The Connecticut Forum

What do Alan Alda, Andy Rooney, Al Franken, Anita Hill, Anthony Bourdain, Arthur Ashe, Ashley Judd, Benazir Bhutto, Bill Clinton, Bo Jackson, Bob Weir, Carlton Fisk, David McCullough, Gene Wilder, Gloria Steinman, Henry Kissinger, Jason Alexander, Joan Rivers, Jimmy Wales, John Legend, Kurt Vonnegut, Malcolm Gladwell, Martina Navratilova, Mia Farrow, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Neil Gaiman, Newt Gingrich, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, Vince Gilligan, and Walter Cronkite all have in common? They, along with nearly 300 other world-renowned experts and celebrities, have been featured panelists at The Connecticut Forum.

Since their founding in 1992, The Connecticut Forum has fulfilled its mission – “to encourage the free and active exchange of ideas in Forums that inform, challenge, entertain, inspire and build bridges among all people and organizations in our community”. The Connecticut Forum is a unique nonprofit organization presents live and unscripted conversations among thought leaders at the historic Bushnell Theater in Hartford, CT.

As longtime supporters and sponsors, CTComp is proud to have been named the official Technology Partner of The Connecticut Forum.

CTComp provides infrastructure support to keep The Connecticut Forum's critical data, systems, and users both connected and secure. See what CTComp can do for your business. Contact us today!

The Challenge:

In order to facilitate events featuring leaders in the fields of politics, entertainment and media, the integrity and reliability of communications and information security are both of paramount concern to the organization.

Additionally, The Connecticut Forum’s website and web presence is critical to the promotion of their unique and continually evolving events. As a non-profit organization with limited internal resources, efficiency with line-of-business systems is also a necessity.

CTComp worked with The Connecticut Forum to create a platform for encoding, storing, and managing their video material for delivery via the web and designed, developed, supports and hosts ForumChannel.org which offers a selection of full Forum events for public viewing.

The Solution:

CTComp provides the managed services necessary to keep The Connecticut Forum’s critical data, communications systems, and users both connected and secure. With a support plan tailored specifically to meet their needs, The Connecticut Forum benefits from a variety of services including System Monitoring, Priority Service and Remediation, Help Desk Support, Yearly and Proactive Updates, Monthly Patch Management, Offsite Backup & Recovery, and Endpoint Security. Complementing these services is the assignment of a dedicated CTComp Account Manager, who serves as a liason to our technical resources and provides assistance with long-term strategic budget planning and project management.

CTComp is also responsible for the design, development, ongoing support, and physical hosting of The Connecticut Forum website – www.ctforum.org. The site is designed to convey all that The Connecticut Forum and its “Youth Forum” outreach program have to offer, and was built using a Content Management System (CMS) to enable non-technical Forum staff to update content quickly and with ease.

The Connecticut Forum website also features tight integration with Salesforce to enable staff to manage panelist, event, and attendee information through a single interface. CTComp’s Salesforce developers leveraged the Application Platform-as-a-Service (“aPaaS”) capabilities of Salesforce to enable Forum staff to manage a number of their internal business processes, including donations, fundraising, event ticketing, and scheduling of volunteers. Integration allows site visitors to submit questions for panelists, which are stored and managed in Salesforce for Forum moderators to evaluate.

Additionally, Forum leadership wanted to be able to provide on-demand recordings of past events to both past and prospective attendees and so CTComp developers created a platform for encoding, storing, and optimizing video content for delivery via the web. This resulted in the development and launch of www.ForumChannel.org, which offers visitors an extensive selection of Forum events for online viewing.

Through our relationship with The Connecticut Forum, CTComp also had the privilege of active participation in Forum events, previously serving as host of the “Big Thinkers” Forum with Malcom Gladwell and Douglas Bradley. Our team worked directly with Craig Newmark (founder, Craigslist) and Jimmy Wales (founder, Wikipedia) on their Forum presentation material, and devised a creative mobile audience response system on a mobile platform.