Using AR at the Conservative Party Conference

This week was the first Conservative Party Conference since 'Brexit' and although here at skignz we are non political, this conference provided the City of Birmingham with a unique opportunity to do something a little bit different.

Birmingham, the second city as it's labelled, is fast becoming an emerging centre of excellence for digital technologies. 

There are a number of clusters growing across the city and an aim by all the key stakeholders to provide a 'joined up approach'.

Over the past few months skignz has met with many of these stakeholders, such as the key Universities, Airport, Chamber of Commerce, Hospital, Business Birmingham and others with the ultimate ambition of making Birmingham the first 'skignz city' in the UK if not the world (currently being challenged by Atlanta in the US).

What is a skignz city?

The definition of a skignz city is very loose, however it builds on the idea of a SMART city, but using the skignz platform and digital eco sphere to provide services, information and experiences across the city. 

This ranges from next generation Wayfinding, asset tracking, leisure activities and raising cultural awareness. SMART cities focus not on the infrastructure such as driverless cars, IOT, etc. 

A skignz city links all of these other initiatives together through a common platform using the skignz Geo Location based Augmented Reality Platform.

How does this apply to the Conservative Party Conference?

It was felt that in order for all of the stakeholders to fully understand and experience skignz an event and/or location was required to demonstrate skignz.

The CPC was chosen and over the past few weeks the skignz team has been in Birmingham installing the infrastructure required, for not only all those attending the conference, but all those in Birmingham and especially those interested in using skignz to further their individual/organisations agendas with regards to digital technology.

During the conference people will be able to access the skignz environment for either navigation from Birmingham New Street Station, to finding the ICC more easily, through to providing interesting facts and information in and around the ICC. 

Birmingham City University and the Greater Birmingham Chamber are the key supporters, in being the very first Party Conference to use Augmented Reality, especially as this is not gimmicky or gamified, it's useful, relevant and interesting.

The future of Augmented Reality is around making the technology useful and complementary to other technologies, both key ingredients in building SMART cities. 

Birmingham has over the last few days become the first city… a huge change from its usual status! 

Well done Birmingham for having the faith and courage to push the boundaries of what is possible, by enhancing a political conference - some would say that's almost impossible! 

The BIG question is? 

Has the second city just become the UK's first city with regards to Augmented Reality?

For more information on the Conservative Party Conference please take look at their website: https://conservativepartyconference.com/index

For more information on the Conservative Party please take look at their website: https://www.conservatives.com

For more information on Birmingham City University please take look at their website: http://www.bcu.ac.uk

For more information on the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce please take look at their website: http://www.greaterbirminghamchambers.com

If you want to find out more about skignz, then please visit our new recently launched website (www.skignz.com) as well as the usual social media channels

New skignz website: Acting on user feedback!

Over the summer we have been working on developing our website in light of the feedback we have received over the last twelve months or so.

We are delighted to say that it is now live and we hope you like it.

We simply wanted to help people understand a bit more about skignz; what it is, who can use it and who we are working with.

Our new website proudly shows the awards we have won, where we have featured in the Press/Media, our blog that will keep you informed of our latest skignz news and our contact information if you have any skignz queries. 

We feel our new updated website is another step forward in our progress. 

We would like to thank the Calm Digital team for their help and support over recent months in providing this fabulous website for us. At times we knew it was an arduous task, but they have not only delivered what we asked for, but exceeded our expectations.

This summers activities did not only stop at the website, we have also been working on the development of the app, at the backend, and we have published an updated Android version in the Google Play Store due to recent issues earlier in the year.

Now the focus shifts to the UX element of the skignz App for both IOS and Android. For a while we have known that in areas it appears 'clunky' and not as intuitive as we would like. 

With recent changes in direction of the technical development of the skignz platform, we aim to be bringing a fresh new design layout, an easier way to register and login. 

We are working on a simpler way for you to introduce skignz to your friends, favourite social media channels and provide the opportunity for you to place skignz on your SmartPhone and we hope to bringing all these news developments to you very soon.

As we always aim to develop skignz with the User at the forefront of everything we do, please do feedback not only issues you come across but also ideas for improvement.

What would you like to see within the skignz App?

So please keep an eye out for the updates and changes either through this blog, our regular Newsletters or any of our Social Media channels. 

