Here at CloudGuide we are getting very excited for the Avant-Garde LAB event in Moscow coming up very soon!

The event is a series of open and closed lectures held at the Curator School in the Avant-Garde Centre of the Jewish Museum in Moscow, Russia. The event will run from September 9th to 30th 2018. It will be covering a range of arts and cultural subjects, particularly focusing on the Curator School’s main topic for this year, New Museum Technologies.

One of CloudGuide’s very own Business Developers, Edward Meyrick, will not only be representing us by attending the event but by speaking at it too. On September 16th, sandwiched between lectures by two great Russian experts, Edward will give a lecture that will be open to students and the public alike - basically anyone who’s interested in art and technology!

Edward has been working with leading tech companies for over 15 years and has developed a real passion and deep understanding of how tech can transform and enhance peoples lives. Inspired by his two daughters, Edward is now working with CloudGuide to combine this passion with the travel sector, focusing on education and the preservation of cultural heritage for our future generations. His work is specifically geared towards overcoming the challenges of educating and engaging a younger audience and how new technologies can help institutions to achieve this. Edward will be discussing how museum organisers are now using dedicated media devices to build engaging content around their exhibits and, therefore, educating and informing visitors in more exciting and entertaining ways.

One feature of our app that is particularly effective in this area is the Play function that CloudGuide offers. We can tailor a game to the institution, transforming the guides and tours into highly engaging & targeted experiences for the audience. We offer three different types of games: scavenger hunts where the participants must hunt for clues and answer challenges within a set time; iBeacon Mystery Quests where visitors must find the hidden treasures inside the institution and once found, the iBeacon will send a signal to unlock the challenge; and quizzes and word guessing, which are the perfect tool to check what visitors have learnt through their visit. We work with the institutions to make the game as engaging and exciting as possible and as an incentive to get involved there’s even the possibility of winning prizes such as discounts in the institution’s shop or vouchers for another visit. This gamification tool is a great and easy way for institutions to present content to their visitors in the most entertaining form possible, while creating an educational environment through diverse, stimulating experiences. Edward will explain all of this in the lecture and will show how great this gamification feature really is.

Edward will present this topic through a case study that CloudGuide conducted with the Mazza Children’s Museum in Ohio, for whom we provided a mobile app to enhance their visitors’ experience and to engage more effectively with their younger audience. The Mazza Children’s Museum found the app - especially the play function - very effective as they received higher user ratings and quickly became a market leader. The lecture will focus specifically on the processes and tools the Mazza Children’s Museum used to find out these best practices and how institutions of all sizes and budget can follow in their footsteps with the help of CloudGuide.

This event is a wonderful opportunity for people to learn about art and technology, for museums to find out more about how technology can enhance their visitors’ experience, and for CloudGuide to share with you all the exciting work we’ve been doing. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!