IconNicholson Hosts North America Workshop On Designing Interactive Environments with the Arduino Physical Prototyping Platform
New York – April 2 –IconNicholson, a leading full-service digital agency, will host the first workshop in North America on developing interactive environments using Arduino, a world-renowned electronics prototyping platform from Tinker.It!.
The exclusive event, which will take place April 7-8, will be led by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino platform and CTO of Tinker.it! Drawing on 10 years of experience in the interaction design and physical prototyping field, Banzi will walk participants through the principles of interaction in retail environments and enable them to build their own interactive elements using Arduino.
“Tinker.it! is excited to collaborate with IconNicholson for this event,” says Banzi. “The agency is a long-standing leader in interactive design and so they were the obvious choice for hosting our North America workshop.”
As part of the two-day workshop, IconNicholson will present breakthroughs from its Innovations Lab including Social Retailing®, a solution to help its client Nanette Lepore engage deeply with the youth market. Using proprietary technology, Social Retailing® enables customers to connect with friends anywhere in the world as they shop in a physical store. Piloted at the Bloomingdale’s flagship store in Manhattan, the innovation was selected by Time Magazine as One of the Best Inventions 2007 alongside the iPhone. (((I wonder how many other "social" things are going to require circle-Rs, not to mention circle C's and maybe TM's. How about "Socialism"? "Swedish-Style Socialism ®." Has the Ikea retail environment been informed?)))
“We are thrilled to host Arduino’s North America workshop here in our offices,” says IconNicholson’s CEO, Tom Nicholson. “The event goes straight to the heart of our mission to help our clients actively engage and empower their customers. The world of marketing has been turned on its head and technology platforms like Arduino are key to our ability to nimbly adapt to the new behaviors of customers in this digitally connected world.” (((You gotta love it when marketing experts hug open-source enterprises to their warm commercial bosoms. Do they realize what they're getting into? Do they know what "open-source marketing" would look like? It would be people honestly telling each other about stuff they like. Mass consumer capitalism would collapse like a soap-bubble.)))
Geared towards designers, the workshop will focus on the ways in which retail environments have evolved from traditional display elements to opportunities for brand extension and customer engagement. Participants will receive a Beginners Arduino Workshop kit and Getting Started with Arduino book and are only required to bring a laptop. Zonebee, which is also collaborating on the workshop, will present its work with Tinker.it! at the Flaundrau Science Centre.
To register for the event, visit: http://tinkerit.eventwax.com/interactive-retail-environments-with-arduino/register. The workshop will take place in IconNicholson’s offices in NYC’s historic Puck Building in SoHo.
About IconNicholson
IconNicholson is a leading full-service integrated digital marketing agency that helps its clients engage, delight and interact with their customers to provide measurable business advantage. (((
(((Maybe some day soon marketing will actually be *eaten by social software.* If there's no more adspace left in extinct magazines and newspapers, ad-men would have to earn their living "delighting" people. I'm not sure I can get my head around that prospect – it's frankly scarier than the upheaval in Pakistan, and they've got nuclear weapons.)))
Visit us at visit us at www.iconnicholson.com
"I suggest that marketers should imagine stopping all advertising and then ask where they would spend their first dollar." (((On open-source hardware, Jeff?)))
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2009/04/the-future-of-advertising.html
"This, I believe, is Google's greatest lesson for media, advertising, marketers, as well as government: provide a platform for your customers and communities to succeed and you, too, will succeed.
"Is that advertising? Well, if we redefine advertising, it might be. Most every company and brand can become platforms for their customers and except for the means to accomplish that, there's nothing new in this. A great company always helps its customers do what they want to do. That's a platform."
