Mise en place aujourd'hui (sous une température de 42°C :) ) du QRcode #SawtPedia sur la porte du Ribat de Lamta. En scannant le code le logiciel détecte la langue du mobile et renvoie l'article #Wikipedia du monument (actuellement disponible en en et de https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribat_de_Lamta )

#Wikimedia
#QRpedia #QRcode

Our competitor was a dud – and we still lost

Nine years later and I'm still bitter - and that's an unhealthy emotion. So I'm blogging as a form of catharsis.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/02/losing-out-to-a-dud/

#mwc #mwc12 #qrpedia

Our competitor was a dud - and we still lost

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/02/losing-out-to-a-dud/

Nine years later and I'm still bitter - and that's an unhealthy emotion. So I'm blogging as a form of catharsis.

Back in 2012, I was taking the fledgling "QRpedia" project to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We had a cool little invention - stick a QR code on a museum exhibit and when a visitor scans it, they're automatically taken to the Wikipedia page in their native language. Nifty, huh?

The project was still in beta, but was gaining traction with museums and galleries around the world. We were also getting good press!

More importantly, our project worked. Not only had we demonstrated that the technology was viable, but we had proof of it succeeding.

So I entered QRpedia into a UKTI backed competition to find the best UK mobile technology. We went through a couple of rounds of judging and ended up as one of four finalists!

Look how excited (and young!) I was!

We were up against a nanotech firm, an augmented reality app, and a company bringing low-cost Android tablets to the developing world. All impressive competitors!

We all did our presentations, then had TV cameras pointed at us while we waited for the announcement. QRpedia didn't win.

I think I managed to hide my disappointment on screen. The winner - DataWind - had done a great presentation about how they were going to bring "Aakash" a $50 Android tablet to India. But I thought there was something "off" about it.

What happened to DataWind?

Back in 2011 - well before the competition - DataWind made headlines by offering a $35 tablet to India. At the time, lots of sensible people questioned whether a laptop with suitable functionality could be made that cheaply. Spoiler alert - it couldn't!

Contemporary reports branded the Aakash device "a dud".

Despite wining a $4 million contract from the Indian Government, DataWind couldn't deliver what it promised. Reportedly, a third of the laptops wouldn't boot at all.

There was, I thought, ample evidence that the company wasn't able to deliver on its promises. But, wow, they did give a great presentation.

Over the next few years, it all came crashing down.

• Today, the Aakash tablet is no less than a subject of mockery (2012)
• The disastrous Aakash project has expunged India's dream of developing the world's cheapest computing device (2012)
• Datawind $35 Aakash 2 – A Cautionary Tale (2012)
• It has become increasingly evident that DataWind are unable to deliver on most of their ambitious promises (2012)
• Aakash tablet project comes a cropper (2013)

DataWind and the Aakash tablet were also the subject of an academic look into the failures of the project - "The Aakash tablet and technological imaginaries of mass education in contemporary India".

Their success wasn't a part in my failure

I know a few things about my personality. I love starting new projects, but I'm hopeless at pushing them out to market. Like the mathematician putting out a fire, I'm content to go "Aha! A solution exists."

A few years after the competition, the QRpedia project was given over to Wikimedia UK. Without a dedicated "sales" team to promote it, the project languished. Partly it was QR codes not being quite mainstream enough, and partly it was my failure to recognise that museums and galleries wanted to point to their own content - not Wikipedia.

Would winning the award have changed anything?

I can't remember what the prize money was - not a life changing amount, I suspect - but the legitimacy that it conferred on the project may have been useful in helping us get more uptake.

I'm happy to say our other competitors from that day are doing well. P2i are still selling waterproof nanocoating. And Blippar had a bit of a tumultuous time, but are still doing great AR work.

QRpedia codes still work - and I occasionally get sent photos of them in the wild.

Perhaps the resurgence of QR codes means that QRpedia will finally take the world by storm.

The lessons that I took from all of this? Winning prizes doesn't matter. The prize wasn't enough to stop DataWind from failing.

Judges aren't omniscient. At the time, I saw the loss as a direct rejection of our vision, and I couldn't understand how the judges had picked such an "obviously" flawed winner.

