Not only that, the goal was to allow WYD officials to locate the appropriate person for a task very quickly. “It was very hard to do, but we found out quickly that we had to add restrictions,” says Veldboer. In other words, the person seeking a volunteer for a task had to enter a language, an availability time frame, number of people needed, etc. The more restrictions added to searches, the quicker the process became.

In addition, dropdown menus and calendar-selection fields were used liberally, while the amount of free text that users were allowed to enter was kept to a bare minimum. In the end, it became possible to get search results in seconds.

“It actually worked quite well,” says Veldboer.

Heads in Beds

A somewhat different challenge was presented by the accommodations-matching program. While many attendees arranged places to stay on their own, some 303,000 needed help finding somewhere to sleep.

Cities that host WYD typically organize a drive to get private individuals and facilities such as schools, parish halls, and youth hostels to donate accommodations at little or no cost, which is vital because most attendees are young and on limited budgets. (Hotels housed only 11,000 participants, mostly VIPs.) For 2005, Exposoft created a system allowing such donors to log in and enter information about how many people they could accommodate. They could specify that they wanted to host people from specific countries or who spoke specific languages, and which gender and age range they preferred.

These donated sleeping quarters were grouped into geographical units so that members of large groups of people traveling together could stay near one another. Attendees also entered a number of personal details. Someone responsible for overseeing a specific geographical unit could see with a click how many accommodations had been offered, how many pilgrims had been assigned to them, when those pilgrims were to arrive, their languages, their transportation needs, and more.

It was easier to develop the program for matching attendees with priests for confession. There was a registration portal for priests offering confession services. The main variables were languages and time frames. Location was not an issue, because part of a large park was dedicated to confessions.

A Big Coup

Exposoft’s performance was nearly flawless, according to Peters of WYD 2005. “The software they delivered worked very well. Each component we got was stable, well-tested, and always delivered on time,” she says.

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 meetings-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 for 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.” By David McCann

How Big Is World Youth Day?

Anyone who has not participated in World Youth Day should be forgiven for not grasping its full scope.

“WYD is the biggest event that exists,” says Gabriele Peters, a key manager for the local organizing ?committee of WYD 2005 in Cologne, Germany. “It’s even more challenging than the Olympics, because of the need to accommodate, feed, and transport so many people. It was a great adventure.”

Christian Veldboer, project manager, Exposoft Solutions, says, “For us, this was not just another event. It was something we put a lot of heart and effort into because we really believe in it. World Youth Day is a pretty incredible experience.”

For one thing, Veldboer notes, the crime rate in every host city so far has dropped drastically during the event, even though there are hundreds of thousands of new young people in the city who want to have a good time. “You just have to experience firsthand the way these people are together,” he says.

World Youth Day is an annual event, though a massive international conclave convenes only once every two or three years; in the other years, WYD is held at the diocesan level all over the world.

For the international version, the world’s religious youth—mostly Catholics but also representatives of many other faiths—gather in a country and city chosen by the Catholic Church in a site-selection process very similar to that used for the Olympic Games. For the first few days, attendees fan out to various dioceses across the country, before coming together in the host city for a week of religious education, discussion, prayer, music, and shows, topped off by the pope’s final mass.

The local organizing committee typically is formed just two years before the event date. A few hundred employees are hired, and thousands of volunteers are enlisted.

All of that necessitates intense planning and ultra-efficient execution, of course. It had become obvious by the 2002 WYD that the event was far behind the technology curve.