Demo Party Day selects six apps for the online competition Apps&Cultura!
The event also became the platform for selecting the winning apps in the Europeana Creative Challenge
Geolocalized tours, a place for sharing common interests, finding local guides for the city you are visiting, learning languages for free and without intermediaries, getting to know street musicians and facilitating access to technology for tour operators – these are the six app proposals selected on Demo Party Day to participate in the competition Apps&Cultura2014, which will take place on the 31st of October this year.
These six mobile device apps were presented as part of Demo Party Day, which took
place on the 23r of September in the Mobile World Centre, During the event, each
candidate had two minutes in which to explain his or her project and a jury consisting
of Christian Rodríguez (ByHours), Imma Losada (MusGuide) and Marcel·lí Zuazua
(Ommwriter and Notegraphy) posed questions to the applicants in an effort to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of each project.
The objective of Apps&Cultura is to facilitate the dissemination of culture and tourism among Barcelona residents. As a result, and thanks to 8500 euros in prize money, the designer of the winning app will have the opportunity to realise his or her project. The deadline for registering new ideas is the 14th of October.
The six most-developed apps are:
. Explock! - a platform for geolocalized, interactive tours and also a useful marketing tool.
. Pim Pam Plan – a solution for those days when you really want to do something but you don’t have a plan – a space for sharing and participating in events with common denominators such as affinities, available time and budget.
. Fast Trip – uses social networks to find local guides to the town or city you are visiting, thereby encouraging alternative tourism.
. Looking4Language – a free, relaxed and participative way to learn languages without the need for intermediaries.
. Undersound/Músics al Metro – a social network for street and metro musicians and a place where metro users can acquaint themselves with the artists they encounter en route.
. TuristIQ – puts ‘gamification’ in the hands of tour operators in an effort to facilitate their access to technology.
“The mobile device sector, creative industries and technology are key areas for the Direcció de Creativitat i Innovació”, affirmed Inés Garriga, the head of this particular area of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (ICUB) at the opening of the Apps&Cultura Demo Party Day. “We are developing a range of challenges to help you move forward with your projects”, she added, in reference to the European accreditation initiative, CreatiFI.
“Apps&Cultura is a perfect example of the digital agenda of the Generalitat [Catalan government]”, stressed Marta Ysern, the person responsible for the Projectes Singulars de Barcelona Media [Unique Barcelona Media Projects] initiative, an agenda that, in her words, encourages “innovation in both culture and in institutions” and which requires “not just technology, but above all a particular attitude and bearing”. Initiatives such as this are designed to bring Catalonia into line with other contemporary cultural leaders, where culture and technology are seen as complementary.
The three mobile device app success stories presented at the event in the persons of Christian Rodríguez, Imma Losada and Marcel·lí Zuazua, not only served as a chance to explain just what each of the projects consists of, but also as an opportunity to highlight their key aspects. Rodríguez and Zuazua underlined the importance of both being the first to offer a previously non-existent solution and of arriving at a situation in which both the interested parties and the users may reap the benefits of the app. Losada emphasised the importance of design, quality content and user loyalty in the proposal’s possibilities of generating wealth.
The event also served as the platform for the selection of the winning apps in the Europeana Creative Challene, a European initiative that encourages the use of the Europeana document collection as a basis for developing applications that are useful from a cultural tourism perspective. Timepatch and Buitenplaats were the winning apps.