A Big Coup

Right after WYD 2002, Exposoft had no more than 15 employees. Now, nearly two years after WYD 2005 and the exposure that it brought, there are about 65. The company's Web site lists almost 80 customers, including associations, trade shows, corporations, and meeting-management companies.

While Veldboer does not say how much WYD 2005 paid Exposoft, he noted that a rule of thumb today is that about 10 percent of the funding for a large event goes for registration and other online services. “We were a little bit lower than that, but the overall revenue for the event was about 100 million euros, so we're not talking about a $50,000 platform here,” he says.

However, Exposoft not only was a major supplier to WYD 2005, but it also signed on as a major sponsor, in effect putting a big chunk of its revenue back into the event.

The next World Youth Day is slated to be held in Sydney, Australia, in July 2008. Attendance may be significantly lower than in Cologne, owing to the distance that most international attendees would need to travel. While work on the event is well under way, Exposoft will not be involved, as the organizing committee is showing a strong preference for local suppliers.

“WYD and the contract we signed gave us the potential for tremendous growth,” says Veldboer. “It increased the level of respect and trust that other organizations have in us. And it led us to explore things such as the translation module, travel-related modules, and the multiple matching solutions that we deployed. Now some of those things are fixed parts of the Exposoft core. We use the translation module for all kinds of events.”

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