24 July 10

Facts from the World Youth Convention (Report 8)

Statistics about the use of media during the World Youth Convention in Stockholm, 15-18 July 2010

Web streaming

Up until Thursday 20 July there had been 37,179 views of the online streaming videos. This number is increasing as people are still going online to view the stored videos.
The most popular video is the Opening Meeting (13.8%), followed by the Praise Party (9.57%). The final meeting has so far had 6.46% of the views. The analysis programme records the number of computers accessing the view. There is no way of knowing how many people were watching the computer or if it was being transferred to a large screen with hundreds of people watching. We are aware of a number of places around the world where groups of people watched the meetings.
Interest in the live streaming of the World Youth Convention (WYC) increased throughout the four-day event. A spokesperson for the broadcast provider commented that their firm streamed video online for a wide variety of companies and events and they rarely see such a continuous increase in the number watching a live broadcast. Viewing interest usually decreases over the time of the event.
21% of online views have been from Sweden, 13% from USA, 11% from UK, 6% from Canada and 5.5% from Australia. Some of the countries making up the remainder include a number of European countries as well as India, Brazil, Pakistan, Argentina, Philippines, Japan, Singapore and Jamaica.
The information technology (IT) equipment needed to create broadcast streams in four languages included 32 2.3Ghz processors and used just under 500Gb of disk space for storage. At any one time, 24 streams were being output from the Aula Magna auditorium using Stockholm University's 20 Gigabit Internet link.
The Aula Magna auditorium technical team of 23 was allocated to the following areas: four in broadcast, four in stage, three in projection, two in sound , two in mixing, five on cameras, two in translation and one producer.
There were also seven translators in the auditorium.
It took the 23 technical team members 12 hours – mostly thoughout Tuesday night – to set up the equipment ready for rehearsals.
Everything was recorded in high definition with the language tracks of English, French, Spanish and Portuguese embedded on the recording.
The screen in the auditorium was projected using two 32,000 lumen overlay projectors in order to create an extremely wide 10 metre by 4 metre screen on which projection windows were overlaid.
A total of 28 Powerpoint presentations and 15 videos were shown. There were live links, via Skype, to New York, Pakistan and New Zealand.
International Headquarters (IHQ) IT staff drove a van carrying audio visual equipment and weighing 3.5 tons (including the weight of the van) 2,538 miles from London to Stockholm and back. Another truck used by the audiovisual team carried a further six tons of equipment.
Companies involved in the technical production included: IT staff at IHQ, TwoFour Digital, VideoForce SE, SoundForce SE, Fabtronics and Media Diary Rooms

Poken (social networking devices used by delegates)

Poken devices were given to all 1,100 delegates. Each delegate inputted their contact details onto their personal Poken, when they touched Pokens with other delegates the contact details were automatically exchanged and a new friend made.
31,050 interactions (making friends) took place during WYC. The top three 'Pokenauts' managed to make 215, 190 and 170 friends.

www.raisedup.org website statistics

There was a dramatic increase in the number of visitors (with 44% being first-time visitors) to the Raised Up WYC website during 14-19 July (which included the four days of the WYC) compared with the number of visitors on the previous six days. The increases are extremely significant, indicating an interest in the WYC streaming video through the website.
During the four days of the convention (15-18 July) there were 15,362 visits, with 7,985 of them being absolute unique visitors. This compares with 2,838 visits to the Raised Up website during 8-13 July.
The visitors during the convention viewed 33,163 pages – predominantly the home page.
A total of 1,498 were very loyal visitors who accessed the website multiple times. Each visitor only represents one computer which may have had a number of people viewing it.
The visitors came mostly from countries where high bandwidth connections are the norm: Scandinavia, North America and the United Kingdom.
The top 10 viewing countries in order were: Sweden, United Kingdom, USA, Australia, Canada, India, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands and New Zealand.
Viewers came from 119 countries.
Most of the viewers came direct to the Raised Up website. However, 15.91% were referred through Google, 9.85% were referred through The Salvation Army IHQ website (www.salvationarmy.org) and 9.22% were referred through Facebook.

Volunteers

A total of 200 Salvation Army volunteers from Sweden, Norway and Latvia ensured that the WYC operated smoothly.
The volunteers took time off work, used school holidays and paid their own way to serve at the convention.

Meals

14,500 individual lunches and dinners were served at WYC. Thousands of snacks were also given out.
193 different fresh products were used in the meals.
The meals were eaten at 215 tables.

Planning