Global pharma symposium: getting 20,000+ photos to international attendees

In October 2026 a Korean pharmaceutical company hosted a global symposium with international speakers and guests. Over three days 21,688 event photos were uploaded, and 98% of attendee visits used the English interface.

The client asked not to be named. The numbers below come straight from PikFind operating records.

Send 20,000 photos as a folder and few people find themselves

Symposium photos are spread across keynotes, panels, networking and the gala dinner. A folder link makes attendees scroll a little and stop; international guests only start looking after they fly home.

Here the photo team uploaded in batches during the event, and attendees got a single event link. The link opened on the event’s own domain, so it carried the same name as the secretariat’s notices.

Attendees got their own photos from one selfie

Of 1,131 selfie searches, 96% returned at least one photo of the person, with 54 photos per search on average. 439 attendees searched and 26,373 photos were downloaded. Half of the searches answered within 1.6 seconds.

Results are split into confident matches and possible matches. Of 1,170 judgements attendees left on possible matches, 1,022 said "this is me" — we use that to tune the threshold for the next event.

Search stayed open while photos kept arriving

Uploaded photos typically became searchable within about 20 minutes (median ~22 minutes). The busiest minute saw 27 searches.

Two file issues surfaced during operation: a special character some cameras write into the copyright field blocked registration (fixed within 28 minutes), and 88 originals at 44 megapixels exceeded the analysis size limit (fixed the next day and reprocessed). In the end, no uploaded photo was missing from search.

Removal requests were handled inside the event

The 15 photos attendees asked to take down were removed from the public page immediately and kept aside. Search selfies are not stored; they are deleted right after processing.