Innovation Oakland, a community-wide infrastructure initiative, will
unveil a model of their new state of the art information kiosks for the
public to test out on August third, in the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital
lobby.
The electronic kiosk was designed by
four students at CMU's
Entertainment Technology Center, and will utilize
sophisticated phone and website applications to help Oakland residents
and visitors better navigate the neighborhood's shopping, dining, and
cultural options. The kiosk is the prototype for phase II of Innovation
Oakland, an initiative created two years ago by the Oakland Task Force,
the Oakland Business Improvement District, UPMC, and Oakland's three
universities to better connect the public to locations and happenings in
Oakland's commercial district through new technologies. Based upon the
public's response to the prototype, many more kiosks will be placed in
both indoor and outdoor locations around Oakland.
"What really guided this project is that we have over 100,000
people in Oakland, in and out on a daily basis. People come here whether
they're studying, living here, or working, and there's so much that
they just may not be aware of," says Georgia Petropoulos Muir, Executive
Director of
OBID. "We wanted to come up with a system that could be
managed remotely, in terms of keeping information updated."
The Oakland Task Force found a precedent for Innovation
Oakland in Zaragoza, Spain's Digital Mile Program, which uses technology
to help people navigate the city's commercial area. After talking to
the creators of The Digital Mile, and conducting surveys and meetings
with the Oakland public, the members of The Oakland Task Force began
working on the kiosk model.
"This is a
prototype, so we can always tweak it and grow it," says Muir. "We're
going to see how the public likes it, and how they interact with it."
Come try out the new technology for yourself
beginning at 9 a.m. in the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital lobby in
Oakland on August third.
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Source: Georgia
Petropoulos Muir, Executive Director of OBID
Writer:
John Farley