By 
On Monday I attended a workshop at Marineland put on by Andrew from Napier City Council. The purpose was to get council staff thinking about what they can do with their new fibre network - that connects many of the council buildings and attractions.
Getting councils connected is the first step in a MUSH deployment model for community broadband. (MUSH being the public sector segment of Municipal Governments, Universities, Schools & Hospitals - by using public sector expenditure to hit MUSH sites fibre is dragged into the middle of the community).
Chris O'Connell (the Chairman of TUANZ and internet evangelist) kindly drove up and gave a great presentation on the sort of things we can do with a GB of bandwidth.
But the stars of the show were Paul's team from Neocom, who in a couple of days had built a stunning demo of showing Napier content on an Android phone using Layar.
Using the inbuilt GPS and sensors on the Andriod device (and soon iPhone) there are countless ways that Napier specific information could be presented to tourists and for specific events.
I think everyone was superproud to see such cutting edge innovation happening in Napier and were fizzing with ideas.
Some included -
- seeing pre earthquake photos of buildings over art deco weekend.
- building hidden geocaching activities around the Bay
- self tours around local attractions.
Even a seasoned internet geek like Chris was blown away by the Neocom demo.
With the Rugby World Cup two years away and the expected proliferation of smart devices that can show this sort of content there is a real opportunity to make the Bay a show case for these types of technologies.
Some of the other suggestions I had included:
- Get all the council staff on Yammer - so they can start building their internal community and gain experience with publishing.
- Get a number of Flip cams and create a local YouTube Channel to tell 'the back story' behind some of our attractions. (They already had one - cool)
- Measure everything to see what aspects of a social media strategy are delivering results
- Evangelize Bay specific tags or groups on sites like Flickr to get the visitors generating their own content and stories
- Create and market some free wifi zones so that its easy for tourists to share their stories
Great session yesterday organized by Andrew. I left pretty excited.
Oh and the sea lions are alive and well.
21:11, 17.11.2009
This is very cool! Neocom are totally paving the way – and are HB based which is even more awesome.
Am I misinformed – I thought Marineland had closed down? Or are they just sans dolphin?
08:57, 18.11.2009
I have been using Layar on the iPhone for a couple of months, great App but had been frustrated at the lack of local content… This is the sort of thing techno tourists will be checking out when they come our way…. if you know any geeks, they love to have their technology validated in this way. “oh look hun my iphone can lead the way”!
10:05, 18.11.2009
+1 for layar. …more local content coming soon!
12:25, 18.11.2009
ZOMG! I HAVE to get me an Android powered handset… Like… NOW!
As an occasional Geocacher the concept of navigation with technology definitely interests me, but this looks like some serious fun and the potential for education is HUGE.
I’ve never heard of Layar til now, but the possibilities are endless, aren’t they?!
11:36, 19.11.2009
layar is great but don’t forget the leaders in the area of AR – GeoVector who have their development team based here in NZ. They developed AR technologies 10 years ago in Japan and now use NZ as the base for all development.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak on this technology at the ULearn Conference to 2000 teachers regarding the cross over this technology offers for education – tourism and community development. If we are to make the ‘most’ of the opportunities we need to work together on a vision for the Bay. 2011 is coming fast – we need to be ready
13:15, 19.11.2009
What I was blown away by wasn’t Layar specifically as I believe this is a class of apps that will explode over the next couple of years.
It was Paul & Dagan’s(sp?) attitude! they just got on with it, it was classic demo or die!
That is a priceless thing to see, the love of hacking together a mashed up solution!
Great asset for HB
You’ve got the fibre sand pit go play in it!
I believe NZ inc needs to harness our natural Kiwi play ethic!
14:14, 19.11.2009
Agree Chris – just go out and do it. We sit back and pontificate the pro’s and cons too much in NZ. We have the skills, ideas and ideal environment…you have to be having fun to innovate…money will follow a good idea.
16:28, 23.11.2009
right,
I have been trying out the HTC Magic and it is probably the best PDA I have seen on the Market. Easy to use, HSDPA with Vodafone extended 3G coverage. Seamless integration with Google.
Its Awesome
Call me to demo the Magic at your business today.
Ben 021 382 088, Vodafone Business Consultant.
New or resigning mobiles can get this device for free!! ask me how!
09:00, 28.11.2009
Hi again,
As of Monday the HTC Magic is free with Vodafone Business plans for new or resigning customers . Conditions apply so please call me to find out more.
Ben Keehan
021 382 088
16:45, 09.02.2011
A formidable share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little bit evaluation on this. And he in fact purchased me breakfast as a result of I discovered it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the deal with! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to debate this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If doable, as you turn into expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is extremely helpful for me. Huge thumb up for this blog publish!