Live Congress Platform for the ESC cover
Case Study

Live Congress Platform for the ESC

BackendFrontendArchitectureScalingDevOpsAgile
.NET CoreC#ASP.NET CoreVue.jsAzureAkamaiK6Azure DevOpsMSSQLRedis

About

When I joined the European Society of Cardiology during the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization faced a major challenge: their flagship medical congress usually held in person for tens of thousands of cardiologists had to move entirely online.
The mission was to design and build a high-availability virtual congress platform, capable of hosting live sessions, user registrations, and large traffic peaks while ensuring a smooth experience for attendees.

During the inauguration of the platform for the ESC Congress 2020, the first fully digital edition of the event, it hosted more than 80,000 participants over one weekend, with over 10,000 concurrent users connected to live sessions at peak load.

The goal was to recreate the experience of a physical congress but online, with the same reliability and engagement cardiologists expected from in-person events.

Work

  • [x] Developed a high-throughput backend API using ASP.NET Core.
  • [x] Implemented a multi-layer caching system with Redis and optimized queries with stored procedures to reduce load on the main Microsoft SQL Server database.
  • [x] Configured the infrastructure on Microsoft Azure with auto-scaling rules to handle traffic peaks seamlessly.
  • [x] Conducted extensive load tests with K6 before each event to validate system scalability.
  • [x] Built a responsive frontend with Vue.js, featuring an advanced search and filtering system for congress sessions, speakers, and more.
  • [x] Ensured fast global delivery and caching of all frontend and static assets by using the Akamai CDN.
  • [x] Set up real-time performance monitoring dashboards in Grafana to track key metrics during live events.
  • [x] Managed all deployments and updates between events using secure Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines.

Results

  • Enabled the European Society of Cardiology to host its flagship annual congress entirely online, serving over 80,000 healthcare professionals.
  • Achieved zero-downtime performance and stability for more than 10,000 concurrent live users during peak sessions.
  • Delivered a responsive and high-performance platform, ensuring a seamless digital experience for a global audience.
  • Maintained platform stability with hands-on, real-time monitoring and operational management during all live congress sessions.

This project combined scalable architecture and resilient engineering to build the core digital platform for one of the world's largest medical congresses.