Neal Robison, Novus team co-lead, has worked with Novus the last two years. Today, all of his hard volunteer work is paying off with millions of friendships being made, and thousand of badges being earned.

Of course, the numbers will change – because the Jamboree is not over yet. But Neal Robison shared the recent numbers from Novus with us Wednesday 31 July at 16:00.

So far 4,617,196 friendships have been made using Novus at the jamboree. That means that every single one of us, on average, have clicked with 100 people. But some have made more contacts than others. In fact, there are at least four scouts at the Jamboree who have gotten more than 2,000 contacts through Novus.

“These numbers are so much better than I expected. Seeing people using Novus makes the two years of volunteer work with Novus worthwhile,” says Neal Robison with a big smile.

In total, 41,856 people have used their Novus wristbands actively to make friends by clicking with people and earn different badges. It is possible to get 540 badges at the Jamboree. So far, the most popular badges have been Global Ambassador, the sustainable treehouse, and Scuba Diving.

As of 16:00 on Wednesday 31 July, 592,301 badges have been earned. On average, every single person has earned 14 badges.

“We wanted to take the Jamboree and break it into pieces which people could experience. We did it to help people discover their options, because they never read the guide books anyway,” says Neal Robison.

Even though he does not believe it possible, Neal Robison and the Novus Team still have a small dream: that the amount of friendships (or connections made between people) will reach 5 million. But even that does not happen, Neal Robison and the Novus Team are still extremely excited about the numbers.

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