Organization of American States (OAS)
Promoting Transparent Dialogue
The Summits of the Americas, organized by the Organization of American States, is the highest level political gathering that brings together 34 democratically elected Heads of State and Governments, and a broad representation of stakeholders in the Western Hemisphere. The goal is to discuss common policy issues, affirm shared values, and to commit to and follow up on concerted actions related to summit declarations at the national and regional level.
Bixal was retained to develop the Summits Virtual Community (SVC) to support the Summits of the Americas.
The Drupal-based, bilingual online platform, which was launched in June of 2010, not only reflects the Summits’ activities and mission but also greatly expands the Summit's reach.
In the past, individuals and organizations had to travel to in-person meetings to participate in the important process of defining regional priorities and mandates on topics of vital interest. The new Summits Virtual Community will allow individuals throughout Latin America, the U.S., and Canada to participate in these important efforts online, hand in hand with their governments. In addition to increasing the number of participants and organizations in the process, the SVC will provide a platform for networking and collaboration on follow up efforts to see that Summit mandates are acted on by all participants in the process.
The SVC takes advantage of many of Drupal’s most innovative community features, with heavy use of multi-lingual localization, which will facilitate the incorporation of additional languages. e.g. Portuguese and French, as required in the future. The platform allows for full participation by both English and Spanish preferring audiences through separate language forums. The forums are led by a moderator and have a specific start and end date, whereas groups can go on indefinitely and can be facilitated by community members around particular topics of interest. To promote community and collaboration, both individuals and organizations are able to create profiles in English and Spanish. A private messaging functionality allows members, if they choose to be contacted, to reach out to others without exposing members’ contact info. Site administrators and forum and group moderators are able to cross post content to relevant communities making custom audiencing easy. Additionally, bilingual users who want to follow discussions in both languages can toggle from the group in one language to the other with the click of a button.
As part of the overall effort, Bixal has worked closely with the Summits of the Americas team to develop and support the implementation of a comprehensive online marketing strategy in English and Spanish to promote the Summits Virtual Community throughout the Americas. The online marketing strategy takes advantage of the key components of an effective online marketing strategy, including content production to reach key audiences, e-mail marketing, search engine optimization activities, and social media. Given the diverse number of audiences and language needs, the strategy places heavy emphasis on a strong bilingual social media presence that includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and e-mail marketing components.