ConnectSolutions

President Obama's Town Hall from Shanghai was broadcasted by the U.S. State Department using ConnectSolutions Podium.

It was an amazing weekend for us here at ConnectSolutions.  We had the privilege of supporting the State Department in President Obama’s historic Town Hall in Shanghai, China with a group of university students.  You may have read about the tenuousness of the Town Hall and the American and Chinese governments were negotiating up until the last minute to figure out if and how the event would be run.

In the end the decision was made that the event would go on, but it would not be broadcast on National Chinese TV leaving the internet as the only vehicle through which many Chinese citizens could view the event. (Note: The event was broadcast on local Shanghai TV, providing another venue for residents.)   Taking this challenge head on, the State Department enlisted us to help them reach as wide an audience as possible with the event.

On Friday, the Co.Nx team at the State Department opened up an Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro chat room on our QuickConnect Platform where Chinese citizens were encouraged to submit questions for President Obama and share their biggest concerns.  What was most clearly articulated in the chat room was an apprehension over the censorship of the internet in China, and a growing movement was revealed.  In fact, over 75% of respondents in the chat room cited internet censorship as their greatest concern.  They dubbed this the “Great Firewall of China” and they aligned themselves with the 20^th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, speaking out against what they perceived to be widespread government censorship of the internet.

This chat room proved to be pivotal, as cited in The New York Times, as it produced the infamous Twitter question asked of President Obama in the Town Hall in which he spoke out in favor of freedom of information and openness on the internet.

The Connect Pro Chat Room where Questions for President Obama were submitted by Chinese Citizens

But our involvement did not end there.  Needing a way to get the broadcast out to as many people as possible, the State Department enlisted the use of our ConnectSolutions Podium webcasting product to provide a video feed of the Town Hall to those inside China.  The U.S. Embassy in Beijing and many universities in China would rely on this feed to host viewing parties where Chinese citizens could congregate and hold discussions after the event was over.  Similarly, the event URL was proliferated by influential Chinese bloggers (and some here in the U.S.) to promote viewing by as wide an audience as possible.

The event was able to reach such a large audience in a short time in large part because of Twitter and the rest of the social web.

Facebook was also utilized to get the word out.  The Co.Nx program already has over 36,000 fans on the site and created a Facebook Event that was shared with their network.

The Co.Nx program also utilized Facebook and its 36,000+ fans to help spread the word about the event.

We were truly blown away by the number of people who were able to reach the event, especially considering that promotion did not start until the day before due to the uncertainty around if the event was going to happen or not.  In the end, we were able to help the State Department connect with 10,000 viewers from 60 countries with the event with our HD Quality stream of the event.

A student from the audience asks a question...

...and President Obama Responds

What’s more is that nearly 70% of this audience was inside China from over 200 cities.  And the response to the video quality and overall experience has been something we are very proud of.  While this raw number works out to something near 7,000, the actual number of viewers is likely much larger, as the State Department facilitated viewing parties at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and at Universities around the country, and each individual view had the possibility of being consumed by entire households or groups of viewers.

Our event reached nearly 7,000 Chinese sites in over 200 different cities.

I cannot articulate how honored we all were to part of this effort and I wanted to personally thank Mark and Tim at the State Department for the privilege of supporting their efforts.  We are continually blown away by how they keep pushing the envelope and taking the State Department’s Co.Nx program to new heights.

If you missed it the first time around, here the Obama Town Hall meeting in China in its entirety:

Watch Town Hall Video
Download Town Hall Video