- Catalyze audience participation at an art & technology event.

- Create symposium for multi-media art and food festival.

- Rescue a Web 2.0 viral marketing project by creating a better teen ideation session.

- Increase attendance at national Music & Arts Festival by 16%.

- Catalyze organization development at non-profit artspace.

- Prototype a co-working space.

Situation: The founding director of a successful non-profit, art and food festival was organizing their 5th annual event in Brooklyn.

Critical Issue: The director wanted to grow the festival’s brand and to include forums for serious debate on the festival themes; but was unable to devote planning resources to the task.

Reasons: The organization was working with a tight budget and their all-volunteer production team was at capacity producing the festival in Brooklyn that pulls in 400+ people on the opening night.

In addition, most of the volunteers had their incentives tied to the short-term success of the main festival event rather than long-term growth of the festival brand.

Vision: Create a symposium in Manhattan to help the festival’s brand grow, illuminate the festival’s themes, and reach new audiences.

Results: We provided those capabilities. We devised and executed a 4-hour evening symposium in Manhattan the week before the festival’s main event in Brooklyn.

The evening illuminated the festival themes in content and format. We curated 3 pecha kucha style presentations by NSA (No Standing Anytime), BurdaStyle.com, and Fluxxlab to inspire the participants. We provided a homemade stew to participants to tie to the food themes and set an intimate tone. We facilitated a World Café discussion period, so that all the participants could share their knowledge in breakout sessions and have intimate access to the presenters.

We produced a data-visualization of the symposium discussions for display in the festival main event, so that participants could refer back to their discussions when they attend the festival and see themselves as contributors.

We provided an opportunity for the festival to market directly to Manhattanites who might not otherwise make the trip to Brooklyn for the festival.