Lights, Camera, Pitch!
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Date: April 25, 2023
Role: Live Event A/V Director
Services: Graphic Design, Live Event Production, Video Editing, Talent Management
Location: Notion Tulsa
Talent: ACT House team and Cohort 5 founders
Crew: Jordan McNear – Creative Producer
Ben Lindsey - Live Stream Technician
The fifth Demo Day of ACT House’s Accelerator program was the culmination of months of preparation, iteration, and intention—both for the founders on stage and for the team behind the scenes. For this event, I directed the full production lifecycle, beginning well before show day with pre-production planning, branded slide design, and coordination with A/V partners. Every element was built to support one goal: presenting the cohort’s six months of work with clarity, confidence, and credibility. This Demo Day wasn’t just a pitch event; it was a moment to signal ACT House’s growth and legitimacy within Tulsa’s startup ecosystem.
Leading up to the event, I designed a full suite of visual assets to set the tone. The Demo Day poster leaned into human-first focus while allowing the sharpness of the venue—Notion Tulsa—to invite the audience even deeper. The strong, candid photo leaned on art and community design, capturing the collective energy in the room without manufacturing it. I carried that same design philosophy into welcome packets, presentation slide decks, and social media announcement carousels. The carousel system was built to be modular and repeatable, balancing bold typography with rhythmic layouts that made founder information easy to digest while staying visually consistent with the ACT House brand.
On show day, my role shifted fully into live event A/V direction. I managed a multi-crew production that included in-house videographers, a YouTube multi-cam livestream team, and full audio support—while also overseeing run of show and presentation flow for more than a dozen founders. When a critical HDMI splitter failed just hours before doors opened, quick problem-solving and coordination with the audio crew kept the event on track without the audience ever knowing there was a hiccup. The result was ACT House’s largest Demo Day to date, executed smoothly and confidently, with founders able to focus on their pitches instead of technical distractions.
Post-event, I edited the full two-hour broadcast into a polished livestream archive that reflected the professionalism and momentum of the program. The final cut highlighted each founder’s progress while delivering a powerful full-circle moment by featuring the Build Day X Documentary winner on the Demo Day stage. More than anything, this project represented a long-awaited moment of visibility for Cohort 5—showcasing their growth, reinforcing ACT House’s role as a serious player in the startup space, and helping set the stage for the next chapter of funding and opportunity.
