MISK Global Forum
A Premier
Youth Forum
Description
The Misk foundation is the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. It aims to empower future leaders. We were proud to support Misk once again, this time with the Misk Global Forum, or MGF platform. The MGF is the region’s premiere youth forum – a flagship annual event; and a key component of the Misk activity and a testament to KSA’s drive towards the beautiful Vision 2030 initiative.
For this project we were contracted to design and build the platform. It hosts events as well as forms a hub for interaction. Much more than a website, it served as a streaming platform, hosting platform and had partial integrations with their LMS. The headline topic was 5 000 – 10 000 concurrent users – an alarming amount to achieve on a WordPress stack.
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Work carried out on this project
The Journey of a Thousand Lines
Like all good projects, we started with a strong idea of what we need to achieve and confirmed we can deliver the scope within the time. We mapped the risks and put plans in place to reduce them.
Next it was on to research led by Mark Naguib; including stakeholder interviews and deep findings to make sure we design a platform that users want to use, don’t just need to use.
This is, of course, what our UX team is great at. Mark led the design himself based on the findings, bouncing ideas with Luke along the way, and of course the dev team and client.
At the same time our development team started planning the architecture. What’s the old saying: “Measure twice, code once.”
André, Omar, Khaled, Kayyum and Alpesh led the charge and spent long hours looking at all the options – when you have a team of experts, these debates can get a little…challenging, but are absolutely crucial to building something wonderful.
Once we knew something good was brewing, and importantly that all the good things were possible, we moved into development.
Platform Infrastructure
Our platform is a WordPress base using the BuddyBoss system, and then heavily extended with modules and custom code. While this served our needs in the short time demands, it opened up the risk of a system that wasn’t as efficient as a fully custom system could be. This, of course, meant rigorous optimisation at every level and relentless stress-testing.
It all came together beautifully, and users can connect, chat, stream, enjoy content and much more on a seemingly seamless platform with tight security at various levels.
It wasn’t easy, but it was exactly, perfectly, on-target.
Project final outcome
What we achieved from this project
Project Ownership
The interaction with multiple vendors and alignment with several tech teams was no small task in terms of project management. Luckily Nour is a pro. Relentless chasing, not accepting delays and removing blockers like it was her superpower kept the team running at speed with fewer frustrations so they can focus on what they should be doing.
All remotely, since we hire for talent, not passports.
This is the future.
Finally, we launched – on deadline, zero downtime, loads of users, all communicating, streaming, and building their futures.
I work with Legends 🙂
Ruaan Grobler
Chief Digital Officer
Members on this project
André Schembri
Omar Tanti
Nour Shokeir
Dorvic Mansueto
Gerhardt Camilleri
Alpesh Nakrani
Daniel Bonello
Kayyum Halai
Luke Vella
Mark Naguib
Every Story
needs a Beginning.
Let’s Start Yours!
We give birth to new ideas, cleverly combined with digitally accelerated solutions that drive growth and make a lasting impact.
