Canada House | SXSW | Government showcase | Questology
Creating a live intelligence experience for Canada House at SXSW
CC&Co created the live experience layer for the Government of Canada and Government of Québec presence at SXSW in Austin: dashboards, screens, projections, Stories pages and social intelligence built on Questology-powered festival data.
Nearly one million SXSW publications were analyzed through a live system created for an international government showcase.
Overview
Project facts
- Client
- Government of Canada / Government of Québec
- Project type
- International government showcase: live dashboards, digital signage, social intelligence, event deployment
- CC&Co role
- Experience strategy, screen and projection logic, dashboard direction, Stories pages, deployment and live recovery
- Questology role
- Festival data collection, social media intelligence, live dashboards, data processing, screen content flow
- Primary channels
- Canada House screens, projections, dashboards, Stories pages, SXSW booth environment
- Known scale
- Nearly one million SXSW festival publications analyzed
~1,000,000
SXSW publications analyzed live
~2 hours
Mid-event infrastructure migration during a partner outage
2
Governments represented in one showcase
Challenge
The challenge
SXSW is too loud for a static booth
SXSW produces a flood of conversation, movement and cultural signals. A static display inside Canada House would have been invisible against that backdrop. The Canadian presence needed a system that could read the festival in real time, organize the signals and translate them into visible moments, all inside a government environment where credibility and clarity are non-negotiable.
The core problem: make live festival intelligence understandable to people walking through a room, at festival pace, under government standards.
Insight
The strategic insight
Data earns its place through the interface
Collecting festival data was the easy half. The value came from how the intelligence appeared: screens, projections, dashboards and Stories pages that a visitor could understand in seconds. CC&Co designed that public interface; Questology supplied the engine that kept it current, processing nearly one million publications across the festival.
The pairing turned raw social activity into a live communication layer, and the showcase into something that moved with the event around it.
Deliverables
What CC&Co created
Experience strategy and screen logic
The role of each surface in the house: screens, projections and dashboards structured so festival intelligence read clearly inside the physical environment.
Stories pages and dashboard direction
Stories pages that made selected festival activity explorable, and dashboard design that turned live signals and highlights into public-readable displays.
Deployment and live recovery
On-site deployment decisions under event pressure, including the infrastructure move described below.
The Questology engine
The festival intelligence layer: collection, processing and organization of SXSW publications feeding every screen and dashboard in the experience.
Two-hour
The two-hour migration
Mid-deployment, a partner system hit server problems. A public government installation cannot sit dark waiting for a vendor reset, so CC&Co and Quest moved the working pieces onto their own infrastructure in roughly two hours and kept the experience running.
That recovery is the argument for owning both the creative structure and the technical logic. The team could move fast because it understood the experience from concept to server. Live digital installations need creative direction, data fluency and technical control in the same room, especially when the client is a government and the venue is SXSW.
Impact
Impact
Nearly one million publications became a live experience across screens, dashboards, projections and Stories pages. Visitors could see the festival moving around them, and the Canadian presence gained a digital layer that matched the energy of the event instead of hiding from it.
For public institutions, cultural organizations and event producers, the project shows what CC&Co delivers in demanding environments: government-grade experience design, live data made readable, and the technical depth to recover mid-event without the public ever noticing.
Frequently asked questions
1.What did CC&Co create for Canada House at SXSW?
The live experience layer: strategy, screen and projection communication, dashboard direction, Stories pages, deployment flow and the recovery decisions that kept the system public during a partner outage.
2.What did Questology power?
The festival intelligence engine: collection and processing of SXSW publications, social data organization, dashboard logic and the content flow feeding the screens.
3.How much data was analyzed?
Nearly one million SXSW festival publications moved through the system during the event.
4.What happened when the partner system failed?
CC&Co and Quest migrated the working system onto their own infrastructure in roughly two hours, and the public experience kept operating.
Project gallery
Images and deliverables
Related
Where this work connects
Related work
- Government of Québec Digital Strategy Launch: public-sector digital strategy event
- JeVois Montréal: civic event screens and live recovery
Working through a similar challenge?
Tell us the context, the constraints and what needs to change. We answer with a concrete starting angle.
Complementary read: Alec Lacroix, Government of Canada / Government of Québec
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