Fort Vancouver Mobile: Need statement

For potential funders out there:

Within the decade, more people around the world will be accessing the Internet through mobile devices than from their desktops. Capable of so much more than just telephony, this new generation of interconnected mobile devices will be able to track location of users and be aware of contextual information, such as where they have been before, what they have looked at and where they are headed next.
In the world of historical interpretation, this opens up a mind-blowing number of possibilities, including interactive narratives that immerse users in a particular time and place and even within a specific character. Information no longer has to be written in brochures or displayed on interpretive panels or wall screens, and costumed interpreters don’t have to be performing on site every hour to have round-the-clock edutainment.
Some within the field are becoming aware of these possibilities, but the race still is on to create the first mobile app for a national park service site. The chance still is there to break that ground and lead the federal government's historical interpretation efforts into this immense new digital world, to suitably enough be pioneers in generating this augmented reality, which is destined to become a standard operating procedure of historical sites in the future.
The Fort Vancouver National Historic Site -- the only historic site in the Portland, Ore., metropolitan area -- has been doing extensive research, under the direction of Texas Tech University doctoral student Brett Oppegaard, on mobile storytelling and tourism, from delivery methods and platforms to interactive narrative structure. Clark County's government recently awarded Oppegaard, also an adjunct lecturer at Washington State University Vancouver, a $9,000 grant to purchase the industry-standard audio equipment needed to generate this high level of mobile content. Various partners on the 12-member production team also are bringing professional level equipment into the mix as well, but there still are a few integral main parts needed to make the production process run smoothly and generate commercial-level quality: An industry-standard video camera and video monitoring system, including a tripod, which costs about $9,600, and a Macintosh-based video editing and media storage system, with the industry-standard Final Cut Pro software on it, which costs about another $8,000.
The team is in place, including several nationally renowned journalists with experience in multimedia content production and prominent regional historians, including a curator and an archaeologist. The opportunity is ripe, like looking to the west and seeing nothing but an uncharted frontier. This project just needs a few more pieces of equipment to leap into action, get the wagons moving and change history.
We are gaining new partners and supporters regularly, but we need you to take one of these larger leaps of faith while the iron is hot. Please consider covering the costs of the Macintosh editing and media storage system, about $8,000, which then would be donated to Washington State University Vancouver's Digital Technology and Culture program at the end of its use at Fort Vancouver. Thank you for your consideration.

Fort Vancouver Mobile: The problems it will solve

Fort Vancouver Mobile is the umbrella label I use now to talk about the various efforts underway by our team at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site to embed digital mobile content that augments the physical representations of the fascinating array of history that has happened in that particular location, on the north bank of the Columbia River, just north of Portland, Ore. This was the spot where the Pacific Northwest’s "first hospital, school, orchard, library, grist mill, saw mill, shipyard and dairy were all established," according to the fort's records.

Our primary goal is to generate mobile interactive narratives, or stories that visitors to the site can immerse themselves in, through a connection with a mobile communication device. We also have been examining and researching various other modes of information sharing and platforms, from QR (quick response) codes to mobile social networking systems.

Before I write more about those specific efforts, I think it's important to define what problems we are trying to solve with this project.

To begin with, the fort's collection and archives contain more than 2 million artifacts, yet only 10 percent of those (or about 200,000 items) are available for viewing, according to the fort. The other 90 percent, or about 1.8 million items, can't be exhibited for a variety of reasons, including lack of display space. A digital solution not only could bring more items directly into the palms of visitors, by allowing downloads to mobile devices, for example, but this approach also gives on-demand access and mobility to that information and imagery, which could greatly improve its usefulness throughout the park, creating more connectivity among the items and stories that include them.

The fascinating stories of this place also are an underdeveloped resource at this point, due to lack of resources to share them. The ideal situation might be living history performances in all buildings every hour the fort is open, but without the resources of Colonial Williamsburg, the fort has to rely on occasional living history outreach mixed with other means of telling its stories, such as park ranger chats, brochures, wayside signs, etc. Digital content could complement the efforts already underway at the site, with additional content that is engaging and educational in other ways, including a facsimile of living history, with anecdotes and stories captured in video and audio for on-demand and on-location playback.

