a long-standing partner of the EPSF for several years, successfully orchestrated this landmark event.

Organizing a hybrid conference for a professional community

Several operational and technical challenges quickly emerged: managing the invitation and follow-up campaign; ensuring that every participant, whether on-site or remote, could follow the presentations live, ask questions, and respond to surveys; organizing several thematic panel discussions with speakers from FENVAC, FONCSI, and SNCF; and ensuring smooth transitions between sessions.

The EPSF’s goal was to create a unique event, a single, unified day, experienced by everyone. The challenge spanned several dimensions:

• Pre-event communication: setting up and automating multiple communication campaigns targeting 2,100 guests.
• Inclusion of remote participants: ensuring that online attendees had the same experience as those on-site, without feeling excluded
• Technical coordination: synchronizing a physical auditorium with a remote audience
• Equitable participation: enabling both audiences to participate in discussions, ask questions via chat, vote, and interact without hierarchy
• Speaker coordination: managing the timing of multiple panel discussions, each featuring several high-level experts, without causing a domino effect of delays

To ensure the security of this conference and guarantee a professional and seamless experience, the EPSF relied on Wisembly, which is capable of managing a large volume of participants, coordinating interactions in real time, and providing comprehensive operational support for every stage of the event.

To turn this conference into a truly hybrid event, Wisembly had to manage three aspects simultaneously: administrative preparations (registration, badges, communications), live streaming (continuous roundtable discussions), and audience engagement (chats, polls, surveys).

The challenge wasn’t just about technical feasibility: it was essential that every participant, whether on-site or remote, experience a single, unified day, a single, unified conversation, and a single, unified event.

Wisembly achieved this by fully integrating all tools: the homepage, registration and invitations, access management, live streaming, large-screen projection, and centralized moderation and facilitation, all on a single platform.

Invitation Management and Email Automation

Each participant received a personalized invitation tailored to their profile: railway industry experts, journalists, or staff members. Thanks to segmentation, every message was relevant and targeted, without overwhelming recipients with information.

In the weeks leading up to the event, a series of strategic follow-ups and reminders was sent out. Automating the email campaigns ensured a consistent cadence tailored to each participant’s profile, without the need for manual intervention.

Accessibility and Simplicity of the Format

Prior to the event, each participant received a unique link in their email inbox that took them directly to their event dashboard: the event page, the panel discussion schedule, speaker bios, and supporting materials.

On the day of the event, a single click took participants to the integrated live stream. No need to switch between tools: everything was centralized on Wisembly.
For in-person participants, the experience was just as seamless: they accessed the auditorium via badge, then used a QR code to join the platform’s interactive space and ask questions directly from their phones.

Lively dialogue beyond the screen

During the panel discussions, participants, whether in person or online, could ask questions live via chat.
📌 Examples of questions that shaped the discussions:

• “What are the major challenges in integrating AI into existing railway safety systems? ”
• “How are interoperability standards evolving in the face of technological innovations?”
• “What lessons have you learned from railway accidents over the past five years in terms of safety?”
• “What R&D investments are needed for the next 10 years? ”

The hosts and moderators selected the most relevant questions and posed them directly to the journalist, creating a lively and focused dialogue that would not have been possible in a traditional format.
This dynamic transformed the roundtables into genuine spaces for debate, where the geographically dispersed audience actively participated in the discussion.

Measurable audience engagement at every stage

Between each panel discussion, instant polls were used to gauge the audience’s sentiment:
📌 Examples of polls conducted during the day:

• “What do you think is the main challenge for the next 20 years? (Safety / Interoperability / Sustainability / Digitalization)”
• “Do you think AI should be integrated into critical railway systems?”
• “What is your perception of the ongoing regulatory changes?”

The results were displayed in real time on a large screen for the in-person audience and live on the platform for remote participants. This instant feedback created a sense of mutual engagement: every participant could see that their opinion mattered.

The success of this conference hinged on the quality of the ecosystem brought together. The EPSF was able to convene top executives from the rail sector to discuss these key issues:

Institutional and industry partners in attendance:

• FENVAC (National Federation of Victims of Terrorist Attacks and Mass Accidents)
• FONCSI (Foundation for a Culture of Industrial Safety)
• SNCF
• Getlink
• CER The Voice of European Railways
• ORR – Office of Railand Road
• Siemens
• Major rail manufacturers
• European regulatory agencies

This gathering of high-level experts transformed the conference into a true think tank: the discussions were not merely informative, but collaborative, co-created with stakeholders on the ground.
Wisembly served as the technical facilitator: by enabling smooth moderation of discussions and voting, as well as reliable recording of results, the platform stepped back to let the content and debates take center stage.

The result? An anniversary conference recognized as a pivotal moment for the French rail ecosystem, where safety challenges for the coming years were discussed openly and constructively.

A big thank you to the EPSF teams for their trust in this wonderful project!