The present disclosure relates to a service that provides a unified assembly of hardware, software and management systems, tools and processes to enable venues to create new visitor experiences and extend those experiences beyond the boundaries of the venue's location over time and space.
Venues are organizations that create location- and/or time-based experiences or special events. Venues often intend for their experiences and events to meet one or more of the following objectives: (1) engage visitors deeply in the experience or event, (2) provide exposure for underwriters, sponsors, and advertisers, (3) drive marketing, revenue and other business objectives, and (4) understand how their efforts are working to improve future business decisions. Usually this management effort requires extensive coordination, especially when considering both onsite experiences (i.e., those that visitors attend at a given place and time) and online experiences (i.e., those that visitors can experience remotely, such as on the Internet).
Referring to
From a business perspective, embodiments of the invention provide a marketing, promotional, educational, and research system that can be used across industries in numerous usage environments. From a consumer perspective, embodiments provide an interactive experience that takes place at a venue and online.
More specifically, while at a venue or event 30, visitors 28 receive a barcode 34 on a card 37 (or downloaded to a mobile device 43). Throughout the venue, visitors 28 can scan their codes 34 at experience stations 36 they find at points of interest to them, such as exhibits, spaces, artists, etc. Scanning the code 34 creates a bookmark that identifies their interest in the location. Later, the visitor 28 can log into a personal website 38 that is created dynamically or “on-the-fly” to receive content based on the bookmarked locations. Additionally, a visitor 28 can download an application to his own mobile device 43 and use that device to scan codes posted throughout the venue 30. The visitor 28 may then have mobile access to content like that on their personal website 38.
Some embodiments of the invention described here include a distinct, integrated system that enables a venue 30 to extend and expand its onsite experiences to online experiences, while also addressing objectives such as those listed above. Embodiments of the invention engage visitors 28 at the venue 30, provide sponsorship opportunities, drive business objectives, and provide tools to analyze business performance.
One embodiment of the current invention combines existing and customized hardware and software technologies including:
Preferred and alternative examples of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawings:
Table 1 lists online and hardware platforms, software and systems and the major function that each supports in the context of embodiments of the present invention. The table shown here is based on open source solutions and is prototypical of the components and systems that may be used, in that the invention can perform similar functions on a range operating systems and hardware form factors. The invention operates on, without limitation, Android, Linux, Microsoft and Apple platforms. The code 34 that drives the major functions is uniquely created to deliver the solution as described in the rest of this document.
Referring to
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As used herein, an “experience” includes something personally encountered, undergone or lived through. An experience station 36 is a device or posted scan code that a visitor 28 interacts with at a given time and place. By interacting with the experience station 36, the visitor 28 may identify an interest in something they have encountered, undergone or lived through. Experience stations 36 add to the venue or event experience by providing direct interaction with content at that place and time. The visitor 28 may scan the codes 34 in whatever form (printed or electronic) at experience stations 36 throughout the venue. Scanning a code in this manner creates a bookmark for that experience station 36. Data are collected to identify the location of the bookmark including, for example, information in the bar code 34, experience station, GPS or other location-identifying coordinates and interactive input. Other data may also be collected at this time as it relates to any device (e.g., mobile phone or other handheld devices) that may be used in the process for scanning and bookmarking. Data may also be generated at the experience station 36 via touch screen or other input devices. Later, at a different time and place, the visitor may use the code 34 and a URL they received to navigate to a homepage on the Internet. Once there, the bookmarks are preferably used to automatically create a customized homepage so that the visitor 28 may receive more content related to experience stations 36 at which they scanned their code 34.
Referring to
Venue owners 24 preferably manage the onsite experiences and sponsor 26 offerings. Sponsors 26 may purchase advertising packages and upload their own content to the venue, advertising, research and management server 44.
The administrator 22 preferably has privileges to manage the entire system. A data and analytics server 46 provides reports to the client venue owner 24's portal 32, the partner sponsor 26 portal 40, and the administrator 22 portal 41.
As noted above, in the preferred embodiment there are four entities (e.g., people, organizations) that interact within the system: network administrators 22, venue owners 24, sponsors 26 and visitors 28. These systems have three operational domains: network administration, onsite experience and online experience. The following sections describe the preferred role and experience of each entity within the context of each domain, as appropriate. It will be appreciated that the role and experience of each entity may vary depending upon the particular application of the techniques described herein.
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The network administrator's system just described provides software to control numerous administrative functions and management processes including, without limitation:
By way of example, analytics available throughout the network 20 may include, without limitation:
Additional reports may be added as needed. These reports may include prompt values to allow the report to be pulled for a variety of date ranges and to control data returned to specific areas such as by genre, if needed. These reports may include venue-based data limits. The network administrator 22 may see all data for any reports.