If you would also like to know more about the awesome brand/digital agency then please take a look here www.calmdigital.com

Thankyou to Rio

Many of you will have seen across our social media channels this summer, skignz have been extremely active across Rio for the Olympic games.

Based at the beautiful Parque Lage at the foot of the mountain that Christ the Redeemer stands. 

The Parque Lage is a 1920's former house of an industrialist, set in the Jardim Botanico and this is where UK Government PLC had their HQ for the World Cup in 2014 and again for the Olympics.

Between the Prime Minister's office, The Mayor of London and Team GB who hosted a wide and varied schedule for events across sport, business and culture was choreographed for the entire Olympic games.

The dynamic of each of these very different sectors was certainly interesting and engaging and provided skignz with an ideal audience to showcase our technology, as well as being involved day to in the various events.

skignz provided the guests with a range of channels of content all with very different focus. A lot of the House contributors and sponsors came from some of the UK's best examples of manufacturing, technology, sport and the other key sectors. The whole environment was one of celebrations as TEAM GB began their most successful medal haul ever.

As part of the celebrations, our medal-winning athletes were treated to a 'special welcome' by the guests and hosts each evening, with a full presentation to the audience and a quick Q&A by the awesome Andy. 

British House Rio (its official title) was a great meeting place for the athletes nearest & dearest, who mixed with ministers, ambassadors, visiting dignitaries and all the varied event guests who were invited to come along. 

Even the many members of the awesome British Airways Crew who were transporting Team GB back were enjoying meeting the athletes and their families alongside the enigmatic Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP of spoke at one of the conferences.

Wall to wall with famous athletes, legends such as Sir Steve Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent, through to current medal winners Sir Bradley Wiggins, Laura Trott and her now husband Jason Kenny. Also a fresh new wave of British stars, some winning their first medals enjoyed celebrating the on-going success of TEAM GB.

All in all we could write a whole book on skignz exploits and experience in Rio, but we still don't feel we could do it justice. It was an incredible opportunity to showcase what is GREAT about Britain, centred on an incredible location and global event. The memories will live long, but the most important thing is that skignz was again exposed to so many wide and wonderful audiences that we couldn't have dreamed possible even 12 months ago.

We think as much as the athletes and their families and all those attending the Olympics take away their own memories, it's the opportunity just to be among the people in the British House and the opportunity to tell them what we are trying to achieve with skignz that was as much a privilege for us as it was to those athletes competing.

Si Brown said: "I would like to thank each and everyone of the people we met in Rio and for taking the time to hear about skignz and see it in action. 

Many of you have had a profound effect on what skignz can become with your suggestions, ideas, thoughts and advice.  Although we didn't compete in the Olympics, we feel we represented our country with the same pride and passion and a big thanks to the teams from No.10, UKTI, British Embassy & Consulates, Innovision, TEAM GB and any others I've failed to recall. Thank you, it’s been emotional!"

At this time is difficult to assess the impact Rio has had on skignz and it may take weeks/months before we do, although we have already started to see a few successes from the trip which we will hopefully keep you up to date on as and when we can. 

With a number of other global sporting events coming up over the next few years, hopefully skignz can be involved, but we still feel it may be difficult to exceed the experience of Rio 2016, although given the opportunity I'm sure we will try.

Please take a look below at a selection of images from Rio...

To find out more about skignz, please visit our relaunched website or take a look on the usual Social Media Channels.

Star Trek: USS Enterprise seen above London

An alert to all you 'Trekkies' out there... Today the USS Enterprise was captured hovering above central London.

A skignz user, managed to use the 'in app capture' to grab these two images...

Although we are not Trekkies, many people are, so it will be interesting to see how many other people see the ship as we are not sure how long it's there... 

Where will it appear next?

If you see it please do share with us on any of our Social media channels or email your pics at info@skignz.com

With all the news and razamataz around 'PokemonGo' and people hunting around the world, we are wondering who has taken this idea into their own hands and used the skignz platform to create their own version of a themed/branded version of a scavenger hunt. 

This prompted many internal conversations on who else could do this across the planet? What brands would like a similar activation using their current 'franchises'? 