Another significant issue at the fort is the difficulty of attracting and maintaining the interest of young, technologically inclined folks, say between 16 and 35 years of age. This is anecdotal at this point, but teenagers touring the site often are seen wearing iPod earphones or text messaging on their cell phones rather than looking around at the wonders of the site. If that focus could be redirected toward some sort of edutainment-type program, in which visitors immersed themselves into a fort story through their devices, maybe while also being socially connected to friends doing the same thing, it could change the dynamic considerably in the fort's (and history's) favor.

Those three issues seems to be key driving factors for us in developing mobile content at the fort. There are secondary reasons for it, of course, which I will address later. But those give us our base driving factors from which to build our content. Are there other, more important problems we could solve with digital content at the fort at this time? If you have ideas, please post them here. Thanks!

What does the Fort Vancouver Mobile project need in terms of resources in 2010 and beyond?

After many months of planning and groundwork, the Fort Vancouver Mobile project I'm coordinating at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is starting to emerge into public view. That's because the first of what I hope to be many financial backers, the Clark County Historical Promotions committee and Clark County Commissioners, recently awarded the project a $9,000 grant. This in turn triggered the project's official sponsor, Washington State University Vancouver, to link a fall 2010 class in the Digital Technology and Culture program to this project. I also have been surprised at the volume of interest generated just from the grant announcement in the local newspaper and various WSU publications. It's clear that people are highly intrigued by the idea of offering engaging mobile content at the site to share historical information and stories through devices, such as the iPhone or Android phones.
While I have gathered a talented and trusted group of people to work on this, initial informal brainstorming sessions with some of them have shown that there are way more great ideas than we have the capacity to perform this year. Which makes me wonder how much I should expand this project, and how quickly?
The initial goal for me was simply to develop a laboratory for my research into mobile interactive narratives as I pursue my doctorate degree in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Yet the support I have received for this idea from Chief Ranger Greg Shine as well as DTC co-directors Dene Grigar and John Barber -- and the many others who have been instrumental in the project's development so far -- has been energizing.
That leads back to the main question I have at this time. Should I keep focused only on the dissertation needs and pursue resources strictly to that end? Or, while I have this wind in my sails, should I start reaching out toward potential funders with a bigger message in mind, one that could make the fort and this project a model for historical tourism sites in this country?

Black Friday in Hazel Dell

Mirror Worlds

At Georgia Tech University's Augmented Reality Lab:

Dissertation on "games in place"

Stumbled onto this short video, which seems within the realm of my dissertation research. Thought it would be worth posting and following up soon with the author, John Martin, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Visualizing augmented reality - a pilot

Here are some ideas from a company called Najork about how AR could change the way things look in the world:

Augmented reality business cards

Yet another example of how augmented reality can change business communication (but don't you think the guy on the left of this card at least could have dressed up a bit for the occasion?)

A digital magazine to Flyp over

This interview with Flyp editor Jim Gaines shows not everyone is asleep at the wheel in journalism circles. Here's the video description:

"FLYP is an independent media startup trying to reinvent the magazine online, not just by posting print/image/sound/video content to a website, but by rethinking what digital story-telling and the next-generation magazine might become. The presentation/design aesthetic is built into the architecture of the story, intended not just to make a story look pretty, but to pull a visitor deeper into the ideas or narratives. Text, image, sound and video are elements to be juggled based on their effectiveness in telling pieces of a story. No one element consistently dominates. Navigation through articles is meant to suggest a kind of digitally tactile sensibility.

Even though its physical form is ephemeral electrons, FLYPs origins are anchored in the physicality of the traditional magazine. Each story is a small multimedia production project in itself. Text is important on this site, but image, sound and video arent just supporting media; various media take turns in the lead, depending on the story or idea. FLYP tries to combine the high-design richness of a glossy print magazine with the dynamic potential of a media-rich website in ways that suggest that a general-culture publication can be a compelling window on culture. Editor-in-chief Jim Gaines was formerly managing editor of People, Life and Time magazines."