The venue owner 24 also controls the onsite hardware 72, which preferably consists of a networked set of experience stations 36 and a control center 39. The experience stations 36 preferably use WiFi or wired (or other comparable technology) connections to connect to the control center 39. The control center 39 is connected to the through the venue's internal systems (or via wireless connect, for example, 3G/4G) to the Internet and ultimately to the network of hosted servers 20. The venue owner 24 uses this system to define the onsite hardware configuration 74, install hardware 76, define hardware use 78, and manage and maintain the hardware 80.
As an alternative or addition, the venue owner 24 may choose to enable visitors 28 to download mobile device experience station software preferably from the hosted servers to their personal mobile device 43 connected to a mobile network. The software effectively turns personal mobile devices into experience stations 36. Thereafter, the visitor 28 may scan codes 34 at locations throughout the venue 30. Upon scanning, the mobile device 43 may receive direct or indirect access to, without limitation, informative content, Internet URLs, and downloadable and non-downloadable interactive experiences.
In a preferred embodiment, referring to
Stepwise, the venue owner 24 defines venues 30 where experience stations 36 are to be placed, and specifies the number of experience stations required to configure the experience. As with all specifications, the network administrator 22 has the authority to approve or reject any configurations as appropriate.
After creating venues 30, the client selects the format of card 37 and barcode 34 fields from a set of design templates for cards 37 or mobile devices 43 that are made available by the network administrator 22.
After selecting the format of the cards 37 or mobile devices 43, the venue owner 24 then creates ad packages and decides the pricing for sponsors 26. The sponsor 26 packages include placement of advertising or other information on the visitor portal 38, cards 37 and experience stations 36 in any possible combination of those options so that the sponsor 26 can purchase it according to pricing and different options available on the sponsor portal 40.
No specific hardware is required for venue owners 24 to use the online system. The portal 32 and all management activities may operate through any common browser including, without limitation, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.
The preferred venue owner 24's portal provides numerous administrative functions and management processes including, without limitation:
Barcode 34 and Card 37 Creation Process
Referring to
In the preferred embodiment, the barcodes 34 that a venue 30 creates are based on templates provided by the network administrator 22 to the venue owner 24 on their venue owner portal 32. A tool for barcode 34 creation contains basic information related barcodes 34. The network administrator 22 defines the basic fields for the barcode 34. Some of them can be changed by venue owner 24, but in the preferred embodiment specific fields that are created by network administrator 22 are compulsory for all. Venue owners 24 can edit/add new fields in barcode 34, this may be a one-time process or whenever required.
The system allows clients to print the cards 37 in advance as a batch job with each code 34 and card 37 containing a unique identifying code. This process is built into the venue portal 32 and the card 37 orders are processed by the network administrator 22 and sent to an outside vendor. Alternatively, the venue owner 24 may choose to produce the cards 37 themselves or through their own vendors. Also, the venue owner 24 may choose to provide the code 34 through an electronic download for visitors 28 so that they can get a scan code 34 on a mobile device 43 to use instead of a card 37. These electronically-delivered barcodes 34 are from the same database as the printed barcodes 34.
By way of example, the fields captured in the barcode 34 include, without limitation:
Experience Station 36 Configuration by Venue Owners 24 and Use by Visitors 28
The experience station 36 is the central element of the onsite experience.
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Alternatively, the experience station 36 can be augmented or replaced by a mobile device owned by the visitor 28. In this scenario, the mobile phone owner acquires an application (usually through download) that runs on their personal mobile device 43 This application can, without limitation, provide an electronic code to the visitor's device, and/or enable their device to become the experience station from which visitors can scan codes posted at the venue.
Each experience station 36 or personal mobile device 43 may be identified by a set of data fields including, without limitation:
Venue Owner 24 Creating the Visitor 28 Online Experience
Referring to
Visitor 28 Online Experience
Visitors 28 who scan their barcode 34 or use their personal mobile devices 43 as code readers at venue 30 create a virtual set of bookmarks of their experience. This set of bookmarks may initially held onsite in the control station 39, after which the data are replicated on a server on the network 20 or alternative processing or storage location. Alternatively, they may be directly sent to the database servers 20 directly from experience stations 36 and personal mobile devices 43. At this point, the visitor 28's experience is in transition from one based at the experience location to one based online.
Later, visitors 28 can sign-in to a visitor 28 portal (e.g., website) that creates a custom homepage for each visitor 28 based on their personal, anonymous bookmark data captured at the venue 30. From here visitors 28 can re-connect, re-visit, and again engage with and experience the venue 30 and its sponsors 26.