The power of story telling. Looking back, it's easy to see how DataWind had a much more compelling story and roadmap for real world impact.

Finally, holding on to bitterness isn't helpful. We lost, so fucking what? I should have used that emotion to spur me on rather than knock me back.

#mwc #mwc12 #qrpedia

The Engagement Economy

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/08/the-engagement-economy/

I was recently interviewed in The Guardian talking about the use of mobile phone in cultural institutions - museums, libraries, galleries, etc.

I was talking about the QRpedia project I co-founded. During the course of the interview, a phrase fluttered into my head - "The Engagement Economy."

It wasn't a phrase I'd heard before - although Jane McGonigal wrote an excellent paper in 2008 with the same name. McGonigal's paper talks about getting people to work on a project. My idea of the Engagement Economy is around how to keep someone's attention in a world full of distractions.

Let's take a typical museum visitor - Alice. When she decides to walk in to a museum she experiences a range of possible distractions.

Her friends may want to chat, there's a movie playing down the road that she wants to see, Twitter keeps buzzing in her pocket, she wants to find out more about the exhibit she's looking at, noisy school-children are annoying her, there's a new podcast she wants to listen to, the list goes on.

Each exhibit in every room, throughout the museum has to compete for Alice's engagement. She may be standing in front of the Hunterian's collection of pickled penises yet her eyes are on Facebook, her ears are listening to the Pod Delusion, and her mind is in a state of Continuous Partial Attention.

How do we snap Alice back to make the most out of her museum visit? We could use the ideas of the Attention Economy - but this often means crudely interrupting Alice and forcing her down a path she wasn't willing to travel.

The "Engagement Economy" suggests that we place ourselves in the channels that Alice is already using.

Let me take four very good examples.

Social Networking

As well as making sure you're reading the tips and notes left by your visitors on FourSquare and FaceBook, you also need to respond to people talking to you on Twitter. Be proactive - catch them while they visit, engage with them on their platform of choice.

Dublin Zoo do this incredibly well:

Video

Alice walks over to see the elephants in Dublin Zoo. Sadly, they're all asleep - which makes for a slightly dull few minutes. Engagement lost. Silly elephants - letting down a visitor like that.

Luckily, Dublin Zoo has uploaded some video of the elephants onto YouTube:

From the looks of that, it was probably shot with an employee's phone - or a cheap digital camera - then uploaded to YouTube. Almost zero cost to the zoo - but a great way to engage with visitors who may otherwise be left frustrated.

It's also "blipvert" length. Long enough to be interesting, but short enough to download on a phone and watch quickly.

Audio

Produce your own audio - let visitors download it. Everyone visiting your site will have a mobile phone. You don't need to rent out audio guides - give people the MP3 to download.

I saw this done last year - the Tracey Emin retrospective gave away an MP3 audio guide. Those who want to listen can do so using their own equipment (which will automatically pause if they receive a phone call, etc).

Wikipedia

What can Alice do if she wants to see more information on an exhibit? Most cultural institutions have a few lines on a card and, if you're lucky, a curator who can give more detail.

Alice is just going to go directly to Wikipedia on her phone. That's where QRpedia comes in. QRpedia puts QR codes on exhibits which then link to mobile Wikipedia.

The really clever part is that QRpedia codes do language detection, so Alice sees the English Wikipedia, no matter which country she is in. Similarly, Jacques sees the French Wikipedia even if he's at Dublin Zoo.Your staff should be editing Wikipedia, improving the articles, uploading photos.

Wikipedia run an outreach programme for Gallaries, Libraies, Archives, and Museums (and pretty much anyone else!) which can help you make the most of Wikipedia.

It's the Engagement Economy, Stupid

Participating in the Engagement Economy doesn't mean disrupting people, it doesn't mean forcing them down a specific path, and it doesn't mean that you have to interact every visitor on every channel.

The Engagement Economy means you have to know what is diverting the engagement of the majority of your visitors. Find a subtle way to insert yourself in that channel, and produce content which will hold their engagement.

#engagement #engagementEconomy #mobile #qrpedia