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

IEIC 2015 - Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry

FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) is a non-government, not-for-profit organisation, FICCI is the voice of India's business and industry. FICCI draws its membership from the corporate sector, both private and public, including SMEs and MNCs; and enjoys an indirect membership of over 250,000 companies from various regional chambers of commerce.

From the 14th – 15th January, the India Skills and Education Conference is taking place in London. The India EIC conference will be bringing together the technology, skills and education communities within the UK, India and other countries to allow open discussion of the possibilities and challenges for collaboration. 

The conference will be exploring a wide range of points such as:

• how innovations in technology, curriculum and financing could help improve educational outcomes

• how partnerships can be built between employers and educators

• assisting Indian and international education businesses looking to expand and grow; and

• how innovative financing and international education partnerships could address global education challenges

The best part of this was that skignz found out that we have been invited to speak and exhibit at the Microsoft sponsored IEIC EduTech conference 2015.
This was great for us to find out and be provided with the great opportunity of demonstrating our technology to all who attend and being a part of the whole EduTech conference event.  

After being invited to speak at the event, skignz managed to negotiate a reduced price of only £240 per delegate to attend the event. If you want to exhibit then we believe there is a very small number of spaces left.

At the two day event, there will be around 300 top end prominent delegates relating to Technology and Education within India. If you are from the Digital City Community who have an EduTech focus, then we believe that it would be a great opportunity for individuals/companies from the community to attend. 

It will provide you with an ideal networking opportunity, and allow you the chance to experience wisdom and enhance your own thoughts from each speaker at the event and all delegates, while getting to know about new technology and improvements along the way. 

If you would like to know more about FICCI then a good place to start would be http://http://www.ficci.com/

If you would like to know more about the EIC2015 event then please visit http://www.eic2015.com/  

If you would like to know more about skignz then please visit our website at http://www.skignz.com and don't forget to check us out on a range of the popular Social Media Channels.

skignz: Most Contagious 2014

We are delighted to announce, that not only will we be attending the awesome Most Contagious Event in Central London on 10th December 2014, but we will also be exhibiting and demonstrating the skignz technology! 

How cool is that!

The guys at Contagious are the gurus, the wordsmiths and THE authority on Advertising, Marketing digital trends, but we cannot compete with how they present what they do, so for those of you who might not of heard of Most Contagious, here's a quick extract of how Contagious themselves describe the Most Contagious event:

"Most Contagious is an annual, uniquely curated innovation event in London staged by Contagious. Most Contagious celebrates the biggest innovations and analyses the most impactful marketing from the year to decipher what influence these will have on the immediate future for brands and advertising.

The event includes a full day conference programme, with Contagious consultants as well as expert guest speakers, a series of interactive workshops, an awards scheme, and an exhibition to showcase disruptive start-ups, innovative new technologies and the makers behind them."

Contagious the company behind Most Contagious is in its tenth year of publishing their incredible magazine and it has grown its offering since its conception, and so we do not do them a disservice again we will let them describe who they are:

"Contagious helps brands and advertising agencies understand and adapt to shifts in marketing, consumer culture and technology. Our dedicated consultancy division, Contagious Insider, delivers hands-on help to effect change in our clients’ companies.

Contagious Magazine, our hard-copy quarterly publication analyses the world’s most innovative brands, and learns from the people behind them. An online intelligence service, Contagious I/O is Contagious’ collaborative and fully customisable research platform. Contagious events attract delegates from the world’s smartest brands, agencies and businesses."

So hopefully from the above two short descriptions about Contagious and its annual Most Contagious event, you can see why we are so excited to be attending but even more so being able to showcase skignz to this very select audience. We hope that some of the most creative thinkers on the planet who will be attending will 'get skignz' but more importantly 'how skignz could work for their clients or their own brand?'

 skignz is already engaged with a number of the big name brands and organisations who are attending, so hopefully we will have a few more brand champions in the room to promote the gospel of skignz.

skignz intends to showcase a few new areas of development, not previously seen outside of the skignz team and in addition we may have not one but a couple of key announcements to make ...

Obviously we will promote this exciting news through the event, but we feel the best way to understand more about skignz is to be present and being present at this event is something you cannot afford NOT to do! You only realise this once you have attended a Most Contagious event.

The Contagious team put an immense amount of work into the event, from Arianna their head of events through to their on stage delivery by members of their editorial team, right through to the hosting by Cofounder & Editorial Director Paul Kemp-Robertson. The quality of the content delivered is second to none and we have not spoken to a single person that has not thoroughly enjoyed and had real benefit from being in attendance.

If you are in the Advertising, Marketing & Digital space then you really should only be in one place on the 10th December 2014. 

We will be there and so should you! If you do please do come and say hello ...

For more information on Contagious, their Magazine and their awesome services, please visit http://www.contagious.com

For more information on Most Contagious and how you can get involved please visit http://mostcontagious.com

For more information on skignz, please visit the skignz website at http://www.skignz.com

Or check us out on our various Social media channels...