Innovative ideas about augmented reality interfaces, without markers

This research project at the University of California - Santa Barbara shows how far we have come in this technology in just a few months.

Mobile Storytelling at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site - Audience Evaluation

Here is the first section of the survey I have been conducting to evaluate the potential mobile audience and its needs and wants at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site:

Questions 1-10

Click Here to take survey

And here is the second set of questions (11-18):

Click Here to take survey

At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry

Keynote speech by Bruce Sterling of Wired:

Video: Bruce Sterling's Keynote - At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.

Maptor, not just a flashlight

Also an augmented reality map projector (warning: video accompanied by breezy Muzak-like track):

iTacitus

Another platform emerges for augmented reality storytelling:

KickStarter.com

Those looking for ways to microfund small projects might want to consider KickStarter, which uses Amazon.com's payment system to process "venture" capital.

Using augmented reality to fix a BMW

This is sort of strange in a cyborgian way (think of the mechanics in the shop all walking around with these sorts of goggles on), but it demonstrates a practical use for augmented reality:

The inevitable Augmented Reality t-shirt

Knew this was coming ...

PaperTweet3d: Augmented Reality T-shirts from squidder on Vimeo.

yellowBird -- 360 degree immersive video

This is fascinating. You can click and move around the 360-degree view -- not a static one -- within the crowd at a concert. Seems like there could be a lot of innovative uses for this kind of technology.

Another perspective on Chris Anderson's "free"

Wired editor Chris Anderson is making the rounds to promote his book "free," this time on The Colbert Report. It's an interesting argument to make.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Chris Anderson
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

"Base Ball" at the Fort

Local filmmaker Mark Dodd recently shot and edited this clip of me playing "base ball" as part of a historic reenactment at the Fort Vancouver National Site in Vancouver, Wash. Thanks for sending it this way, Mark!

Wired's Chris Anderson talking about "free"

Fascinating interview with Wired's editor, on Charlie Rose show (Free is here to stay; But what's the pet for our penguin?):

U.S. Debt Clock

This is mesmerizing.

More advances in digital holograms

I'm trying not to get too sidetracked on these, but the development of this technology is a fascinating realm of augmented reality. Here are a couple of projects by a grad student from Japan, named Julien Pilet, doing work at the EPFL labs in Switzerland:



And this one:

Jeff Watson presentation on locative media and responsive environments

Stumbled upon this slideshow of a recent Jeff Watson lecture that had some interesting factoids about locative media:

Locative Media And Responsive Environments

View more presentations from Jeff Watson.

Combining augmented reality and social networking

Found this application (and video) that supports the concept:

Topps 3D Live - Another AR example

This takes the digital hologram past the model and display phase and into simple manipulation of the hologram, augmented reality for a mass market. This has to be one of the earliest commercial ventures into this realm. If you know of any others, please post them.

Digital holograms via Flash

I have no idea what I could do with something like this in a practical sense, but it will be fun to think of possibilities:

IBM Seer at Wimbledon 2009

American giant IBM gets into the augmented reality game at Wimbledon:

Mobile storytelling project at Fort Vancouver National Site

I'm working on a new mobile storytelling project in the vicinity of the Fort Vancouver National Site in the Portland, Ore., area, where the Oregon Trail ended for many settlers.

As part of this, I'm conducting a survey of the potential audience and trying to determine what will work best, including the technology to use, the format of the content and the core narrative structure that will have the biggest impact and leave the most flexibility in terms of artistic expression.

In preparation of the survey, I interviewed a neighbor, Dave Griffith, who has an iPhone 3G and an interest in local history. He graciously is allowing me to put a summary of his responses on the blog as well, in case it might provide insights to anyone else working on mobile storytelling projects.

