In 2013 Pope Francis announced that Kraków would host the 31st World Youth Day in 2016. From then on, the capital of Małopolska and the Archdiocese of Kraków had three years to prepare. While planning the event, the organisers needed an IT system that would serve as a single logistics and control platform — one that would manage the flow of information smoothly and without errors, enabling complete handling of events and participants during World Youth Day.
At the end of 2015 we started work on the system. Its main purpose was to collect information in several areas critical to the organisers. The platform was used internally to manage both the schedule of all kinds of events and the stays of VIP guests — bishops, catechists, reporters, journalists and other important visitors. The system linked each guest’s dates of stay with the accommodation generated and assigned to them across Małopolska. It supported many types of locations: hotels, hostels, private homes, rooms, parish houses and more, and recorded details down to the standard of each lodging or room.
Besides accommodation, the platform was used to manage catechesis sessions held in parishes across the Archdiocese: organising and booking time slots for each language group and assigning catechists to parishes and pilgrim groups.
Our solution also served as a settlement system, where all financial operations were recorded on an ongoing basis, with data import and export to Microsoft Office tools. The platform ran on cloud infrastructure provided by Polcom and was integrated with the security of the Archdiocese of Kraków’s domain.
After World Youth Day, the organisers were very satisfied with the system, which provided major logistical and organisational support. It worked so well that the Vatican considered using it again for the next World Youth Day in Panama.