NAVER Cloud AI SUMMIT — Taking a look at the technology used in the making
December 17, NAVER Cloud AI SUMMIT
NAVER Cloud AI SUMMIT Online
Though the event is over, we wanted to look back to showcase the technologies that were used in making an online conference platform that broadcasted 32 unique programs to thousands of people.
Thanks to NAVER Cloud Platform, even I, a marketer with a liberal arts major, was able to handle this without too much trouble.
Here is how we developed our website.
Architecture
NAVER Cloud AI SUMMIT Online Conference Platform development
The architecture, seemingly endless, is in summary, as shown below.
- Create Server and Request for Public IP
- Cloud Server - Developing Website
- Auto Scaling
- Load Balancer - Real-time Broadcasting and Streaming of Recordings
- Live Station → VOD Station
- Object Storage, CDN+ - Producing Speaker Introduction Script and Subtitle Extraction
- CLOVA Voice
- CLOVA Speech - Sending Notification Emails and SMS to Customers
- Cloud Outbound Mailer
- SENS (Simple & Easy Notification Service)
From creating servers to notifying customers through email and SMS, let’s look into the details!
1. Creating Server and Requesting for Public IP
Server Creation
There are cloud servers with a variety of different specs available in NAVER Cloud Platform Console. The word “server” still makes me think of physical equipment, but as I became more familiar with the Console, the concepts and vocabulary related to Cloud became more familiar and therefore more approachable.
- Tip: You can choose between the Classic and VPC options when you see the “platform” part in the left side of NAVER Cloud Platform. An upgrade from Classic, VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a virtual network, logically completely independent, and comes with advantages for protecting your virtual resources and data more securely. You can also set up a more flexible network through additional features such as Subnet, NAT GW, ACG, and NACL.
When creating a server, you can select the desired boot disk size, image type, OS image type, and server type.
Request for Public IP
Afterward, you can easily request for a Public IP address in Public IP menu by clicking [+ Allocated New IP].
2. Developing the Website
Since it is an online event, traffic should be highly concentrated on the day of the event. That means we can expect a relatively small number of visitors before and after, right? But the thing to remember is that it’s hard to control the traffic online, as opposed to offline events where you can control the number of people to admit at the entrance door.
So, the specific cloud technologies that come in handy for times like this are Auto Scaling and Load Balancer.
Applying Auto Scaling
This is a service that automatically increases or decreases the number of servers based on the preset resource conditions. It provides high availability when the demands can be difficult to predict, like this time’s NAVER Cloud AI SUMMIT, so there is no need to prepare too many servers. The advantages are that you can maintain stable service while efficiently managing the cost for servers.
Creating Load Balancer
This is a service that distributes network traffic to multiple servers by considering server performance and amount of load. (Although it shouldn’t happen…) If one of the servers connected to the load balancer fails, then it automatically distributes the load on the server to the other servers and prevents disruption to the service. Thus, reassuring that the event would take place without any trouble. So, it is reassuring that we will be able to hold this December event without any trouble.
- Load Balancer supports high security, including encrypted communication such as TLS v1.0, TLS v1.1, and TLS v1.2, and the SSL Offloading feature.
3. Preparation for Live Broadcast and Recorded Video Streaming
The highlight of preparing an online conference event. Getting ready for video transmission!
Live Station
Live Station provides a variety of features for real-time live broadcasting. The provided features include an encoding feature that converts one high-definition live video into various image quality levels, real-time DVR, Time Shift, real-time thumbnail extraction, and Re-Stream, which enables simulcasting to various media platforms.
Clicking <Watch> while the video broadcasts on air will allow the pre-linked video to stream live on the platform you are utilizing to host the event.
If you select “Set” for <Automatic recording settings> when creating the channel, the original video will also be recorded at the same time as the live video stream~!
I referred to the training video below for all the technologies and their application. (You can finish it in only 26 minutes!)
VOD Station
VOD Station is like the recorded version of Live Station. It’s also a service that more than 40 universities all over the country including Gachon University have been using for their remote education classes.
It packetizes the MP4 video files and streams it as high quality VOD videos. The user can watch high definition videos on the spot without downloading. In order to do this, it is essential to have Object Storage, where you save the video content, and a CDN+ (Content Delivery Network)! I thought that the synergy created by combination of different services is also part of the reason why the cloud is so attractive.
* Tips on CDN for Faster Content Delivery: View more
4. Producing Speaker Introduction Script and Subtitle Extraction (Automatically!)
More than 30 speakers were invited to present at the AI SUMMIT. Can you imagine how troublesome it’d be to have to record all the introductions and make the subtitles one by one?
Let’s get some help from AI for this, shall we?
CLOVA Voice
Making voice introductions for the speakers.
We utilized the voice synthesis service, CLOVA Voice, to create introductions for the speaker presentations. CLOVA Voice has technology that turns text into a human voice, and produces natural intonation and emotional expression. Hearing this kind of premium synthetic voice really makes me feel the advancement of AI technology. Take a listen on the CLOVA Voice website on the various voices. The speaker introduction voices made with CLOVA Voice will only be available to rewatch and listen to on the AI SUMMIT page until January 15, 2021.
CLOVA Speech
Automatically extracting subtitles
Next is CLOVA Speech, the service that converts voice into subtitles. It really saved us a lot of time putting the video together. Below is a sample screenshot of voice recognition results editor.
The subtitles created can be downloaded to the cloud’s Object Storage or local PC. The supported formats are JSON, SMI, CSV, XLS, and SRT.
- CLOVA Speech service officially launched on November 17.
5. Sending Customer Notification Contents
We’ve used the email and SMS sending service that’s easily accessible in the NAVER Cloud Platform Console to communicate with customers who have signed up for the event.
Cloud Outbound Mailer
Cloud Outbound Mailer is easy to use since it provides an environment that’s similar to a regular email editor. What makes it unique compared to other mass mailing services is the content personalization feature based on replacement tags, allowing you to be able to greet participants with a more familiar-sounding voice!
You can also utilize the statistics feature to see how many participants have read the mail you sent.
SENS (Simple & Easy Notification Service)
Finally, we prepared sending text messages as well. It’s easy for emails to get missed, so we decided that it was essential to utilize SMS notifications as well.
We’ve used the easy sending messages and notifications feature, SENS (Simple & Easy Notification Service), which can be used without setting up an additional message server. It supports push notifications using APNS in iOS and GCM/FCM in Android, as well as Kakao Talk BizMessage (Alim Talk), but we only used the SMS sending feature since that fulfilled our requirements.
Final Thoughts
Building an online conference website using NAVER Cloud Platform. Was it fun?
We’ve worked really hard preparing the platform, especially for this event. We hope the participants had a valuable experience.
We had an amazing lineup this year and completed the event successfully. Thousands of people joined to watch and learn about the AI trends, discoveries, and innovations that are happening at this moment. We are excited to host more events like this one in the future and hope you can join us there :)
