When the pandemic emptied trade show floors and convention centers, Toronto-based digital agency Globacore found its business model evaporated overnight. The company had built its reputation on interactive installations for physical spaces—projects for global brands like Acura, the IEEE, Volkswagen, and Samsung that pushed the boundaries of what audiences had seen before. With the venues gone, the agency faced a stark choice: halt its pipeline or rebuild its practice for the web. It chose the latter, and completed the transition in roughly two months.
Rapid reinvention
As in-person events disappeared, Globacore’s clients pivoted to virtual trade shows and demanded immersive, 3D experiences online. Dave Boyle, Head of Development, and his team had to become a web company quickly. New hires were brought in, and Mike Robinson—now DevOps Engineering Manager—was tapped to lead the projects and establish the agency’s technical foundation.
The agency’s clients were the same global brands, but the stakes were different. Virtual experiences had to be flawless; audiences were joining from around the world, from a wide range of devices, and the success of a client’s investment hinged on responsiveness.
Globacore also faced demanding service level agreements, including 99.99% uptime guarantees for larger brands. For that scale and support, they adopted Vercel’s enterprise plan, which handles edge computing and caching on a global network. As Robinson put it, end users received the fastest possible response regardless of location or device—without the team having to manage infrastructure.
“Vercel’s Global Edge Network is handling edge computing and caching for us and ensuring that during these virtual events reaching audiences around the globe that our users were receiving the fastest possible response no matter where they were—or which device they used to join—without us having to think about it.”
A developer workflow built on speed
Globacore’s tight timelines ruled out any solution requiring significant setup. Their developers leveraged Next.js build tooling, particularly fast refresh, which displayed edits in the browser within a second of saving. The surrounding Next.js ecosystem also meant the team didn’t need to build everything from scratch; developers ramped up quickly and gained confidence, allowing for rapid iteration. The agency reports making hundreds of code changes daily.
At the deployment level, Preview Deployments exposed new features to clients with a simple Git Push. That tightened the review loop considerably. As Robinson explained, the workflow required only linking a Git repository and pushing code—no separate DevOps effort.
Omnichannel from here on
With in-person events now returning, Globacore hasn’t reversed its digital transition. The firm now identifies as a hybrid agency, able to deliver omnichannel experiences across physical and virtual spaces alike. Boyle noted a corresponding shift in positioning, from "digital experiences for physical spaces" to "digital experiences for any space."
The experience also reshaped the agency’s economics. The lean team now builds at scale with lower infrastructure overhead. Boyle credited the platform for letting the business grow even as the pandemic upended its original model.