To begin with, he noted, the iPhone doesn't allow applications to run in the background, which means a potential audience member would have to have the appropriate program loaded on the right device and have it ready to go to even start engaging with an interactive mobile presentation. Those are a lot of obstacles to overcome, including trying to create a universal medium when standards are evolving and shifting and each mobile device right now has different applications to do different things.

Let's say, though, that we can create a mobile presentation that can be accessed by the majority of the devices -- including the iPhone, the G1, the Palm Pre and the BlackBerry Storm -- and that they all, or most of them, can use the material in the same basic ways. Griffith's point extends to the idea that somehow these people are going to need to know to have the specific application loaded and ready to go, and any technical glitches between the application and the material will be negligible. How would this mobile story be publicized, especially at the location? How can this material be accessed by the most people, in the easiest way? Those are important questions.

If he could access such a piece, Griffith said he would like that to be a multimedia blend of text, images and video, not just a chunk of text, or a photo or a video. He was intrigued by ideas I floated about following in the footsteps of history while a nonfiction anecdote played itself out, or by interactive mysteries or games, that could be broadly labeled as historical fiction. But when I brought up the possibilities of social networking as part of that, including interacting with other participants as they followed along with the story as well, he said he did not have an interest in taking the idea that far and that he likely wouldn't use such a feature.

In terms of specific content that would interest him, he leaned toward contextual enrichment via real maps, photos of artifacts and journal entries, plus other information that provided details of the ways in which people, especially famous or quirky people, lived in the mid-19th century, when Fort Vancouver was at its apex in history. Yet he thought it also would be fun to experience that kind of material as part of a game, or mystery, or tour, particularly one that was family-oriented and would include children in the process.

All good fodder to keep in mind for later steps.

Born Digital

Just finished "Born Digital" by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, which addresses the idea that people born after 1980, when computers emerged, dubbed "digital natives," haven't known anything but digital technology, so they therefore live differently than those born before 1980. The World Wide Web, by the way, didn't appear until 1991, even though it seems now like it's been part of our lives forever.

I read somewhere recently, too, that the gap between generations right now is the greatest since the Vietnam war era, with the country having a distinct split on the direction it should follow.

The "Born Digital" book covers many of the issues and ideas that have emerged from this fissure -- related to such topics as privacy, quality of information, pirating, learning and innovation -- in layman terms. Even though it was written by a couple of attorneys, and it's about a technical field, the writing style and language clearly were aimed at a mainstream audience. Sometimes, I found that tedious, in terms of repetition and unneeded context. But I suspect those who haven't read much in this field would need that framework to understand the points.

That said, here are a few excerpts from the book I found interesting:

* In 2006, Tower Records liquidated, and by 2008, iTunes was the largest music retailer in the U.S.

* If you are not a digital native, you still can be a "digital settler," helping to shape this new world, even though you weren't born into it.

* If the VCR didn't ruin the movie business, why will digital file sharing kill the music industry?

* "I think the reason why print magazines are still very popular is because you kind of have the feeling, okay, this is like one issue, and this is what happened this week. And on the Internet ... there's no beginning and no end. -- An 18-year-old Harvard student."

* In 2007 alone, 161 billion gigabytes of digital content was created, or 3 million times the amount of information in all of the books ever written. Experts predict in 2010, the world will produce nearly a trillion gigabytes of digital content.

* A person's short term memory can only hold seven items at once.

* When people are overloaded with information, they tend to respond with simpler and shorter messages. Hmmm, Twitter?

The chapters on digital dossiers and information overload were the most striking to me, making me rethink some of my views on sharing information online as well as the ways in which I handle the glut of knowledge. The authors use the metaphor of a tattoo as a way to think of something a young person might leave in cyberspace that will haunt them the rest of their lives.

Much of this confirms my mantra on web design: simple, straightfoward and clean. As I work on building brettoppegaard.com into that vision, and transform it for mobile screens, (and the more I use mobile apps on my G1), I'm getting convinced that the less complexity, the better.

- Brett