That was the challenge faced by the organization Outdoor Nation at its 2010 Youth Summit in New York, N.Y., June 19 and 20. The organization reports that the Outdoor Nation Youth Summit was "the largest and most diverse youth-attended, outdoor-focused event in America's history."
The event required that more than 500 young leaders from across the country join together to "address the growing disconnect between young people and the outdoors."
Event planners teamed with 5th Medium I.C. (Interactive Communications) and Option Technologies Interactive (OTI) to create and carry out a wildly successful interactive event that engaged participants and resulted in actionable goals for creating new opportunities for young people to interact with nature.
During the event, Chris Bui, founder and sole proprietor of 5th Medium I.C., used the power of interactive technology to collect data in real time and use it immediately to guide the direction of the meeting. Because they could see their input and decisions being acted on immediately, the Youth Summit delegates were able to set a national outdoor agenda, outline priorities and actions, and ultimately launch a youth-driven Outdoor Nation movement — all in a mere two days.
Conquering logistical challenges
Bui has long had a vision to revolutionize the way corporations, government agencies and communities communicate, build consensus and achieve goals. Since 1992, he has designed and implemented more than 1,350 interactive events. Planning and co-facilitating the Outdoor Nation 2010 Outdoor Youth Summit and Festival in Central Park was his most recent endeavor.
Typically, audience response systems are used indoors, where the wireless signals can bounce off walls and ceilings. In this case, Bui used the OTI G2 devices. He's used these devices many times outside, and they provide a strong signal from as far away from the wireless receiver as 300 feet.
The intricate Summit design, multiple question sets, large, diverse audience and the outdoor environment presented some unique challenges that were easy to overcome with the help of OTI's OptionFinder interactive polling systems. "One of the most important skills and benefits we bring to our partners involves designing the perfect agenda and content material tailored to the goals and objectives for any given project." Bui and his partner Johanna Saretzki used their combined experience to create the ideal framework to allow for the flexibility to deal with new questions, comments and lists of ideas as they spontaneously came from the participants.
"At the end of an event we always have the participants use their keypads to evaluate the success of the project on a scale from 1 to 10. In this case, 93 percent of the participants voted a "10" for holding the event annually, which is an outstanding level of success."
Bui says, "We exceeded everyone's expectations. The project organizers were thrilled, and most importantly, the participants created some incredibly strong actions, responses and solutions to outdoor-related issues that are going to make a difference."
Bui also praised OTI's interactive polling system for its ability to look at different demographic groups during the experience. The system lets you immediately move through the most important results, looking at specific factors such as gender, age and political party. The diversity key allows the facilitator to identify results that indicate a high level of disagreement and then to pinpoint where the disagreement exists between specific groups.
"We were able to immediately show and analyze results according to different demographic slices," said Bui. "It's easy to see when you don't have agreement among a particular group — and when you do. We were able to focus on the area with the most disagreement and find out why through an interactive dialogue process. We call this 'making the invisible visible,' and it helps us bring to life the conversation in the room that we need to discuss."
Bui has worked with OTI since 1992 and he says the relationship he enjoys with OTI is amazing, especially with regard to ongoing support. It's much more of a partnership than a typical business/client relationship.
In addition, many organizations that have become OTI customers were first exposed to the technology through events that Bui facilitated. He praised the customer service that OTI provides and says the company really believes in arrangements that are beneficial to all parties.
If you'd like to learn more about OTI's audience response system and how this technology can bring democracy and interactivity to your next group event click here.
