World Schools Summit 2025 — Live Campus Broadcast & Video Production

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Overview

World Schools Summit 2025 was a two-day international education conference held at Yasmina British Academy in Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi on November 15–16, 2025 — hosted by T4 Education and Aldar Education. 1,000+ delegates from 90 countries attended, with speakers including the CEO of Emirates Foundation, the CEO of Aldar Education, representatives from The Brookings Institution, the World Economic Forum, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and Microsoft Elevate.

Mirror Production House handled two distinct scopes on this project: filming and editing the event highlight video, and designing and operating the live campus broadcast — distributing the main hall feed across 30 screens throughout Yasmina British Academy in real time, with no internet connection involved.

The highlight video is available here: youtu.be/MH2jVDzTtiI

Client

Client: T4 Education / Yasmina British Academy (Aldar Education)
Event: World Schools Summit 2025 — “Leadership for a Better World”
Dates: November 15–16, 2025
Location: Yasmina British Academy, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Delegates: 1,000+ from 90 countries

The Production Challenge

The broadcast requirement was the harder problem. The summit needed delegates and school staff in other parts of the campus to watch the main hall proceedings live — across 30 screens spread across different buildings and rooms. The screens were a mix: some were LED walls capable of receiving a dedicated input; others were standard non-smart televisions with no native network capability.

The instinctive solution — stream over the internet — wasn’t viable. The school’s internet connection wasn’t dimensioned for pushing a broadcast-quality signal to 30 simultaneous endpoints. Internet-based streaming also introduces latency that creates audio echo when people in adjacent rooms can hear the live audio from the main hall and see the delayed stream on a nearby screen at the same time. In a school environment where rooms are close together, that echo becomes a serious problem.

The solution had to run on the school’s local network only, solve the incompatibility between LED walls and non-smart TVs, deliver synchronised playback to all 30 screens, and be set up, tested, and operational before the first session on day one.

Running the live broadcast and running a 3-camera main hall production simultaneously required clear crew separation. A 12-person team was needed to keep both scopes operational without one affecting the other.

How We Approached It

Local streaming server: We built and configured a dedicated streaming server on-site, connected to the school’s internal network rather than the internet. The server received the main hall feed and redistributed it to all 30 screens simultaneously via the LAN. Because the signal never left the local network, latency was reduced to a level where audio echo was eliminated — even in rooms adjacent to the main hall.

Mixed screen environment: Non-smart TVs can’t receive a network stream directly. We used media player devices connected to each non-smart screen to pull the local stream and output it via HDMI. LED walls received the signal through their own input protocols. The result was a unified signal reaching all 30 endpoints regardless of screen type.

Setup and testing: The server and full screen network were installed and tested the day before the event opened. We verified signal quality, synchronisation, and audio at each screen before delegates arrived. Any configuration adjustments were made during the setup window, not on the day.

Main hall production: Three cameras covered the hall from fixed and roaming positions — wide, mid, and close — with dedicated operators on each. Audio was fed directly from the venue’s PA system into the production chain, avoiding ambient mic pickup. The same feed went to the broadcast server and to the recording for post-production.

What We Delivered

Local broadcast infrastructure — server built and operated on school network
Live signal distributed to 30 screens (LED walls + non-smart TVs) simultaneously
Zero signal delay · Zero audio echo · No internet dependency
3-camera main hall video production across both days
12-person crew across broadcast, camera, audio, and photography
Event highlight video — edited and colour graded in-house
Event photography