The Record hosted another community forum in our Media Lab on April 28 on the subject of Horse Racing Handicapping, hosted by Nick Kling – a nationally-known horse racing handicapper who has worked as a columnist with The Record for around 20 years.

While only seven individuals showed up, Kling made the forum very interactive, asking each member of the audience what they hoped to get out of the event and what specific questions they wanted to have answered before leaving that night. He then took the time to go through sample racing forms line by line to explain a few different ways that one could use the information available to make an informed pick at the race track and even discussed some options for how to go about wagering for those interested.

Despite the small audience, each person who attended the session was heavily engaged for over an hour and a half, with several noting they would have liked to have stayed longer if it had been possible. We also had seven people watching for practically the entire event on our live stream. A recorded clip of that stream is located below.



This was a great example of how valuable engaging your audience can be. If seven people were interested enough to stay at the session for nearly two hours, there's a good chance each of them will come back to a future Record event and even participate in our interactive crowdsourcing efforts down the road.

Now we just need to figure out how to get larger crowds engaged on the same level.