Could we soon see Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spiderman or Transformers? How about Dora the Explorer, Lilo & stitch or taking the lead from Pokemon and rejuvenate old & retro characters? 

How about 'Find a Fraggle', Battle of the Planets, TMNT, Wheres Bod?, whatever the brand, the digital assets can be featured in Geo Location based AR games..

We see this going one step further by making them both educational and even more interesting than just looking and finding a specific character.

If you have a brand, a franchise or are an agency looking for ways to expose your characters to a new and existing audiences in a fresh and invigorating way, please get in touch via info@skignz.com and lets see what type of brand experience we can create for your audiences?

Also check out other stories on this blog, our website www.skignz.com and our usual social media channels for more on what skignz is? can do? and is already doing?

PokemonGo - Gamification through GeoAR

In little under two weeks Pokemon Go (not launched in the UK yet) has taken the world by storm.

According to 'Tokyo Reuters', shares in Nintendo (Pokemon's owners) soared on Monday 11th July 2016 bringing and increase in Market value to $7.5billion in only 2 days.

It's Nintendo's first foray into mobile gaming and although only being released in certain regions it's become an 'overnight success'. But what is PokemonGo? 

Most people ask what Pokemon are?

Pokemon is a brand created and used by Nintendo since the early 1990's. Where Pokemon's characters and TV programmes became a 90's phenomenon for most children of the day. 

Now Nintendo have taken it a step further by using 'Geo Location based Augmented Reality' (essentially skignz) to place little virtual characters across the planet.

This creates a scavenger hunt for people to look for this elite virtual characters as they go about their daily lives…

However this has already not been without controversy, huge pile ups and traffic problems (Check out some of the stories by pressing here) happened when someone held up traffic by walking into the middle of a road or even where a driver was trying to find a character whilst driving!

With 5% of Android users downloading it two days after its release in the US, you can safely assume that this is only going to get bigger and bigger. 

With users averaging 53 mins per day, could it be the next big game distraction since Candy Crush? 

Its already shot to the top of the charts in Apple's FREE app rankings and continues to explode across the world.

So why is skignz writing about this? Geolocation is the essence of the skignz platform and PokemonGO is the first real high profile, mass market use of this type of AR after skignz. 

We think it's great, we think PokemonGo although not perfect, certainly increases the profile of GeoAR in much the same way in what Oculus did for VR. 

We have had an incredible amount of emails and calls in the last few days from people we have been dealing with over the the years, asking us our opinion of PokemonGo? 

How does it affect skignz? 

How does it compare to skignz? and plenty who have said that this makes skignz so much more relevant now, especially as skignz makes AR useful and can be delivered across so many different sectors and industries with a plethora of uses & applications, literally your imagination is the limit to what skignz can do?

In our blog post of 13th July 2016, (Press to view here) we showcase how skignz users have uploaded their own  Star Trek Space Ship, The USS Enterprise for views to find in Central London. 

This also begs the question, as we explain in the aforementioned blog post, what other brands could take advantage of this type of Brand activation? 

From TV series launches like Game of Thrones, through to the next Star Wars / Xmen, Star Wars, movies. Even going back into the archives (like Nintendo have done with Pokemon) and relaunch old franchises in a new and engaging way.

Two very interesting articles we have just come across by Tim Bajarin for Time and Alexandra Tregre for Stable | Kernal both outline the impact of Pokemon Go, but also explain that it's not AR but more Geo Location that's driving the Phenomenal take up.... 

Time - http://time.com/4410327/pokemon-go-technology/

Stable| Kernal - http://blog.stablekernel.com/the-technology-behind-pokemon-go-why-augmented-reality-is-the-future

You may further query as to why this matters or relates to skignz? That's becuase everything that PokemonGo should do can be done with skignz, not one (use a map to find each character) then the other (view the character in AR), but both at the same time. 

skignz has the ability to place the content in an exact location, not base it around your handset when in said location, there's a HUGE difference to the user experience and more importantly the opportunities for global reach...

All of the aforementioned global brands (and more) are able to follow suit by using the skignz platform to deliver their ideas...

If you want to get in touch to see how you could use the skignz platform to help with your brands activation then please email us info@skignz.com

If you would like to find out more about skignz please find us on the usual Social Media channels as well as our blog and website www.skignz.com.