Behind the Scenes at LINC 2026: 700 Presentations, Zero Friction
There’s a moment at every conference when months of preparation become real. For LINC 2026, it was 7 AM on January 27th. The first buses pulled up to Trade Fair Leipzig, doors opened, and the empty hallway filled up with physicians, surgeons, and researchers from 70 countries, ready to collect their badge and join four days of live cases, cutting-edge techniques, and nonstop learning.
The beeping of scanners and the hum of rolling printers were a reminder of our team’s hard work to make on-site registration smooth and quick. I was there to see it happen.
What is LINC?
The Leipzig Interventional Course is one of the world’s premier events in endovascular medicine. Over 2,000 participants. Four days. More than 50 live cases streamed from operating rooms around the globe. Interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons, and cardiologists - all in one place, watching real procedures unfold in real time.
It’s the kind of event where everything has to work. There’s no room for “we’ll fix it in post.”
Six Months in the Making
Preparation started in June. Registration Town handled attendee registration, faculty assignment, and program planning long before anyone set foot in Leipzig. By the time January came around, the data was ready - thousands of registrations, hundreds of faculty members, a program packed with sessions across multiple rooms and stages.
But data sitting in a system isn’t the same as a conference running smoothly. That’s where the real test begins.
When the Weather Had Other Plans
A few days before the conference, extreme weather across the US disrupted flights. Some speakers couldn’t make it. Programs had to shift - presentations moved from on-stage to remote, speaker assignments changed, schedules adjusted.
I found out about this almost by accident. I asked the faculty manager how things were going, and she mentioned the changes casually. No stress. No panic.
Why? Because once the data is updated in Registration Town, the program just follows. Changes propagate instantly - to the AV team, to signage screens, to the event app, to the moderators. No frantic phone calls. No conflicting information. The system handled it.
There was no dramatic moment because there didn’t need to be one.
CME Tracking with Precision
Medical professionals attend conferences like LINC to earn Continuing Medical Education credits. But tracking attendance precisely - not just “they registered” but “they actually sat through the session” - is a challenge.
For LINC 2026, we built something new: check-in and check-out kiosks at the entrances of the main arenas. Attendees scanned in when they entered, scanned out when they left. Certificates of attendance were generated based on exactly how much time each person spent in each session.
It was fascinating to watch people engage with it. A quick scan on the way in, another on the way out. Simple. No friction. And for the organizers, precise data they could trust.
The Master Control Room
Inside the Nerve Center of a Live Medical Conference
If you’ve never been in an MCR during a live medical conference, it’s hard to describe the energy. Multiple screens. Feeds coming in from operating rooms in different countries. Video directors calling shots. And in the middle of it all, our partners at Media House orchestrating the live cases.
Slideshow City powered the presentation management. Nearly 700 presentations were reviewed and delivered across multiple stages in 3.5 days. Video directors put speaker names or “Live from…” location tags on screen with a single click - right on time, every time.
When I walked backstage and asked the technicians how things were going, the answer was always the same: “It just works.”
That’s the best compliment we can get. These are people managing back-to-back sessions, juggling dozens of live streams. The last thing they need is friction when launching a presentation or getting the right name on screen.
”I Love Working with Registration Town”
One of the faculty coordinators told me: “I love working with Registration Town. The different filter and column presets make it so easy to switch context when managing faculty.”
When you’re handling hundreds of speakers, being able to jump between views – by roles and assignments, accommodation, or arrival status – is a lifesaver. It means less time clicking around and more time solving real problems as they happen.
700 Presentations. Zero Friction.
LINC 2026 was a reminder of why we do this work. Conferences like this matter. The physicians in that room are learning techniques that will save lives. The last thing they should worry about is whether the technology will hold up.
There’s nothing quite like being on-site when your software is running a conference of this scale. You see things you’d never notice from behind a screen. You hear feedback you’d never get in an email. You watch real people interact with what your team has built.
Meeting the HMP Global team in person was an honor. Walking the halls, checking in with technicians, sitting in the MCR - these experiences shape what we build next. That’s how great software gets built: not in isolation, but in the heartbeat of real events.