G8 Young Summit Mobile Interaction

Overview

ProTexting.com had the wonderful opportunity to be a technology partner for the G8 Young Summit that took place in Washington D.C. from May 4-6, 2012. The G8 Young Summit is a gathering of 100 delegates from 20 countries. These young leaders of tomorrow spent 72 hours doing intensive work encompassing Global Dialogues, Global Panels and Global Think-Tanks, which led to recommendations that were presented in the form of a final communiqué and a call to action for the world’s leaders who met the following week. The G8 Young Summit takes place before the G8 Annual Meeting that convenes with the Heads of State from all participating countries.

Solution

How exactly did ProTexting work with the G8 Young Summit? The ProTexting platform was used during the text message survey and voting proce. The delegates discussed many Global issues, including the Economy, Health, Security, and Governance. Additional presentations and discussion covered topics such as Genocide in Africa and Nuclear Proliferation. After many hours of discussion and deliberation, delegates voted on issues and then ranked the top five. Among the top five issues, they voted to choose the number one issue that they will work on together to find a solution.

Campaign Goals

In prior years, the Summit conducted their voting process by using a traditional paper and hand-tabulation method. The process was tedious and did not get the full participation of the delegates. It took too much time to sort results and to verify accuracy. During the summit, American diplomat John Negroponte spoke about the sheer speed of information transfer today vs. the way it was during the past 20 years. It’s obvious how times have changed and how our ability to communicate rapidly has changed not only the way we do business, but it also has forever changed the world.

The speed and accuracy of the data being transmitted was essential to this project. In their technology partnership with ProTexting.com, the leadership of the G8 Summit established specific campaign goals:

The G8 Young community values current "intelligence" that is best evidenced by the speed of text messaging. The more each delegate can quickly bring to the table, the better. The delegates used their mobile device to vote! And this is where ProTexting.com was essential! The delegates used ProTexting's technology to vote from their mobile phones. The use of mobile surveys and voting made a difference in the outcome of the Summit.

All of the voting results of the G8 Young Summit could be immediately seen by participating delegates. The voting results quickly showed that the number one ranked issue focused on the Global Economy and Entrepreneurship.

Results

ProTexting became an integral player in facilitating the speed of accurate communication. There are many different ways mobile can be used to support leadership at summits and think-tanks. Finally, it is important to note that it did not matter what type of mobile device the delegates used to vote. The Final breakdown established the following percentages by device: iPhone 55%, Android 12%, BlackBerry29%, Other4%.

According to Richard S. Seline, G8 Executive Secretariat for the G8 Young Summit in Washington D.C., "I was one of 100 delegates from 20 countries that wrote a Communique which was later presented in front of the White House. ProTexting was one of the sponsors and provided their mobile voting platform. All the delegates in the room were asked to text their votes on three important questions and the results were shown on the big screen behind the main stage. The use of the ProTexting platform – with its immediacy of response also sparked conversation during the prioritization process as well as post the voting decisions were ranked and shown to the delegates. Using this platform required no installation costs, no cumbersome wiring or other hotel A/V application, and simply worked seamlessly. I have seen similar processes implemented only by spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours planning. The voting was a success and I want you to know that many of the delegates were impressed with the technology and loved the interactivity. I would use this again in any conference or meeting setting! "

Kalin Kassabov, CEO of ProTexting.com added, "I had the leader of the event come to me to tell me that he would use the mobile platform again for future events. A Colombian government representative asked me if we could implement this technology in Columbia. Many other participants said they would use ProTexting for their organizations."

Conclusion

It is great that ProTexting could be involved with so many young world leaders and to provide the mobile interaction platform for them to vote on what matters to them. ProTexting.com played a critical role in helping these leaders to present their views to the global G8 member country leaders. We are very proud that our technology is playing a role in how global innovators and change makers will impact the entire world of today as well as the world of the future. We are especially proud of the fact that the G8 Young Summit is shaping our young people to be the leaders of tomorrow!

If you need a mobile marketing partner for your next event, please contact us so we can discuss what the best approach is.