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After successful log in a user will be presented with a home page and portal 38; an exemplar image is shown in
Once on the visitor portal 38, visitors 28 may engage in processes that may include, without limitation:
Sponsor 26 Online Experience
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The sponsor portal 40 just described provides numerous administrative functions and management processes including, without limitation:
In a preferred embodiment, the system components may include the following:
One embodiment includes a process for providing online experiences based on onsite visitor experiences. The process includes providing a visitor identifier to a visitor to a venue; associating a location identifier with each of multiple points of interest in the venue; receiving an indication that the visitor has expressed interest in one of the multiple points of interest, the received indication including the visitor identifier; and after the visitor has left the venue, providing the visitor with online content related to the one point of interest.
Another embodiment provides a system that includes hardware (e.g., a processor, memory) configured to execute a module configured to provide any of the above-described processes.
Another embodiment provides a computer-readable medium that includes contents (e.g., instructions) that are configured, when executed by a processor, to perform any of the above-described methods.
In an example embodiment, the described techniques may be implemented using standard programming techniques. For example, the components or modules may be implemented as “native” executables running on a CPU or other processor, along with one or more static or dynamic libraries. In other embodiments, modules may be implemented as instructions processed by a virtual machine that executes as a program on a CPU. In general, a range of programming languages known in the art may be employed for implementing such example embodiments, including representative implementations of various programming language paradigms, including but not limited to, object-oriented (e.g., Java, C++, C#, Visual Basic.NET, Smalltalk, and the like), functional (e.g., ML, Lisp, Scheme, and the like), procedural (e.g., C, Pascal, Ada, Modula, and the like), scripting (e.g., Perl, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, VBScript, and the like), and declarative (e.g., SQL, Prolog, and the like).
The embodiments described above may also use either well-known or proprietary synchronous or asynchronous client-server computing techniques. Also, the various components may be implemented using more monolithic programming techniques, for example, as an executable running on a single CPU computer system, or alternatively decomposed using a variety of structuring techniques known in the art, including but not limited to, multiprogramming, multithreading, client-server, or peer-to-peer, running on one or more computer systems each having one or more CPUs. Some embodiments may execute concurrently and asynchronously, and communicate using message passing techniques. Equivalent synchronous embodiments are also supported. Also, other functions could be implemented and/or performed by each component/module, and in different orders, and by different components/modules, yet still achieve the described functions.
Different configurations and locations of programs and data are contemplated for use with techniques of described herein. A variety of distributed computing techniques are appropriate for implementing the components of the illustrated embodiments in a distributed manner including but not limited to TCP/IP sockets, RPC, RMI, HTTP, Web Services (XML-RPC, JAX-RPC, SOAP, and the like). Other variations are possible. Also, other functionality could be provided by each component/module, or existing functionality could be distributed amongst the components/modules in different ways, yet still achieve the functions described herein.
Furthermore, in certain embodiments, some or all of the described components may be implemented or provided in other manners, such as at least partially in firmware and/or hardware, including, but not limited to one or more application-specific integrated circuits (“ASICs”), standard integrated circuits, controllers executing appropriate instructions, and including microcontrollers and/or embedded controllers, field-programmable gate arrays (“FPGAs”), complex programmable logic devices (“CPLDs”), and the like. Some or all of the system components and/or data structures may also be stored as contents (e.g., as executable or other machine-readable software instructions or structured data) on a computer-readable medium (e.g., as a hard disk; a memory; a computer network or cellular wireless network or other data transmission medium; or a portable media article to be read by an appropriate drive or via an appropriate connection, such as a DVD or flash memory device) so as to enable or configure the computer-readable medium and/or one or more associated computing systems or devices to execute or otherwise use or provide the contents to perform at least some of the described techniques. Some or all of the system components and data structures may also be stored as data signals (e.g., by being encoded as part of a carrier wave or included as part of an analog or digital propagated signal) on a variety of computer-readable transmission mediums, which are then transmitted, including across wireless-based and wired/cable-based mediums, and may take a variety of forms (e.g., as part of a single or multiplexed analog signal, or as multiple discrete digital packets or frames). Such computer program products may also take other forms in other embodiments. Accordingly, embodiments of this disclosure may be practiced with other computer system configurations.
While the preferred embodiment of the invention has been illustrated and described, as noted above, many changes can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the scope of the invention is not limited by the disclosure of the preferred embodiment. Instead, the invention should be determined entirely by reference to the claims that follow.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/470,286 filed Mar. 31, 2011, the contents of which are incorporated by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61470286 | Mar 2011 | US |