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As the year draws to a close Mark Maydon , commercial director of Crowd Connected , explains how the software company ’ s 2022 innovations have set the stage for 2023 ’ s developments
aced with an
F unfamiliar physical environment , we struggle to find what we came for . We frequently don ’ t get to meetings on schedule or leave at the end of the day having not met with all the people we intended to .
The ‘ blue dot ’ on a mobile phone screen , shorthand for ‘ I am here ’, has become second nature thanks to apps such as Apple and Google maps . But Google and Apple don ’ t map temporary event environments , and GPS doesn ’ t work inside a building .
Our indoor positioning technology was developed specifically for the challenging environments of temporary events and footfall analytics , so we were pretty chuffed when technology research group Gartner picked up on our tech , naming Crowd Connected as a Cool Vendor earlier this year .
Let ’ s talk floorplans . We ’ ve integrated with indoor mapping providers to take away much of the pain when it comes to deploying for an event ( the blue dot just appears as if by magic on the digital floorplan ). Our work with ExpoFP , an interactive floorplan provider , is a case in point . We wanted to focus as much on making it easy for app developers to add blue dot navigation to an event app , as on the end-user experience .
The third component of providing wayfinding / navigation on a mobile phone is the app . Post-Covid-19 we ’ ve worked with many vendors , including ExpoPlatform , Grip , Pathable , Realife Tech , Swapcard and Venuetize , to develop new integrations . For us , 2022 has been a breakthrough year , right from the start .
Back in January , readers of Exhibition World saw our research that suggested that the value of a typical exhibition would be 20 % higher if visitors had no problem finding everything they were looking for . As we ’ ve become used to relying on the little blue dot to tell us where we are , humankind
“ The ‘ blue dot ’, shorthand for ‘ I am here ’, has become second nature thanks to apps such as Apple and Google maps ” is losing the skills to use traditional navigation like static maps . Since then , app vendors have repeatedly told us that wayfinding is a key driver that has resulted in mobile app adoption jumping 100 % at some events .
If 2022 has been about first movers and early adopters , 2023 promises to be the year when blue dot navigation at large-scale indoor events moves into the mainstream . So , no more ‘ where the hell am I ?’ frustration . No more getting lost . Outdoors your phone sorts that for you . Now ditto for any indoor event .
The mission continues . EW
www . exhibitionworld . co . uk Issue 6 2022 41