CASE STUDY

Turning IT Conference into Neil Gaiman’s Novel

Rostelecom

Rostelecom has a reputation of a conservative and outdated company even if in reality it is one of the most innovative telecom and IT companies. Because of this reputation a lot of IT specialists don’t want to work with Rostelecom.

Rostelecom holds a Project Confession every year to create an event that would show to the IT community their projects and culture, keep informal atmosphere in the community and attract more specialists.

We maintained an informal atmosphere online with a bold narrative and direct participants' impact on the conference flow.

GOAL

Create an online conference that the participants won’t ever forget

Keep participants engaged on four conference tracks
Give participants an opportunity to influence the flow of the conference
"Fool around": create a narrative and a vivid image of the conference called "confession" and held on Friday the 13th

SOLUTION

Narrative Like Neil Gaiman’s Novels

Project Confession itself tells a powerful story about repentance from the sins of IT projects, absolution, the struggle between good and evil. After all, it takes place on Friday the 13th.

Such stories strengthen the community and increase engagement, so we should reinforce them. The typical problems that the IT community faces turned into a battle between forces of light and forces of darkness, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse became the symbol of the conference.

Cross-Cutting Story through Conference Content

Four tracks were linked with the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and IT solutions represented attempts to stop their arrival. The story was unravelling through the website interface, stream design, moderator’s setups, and user interaction with the platform.

The journey through the conference turned into four acts of one story, making the guests want to go through it to find out what the outcome is. A common goal brought the community together, and the story format kept the participants' attention.

Interactive Competition with Visible Outcome

At the end of each "confession", the participants had to decide the speaker’s fate: absolve their project sins or not. Voting is streamed live, helps people feel their involvement. Usually passive viewers have a direct impact on the flow of the conference.

After all the Horsemen arrived, the Apocalypse should come. If the participants haven’t learned the lesson from the project sins, they won’t be able to stop the end of the world. To be forgiven, they fight the Apocalypse in real time by taking surveys.