Based on a previous article about setting up a geofenced virtual event in Atlanta for the sistas, I decided to go ahead and get the ball rolling on a real-world implementation. I'm going to create a geofenced virtual event for the sistas and the planned live date is around September 13-15. The geofenced location will be around the arena/convention center and Centennial Olympic Park. With that said, that means I do not have a lot of time to get this up and running so in this article, we are going to discuss how I plan to hustle this virtual event out.
The reason I decided to do the virtual event is because our intelligence indicates there will be tens of thousands of sistas in the target geofenced area during that weekend. I want to give the sistas who are entrepreneurs a venue to market their products or services using "virtual booths" to be viewed exclusively by the sistas who will be that Atlanta location. I think this would be a great opportunity for sistas to market. The other reason is this will be good content for our upcoming Hustle Space magazine to cover geofencing and our experience with this project.
If you do not know the concept I'm talking about, check out the following video below:
I have posted this information (and this video) before on this blog plenty of times in previous articles so this is nothing new to me or my previous readers. It is also how the geo-airport business model works also and I created a working demo of that with source code that actually worked for every major airport in the world. But since time passed, me and my crew at the 3rd Strategic Institute experimented with geofencing and virtual pop-ups and we learned a lot.
The first thing we learned is the augmented reality part is not necessary and worthless. Showing an augmented 3D image of a shoe spinning around is cute, nothing more. What we discovered is what is important is just being in the area and showing rich information on the smart phone or tablet device to interact with. There is no need to be sticking some mobile device camera in the air looking like an idiot to view a spinning shoe so we abandoned the augmented reality part.
What we realized is creating a geofenced virtual pop-up store or event is actually straightforward and relatively cheap to implement on the technology part – about $50 to $100 if you want to be honest. The real part will be the marketing and getting the word out to the audience to raise awareness – that will be the real work for our virtual event.
Now, I have to be honest because in less than 1 day, I got the domain address from GoDaddy and a web site hosting package. I already got the code to drive the geolocation functionality. I also got the bootstrap template in place to customize and I got a good stock photo library for the graphics. So the technology part is already setup. I have already started the software lifecycle process and we are in the design and planning stage. Yes, I have done all of the initial work for the geofenced virtual event in my innovation room at my crib – did you build out your innovation center or do you still have a home office, huh?
Let's go over some of the major points – keep in mind that I will be starting up a new article I will keep updated with my progress on this virtual event project, but let's discuss the major points:
Need Help. I will definitely need some help as my focus is Swagg-Scientific operations and if you know somebody in Atlanta who is a real techie (Tech/GSU/AUC college student preferred) let me know. This may be a good learning experience for them to work with a pro and can put it on their resume.
Mobile Safety. On the home page, we will focus on pointing out the important of being safe with a mobile device. We got dirty cats out here snatching phones and tablets from people and that is why I abandoned the whole augmented reality crap of sticking a phone in the air. I will highlight how to use the service and do it in a safe environment and to tell the sistas to be mindful of their surroundings and watch for phone snatchers and tablet snatchers.
Virtual Booths. A virtual booth allow vendors to setup their own area to be viewed. The vendors can upload multiple images, videos and edit their own text presentation. Because mobile users will be accessing the virtual events, we will do mobile programming with links that can make phone calls or send emails. We will also have a section to show the vendor Facebook, twitter, Instagram and other stuff.
Bidding for Spots. We are going to setup a system where vendors can bid for their priority placement. So instead of saying $150 for the top spot, we are just going to take bids from vendors and the top bidder get the top spot, the second biggest bidders get the other spots. I would like yall to consider this model for your geofenced event virtual booths versus just having advertising space at a fix priced.
Passing Out Flyers. I will have a street marketing team out there with flyers promoting the virtual event to the sistas in the area. So that means I have to get those flyers designed like right now and sent in for printing. It is very important that I have a team out there promoting and getting the word out. I will also research some other ways like having a truck with a sign driving around if we get enough vendors paid up. The street team will help assist sistas how to use the QR code on the flyers to scan and go to the virtual event web site.
I got a lot more details but these are the major things that need to be hashed out more. In addition, you know how we do – I will be documenting step-by-step and open source so you guys can see our progress and try it out yourself. Now, if this virtual event in Atlanta works out well, maybe one of you brothas or sistas will focus on creating a sidehustle and focus on creating a geofenced virtual event in New Orleans around the 4th of July next year for the sistas.
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