Every Byte Counts — Splunk .conf19 Smart City Activation

The Challenge

Cut through a floor full of screens

Conference expo floors are crowded with screens. At .conf19, Splunk needed an activation that would cut through passive booth experiences and make its “data to everything” story tangible — while spotlighting its commitment to sustainability.

The experience had to educate attendees on how data drives sustainability outcomes, capture participation through the event's RFID badge system, and move from creative approval to a fully fabricated interactive installation on an event-deadline timeline — including 3D-printed interactive objects with zero margin for redesign once printing began.

Render of the cross-shaped Splunk .conf19 smart-city model with its lit building array

The Idea

A smart city you could pick up

A cross-shaped model smart city divided into four sustainability zones — each an independent station, so four guests could explore at once. Guests picked up a physical “hero object” to activate a zone, then placed sensor objects on smart bases to unlock real-world data stories.

TransportationWasteFoodEnergy

The four 3D-printed hero objects — bus, waste bin, shopping trolley, and building — with sensor objects below — The four 3D-printed hero objects — bus, waste bin, shopping trolley, building. Three sensor objects per zone unlocked deeper data stories, from smart parking meters to garbage-can-lid sensors to ML demand forecasting.

The Experience

Scan, activate, explore, pledge

Scan

Badge in — an RFID scan starts the session and ties every interaction to a real attendee.

Activate

Pick up a hero object — the shopping trolley wakes the Food zone — to trigger its screen.

Explore

Place sensors on the smart base to unlock three data stories per category.

Pledge

Scan the badge again to commit to a personal, quantified sustainability action.

An attendee interacting with a lit zone of the smart-city model at the Splunk booth

The Pledge

Close the loop with a real commitment

The experience closed the loop with a personal commitment. After exploring the data stories, guests scanned their badge to accept a concrete, quantified pledge — like taking a shuttle to the airport, or skipping single-use plastic bottles in favor of the reusable bottle in their conference pack.

“Your commitment saves almost 2.5 lbs of CO2e — the emissions from charging your phone 128 times.”

Every pledge was translated into its real environmental impact.

Will you pledge to take a shuttle or shared-ride back to the airport when you leave Splunk .conf19?

To accept, please scan your badge below the screen.

Thank you! Your personal commitment saves almost 2.5 lbs of CO2e — equivalent to the emissions from charging your cell phone 128 times.

If every .conf19 attendee took a shuttle instead of their own car to and from the airport, over 92,500 lbs of CO2e would be eliminated — the carbon sequestered by 50 acres of forest.

Thanks for your commitment! Check your email for tips on how to keep it up when you get home.

Pledge copy: prompt → badge scan → quantified impact

Built to Come Back

Sustainability, practiced not preached

The city was built to live more than once. The model is modular — a two-part base on casters that wheels together on the show floor, its walls and tabletop vinyl-wrapped so the surfaces can be stripped and re-skinned in new brand colors for the next show. The center is hollow: room for the hardware, wiring, and a technician to get inside and service every component.

At the end of a run it splits into two wheeled halves, shrink-wraps, and packs onto two skids for storage and redeployment. The activation about sustainability was itself engineered to be reused.

Wheeled halves

1,605 lbs

Packed weight

Skids to redeploy

The modular two-part MDF base of the model under fabrication, showing cut-outs and the hollow serviceable core — The modular base in fabrication — two parts, hollow core, built to wheel together on the floor.

A wheeled half of the model shrink-wrapped and labeled fragile on a wooden skid, ready for transport — End of run — shrink-wrapped and skidded, ready to redeploy.

My Role

Executive Producer

Cross-functional orchestration

Led the creative/fabrication studio, Splunk stakeholders, and sustainability consultancy MeetGreen through parallel design, copy, fabrication, and technology workstreams.

Fabrication deadline management

Locked design approvals to the day and hour ahead of 3D-printing starts — zero margin for redesign.

SME content development

Ran structured input rounds with Splunk and MeetGreen to ground every data story and pledge calculation in validated, real-world numbers.

On-site ops & measurement

Ambassador staffing, daily interaction tracking across four show days, and a post-event report with a 2020 roadmap.

Physical + digital integration

3D-printed hero objects and sensors, per-zone screen states, RFID badge-scan pledge capture, and a celebratory pledge totem.

The Results

Four days at .conf19

1,013attendees scanned in to explore the smart city

54%of explorers converted to a personal pledge (550 total)

3,195data-story interactions across the four zones

1,201category introductions deployed by guests

Food drew the most interactions (31%) — but Waste converted the most pledges (31%): the reusable-bottle ask, paired with the bottle already in every registration pack, proved the most actionable.

The finished Every Byte Counts installation lit up on the .conf19 show floor

Why It Worked

Data you could hold

Every Byte Counts made an abstract brand promise — data to everything — physical, personal, and measurable. Attendees didn't watch a demo about data; they picked it up, played with it, and left having made a commitment the data could actually track.

Guests repeatedly remarked on being able to touch and move the model — and asked how it was built.
Attendees working in the featured industries shared their own data stories with brand ambassadors, turning the booth into a conversation engine.
Built to come back: the city splits into two wheeled halves, re-skins in new brand colors, and packs onto two skids for redeployment.

The Takeaway

The activation that wins a crowded floor isn't the one with the most screens — it's the one people pick up.

Make an abstract promise physical and personal, tie it to real numbers, and let people leave having done something the data can track.

Jill Honig · Executive Producer · Splunk .conf19, Las Vegas