World Youth Days — a challenge not only for the organizers

At the end of July, eyes of the whole world were looking at Poland. World Youth Days brought nearly 3 million of pilgrims from 187 countries. Beside a plenty of joy and prayer, it was an event that required hard work, not only from organizers.

WYD is not just a meeting of pilgrims with the Pope or several Holy Masses and common prayers. It is also thousands of people involved in the organization of the event, as well as ongoing support and assistance. One of the most visible support groups of pilgrims were volunteers — about 25 thousand of people from 67 countries. They were helping 3 million of people who eg. wanted to reach to the right place in which they had never been before.

To transport effectively such amount of travellers, Municipal Transport Company (MPK S.A.) in Cracow has launched 935 additional tram rides and 953 bus rides. MPK has also decided to modify the application that allows check timetable on mobile devices (rozklady.mpk.krakow.pl) and customizes servers responsible for its proper functioning. As a result, the application efficiently informed pilgrims about planned rides despite more than 7 000 000 page views per day (about 48 million during the week).

Event information was also provided by journalists. Polish Press Agency (PAP) in collaboration with the Catholic Information Agency (KAI) have prepared a dedicated platform for communication with journalists from around the whole world. During a week they published over 3 000 different types of content expanded by more than 50 thousand of photos and videos. Over 6 000 people were using the resources of the www.pope2016.com portal and reported that remarkable event for the whole world. At that time publications reached to everyone who was watching programs, was browsing portals or was reading a daily newspapers in his country.

Lidia Sobańska PAP President says that “the main portal task was to provide objective and comprehensive information related to the visit of Francis Pope in Poland and World Youth Days. From the perspective of time we can say that the portal effectively fulfilled its purpose. Publications that were prepared by foreign media on the basis of materials supplied by us, reached in every corner of the world. Last week events, with our little help, became so important factor contributing to the positive perception of Poland by foreign media and their audience”.

In Poland there was also a large interest of the event on the Internet. Mainly every major portal run a section devoted to World Youth Day just to catch the attention of a large group of Internet users. The biggest polish Catholic portal called DEON.pl also recorded a significant growth of interest which resulted in a fourfold increase in the number of readers. At peak times, the number of page views exceeded half million page views a day.

Piotr Żyłka DEON.pl editor-in-chief summarizes that “all the materials that showed how fantastic atmosphere was created in Cracow during WYD enjoyed a great popularity. We have also seen a huge increase of interest in the Pope’s statements. In recent days people started acting more enthusiastically in a similar way as they were acting at the beginning of Pope’s pontificate on Polish Internet. Users activity of our profiles in social media indicates that. There is definitely rise in number of likes, shares and positive comments of Francis’ statements”.

According to the data collected by Brand24 results that also pilgrims showed great activity. They published a content in social media which reached over 460 million of people. Nearly 6.5 million of Internet users responded positively to the content through giving comments, shares or mark “I like it”.

Such big event organization formed a positive image of Poland and tangible benefits. Many young people admitted that they would love to visit Poland again. Furthermore, information that was published by pilgrims and media can influence others to think about our country as an interesting and friendly place to visit.

Ideo Interactive Agency was responsible for design and implementation of mobile timetable MPK, Pope2016.com portal and DEON.pl portal. Content in platforms was also adjusted for people using mobile devices. The company implemented work related to servers configuration and management that supported a smooth functioning of MPK service and DEON.pl portal.