As of 2006, Flemish radio station Studio Brussels organises the yearly charity event Music for Life, as part of the “Warmest Week”. Studio Brussel calls on their listeners to set up a campaign for a cause that lies close to their hearts. Since 2015, these campaigners have their own app, which enables them to share their story and better connect with their radio station. Behind this app lies the technology of MARCONI. In this blog post, you can find an overview of what MARCONI contributed and piloted at Music for Life.
The chatbot “Flammie”
With the app, campaigners can make footage and capture their activities. In 2018, the innovation department of VRT worked on refining and improving the app. In the initial display of the app, campaigners were able to see a timeline of their activities, with specific calls to action. For example, they were asked to make a video about the organisation they were starting a funding campaign for. Apart from that, campaigners were also able to ask questions to the editorial team.
Experience of the Music for Life app - through the eyes of a campaigner (vlog)
With the platform that VRT Innovation co-developed within the MARCONI project, the workload of the radio station was reduced considerably. Together with the editorial team, VRT Innovation and service provider Faktion developed as part of the project the chatbot “Flammie”, which provided first line support in the app. Only when Flammie was not able to answer a question, it was forwarded to the editorial team itself.
Experience of the Music for Life app - through the eyes of the radio station
Interaction onsite the event
Even more, on the terrain of the event, VRT Innovation installed about thirty iBeacons, of which the signals were captured in the app. As such, they were able to make an estimation of where the campaigners were located at the terrain and how they were moving around. This information was linked to the content aspect: pictures that were sent in by campaigners present on the terrain were also shown more frequently on the screens onsite.
Event screens enriched with user-generated content
Next steps: building on interaction opportunities
For the next edition, VRT Innovation aims to explore service and context-based content even more. The aim would to be to not only make the chatbot smarter, but also enrich interaction by for example integrating video content or sending polls. Even more, the interaction with the environment has a lot of potential as well. Where the focus lied on technical validation in 2018, 2019 will also focus on the content itself and the impact on the campaigners.
