The City of Fort Wayne Indiana was on national TV last night, and Atos Origin was a happy participant in the process. Dave Evans, Program Manager for the IT Outsource project for Fort Wayne and Allen County Indiana gives us the details on how Atos Origin was ended up working with the Jimmy Kimmel show.
"A while back we noted the trend of Local Governments making use of idea generation services as a great way to foster public involvement. We highlighted UserVoice as a popular tool with good reviews. Atos Origin along with the City CIO Jim Haley went on to set up the online system to allow citizens to provide suggestions and vote on ideas for the naming of a newly purchased City Hall building, " says Evans.
The poll gained nationwide publicity because of the uniqueness of the most popular vote. Over 20,000 votes were cast to name the center after the name sake of former City Mayor, Harry Baals. Jimmy Kimmel was one of the first to mention the vote during his live monolog for the show, Jimmy Kimmel Live. The bit quickly spread through news wires and was even heard on radio stations as far as Houston Texas that next morning.
"Sources tell us only 1,000 of those votes actually came from Fort Wayne," says Mayor Tom Henry during his lighthearted Jimmy Kimmel interview. The "source" was our very own Atos Origin teams. "This detail is available via google analytics which was initially set-up along with the UserVoice voting page," says Evans.
Because of the popularity of this harry topic, The Jimmy Kimmel show contacted Mayor Henry to become a guest on the show via live SKYPE broadcast.
Dave Evans explains: "the Jimmy Kimmel people made contact with the City Public Information Office. They then turned to us for making the technical arrangements. Jim Haley (City CIO) had a staff member go out to Best Buy to buy an HD Web Cam. Then Brian Avery and I worked with the Jimmy Kimmel production crew on getting the right angle of the shot as well as getting the sound levels right. We also provided them some basic details on our Network such as up/down bandwidth speeds.”
At 4PM that day we worked with the Mayor do a quick demo with Jimmy which went smoothly. The Mayor came back to his office that night to do the live show. Brian Avery was onsite to handle any technical issues."
This HD Hollywood Skype broadcast was definitely a first for the team but as Dave mentions: “it does highlight a key strength of our Outsourcing relationship and that’s agility. When you partner of Atos Origin no request is out of bounds. Even a last minute late night video feed with a California celebrity.”
See the Mayor's interview here:
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