The Swarm works with Dance Artist Tim Casson

The Dance We Made is an interactive pop-up dance event happening around iconic London landmarks this summer that invites members of the general public to choreograph dances for professional dancer Tim Casson. These dances will then be performed in each location, filmed and placed online and on mobile for people to watch and share. Tim will also perform a full length piece choreographed by members of the public at the Big Dance festival 2012.

If that wasn’t good enough The Guinness Book of Records have confirmed that with this many choreographers involved the project will also be a record-breaker!

The Swarm is getting involved to help Tim out with the some of the components he needs to support his project – such as branding & design as well as a spectrum of digital facilitation including online / social media presence and a smartphone app to help people find when and where the performances will take place.

We’re just days away from the 30-day countdown to the project, and have just launched the new the website – find out more about this project at the link below!

http://www.thedancewemade.co.uk

THE SWARM has just finished working with Reed Midem on the world’s premier event for bringing the digital media and television industries together.  MIPCube is part of the MIPTV festival which has over 11,000 attendees from all over the globe.  This is the second year THE SWARM has worked on the event, having worked to curate the Connected Experience Hub for the 2011 festival.

THE SWARM worked on running the Content 360 content pitching competition, which included the Videos That Create Global Buzz competition sponsored by MSN International and the New Transmedia Concepts category.  The competition attracted entrants from all over the globe and helped position MIPCube as the place to find global talent in the digital content space.

We also worked with MIPCube to programme an international panel of speakers and participants for the MIPCube Hack.

Jason DaPonte also hosted two sessions at the event.  The first was about transmedia and documentary and the second was about new forms of financing for digital media projects.  You can watch them both below:

Contact us to find out more about how THE SWARM can can help you with working on events, competitions and speaking in the digital media space.

When Fringe! – London’s gay and lesbian fringe film festival – wanted help with creating a digital film project and on their mobile strategy, they came to THE SWARM for help.

The First Love Project

Fringe! wanted to create a place where people could easily share their stories and have them communicated to as wide an audience as possible to help spread the message that love is a human right – regardless of the subject’s sexuality.  THE SWARM worked with the Fringe! team to create a branded look for the project and to develop channels on Vimeo, YouTube and widgets to promote these channels and to create seed content for the campaign.  We also carried out filming and community engagement to build content for the project.

The project is now live at http://www.fringefirstloveproject.com.  The best entries were curated and screened as part of the festival and continues to collect online submissions.

Mobile

THE SWARM developed a mobile web app for the festival that provided full listings and social functionality for the event, gave guidance and interfaced with some of the festivals art projects.  We also custom designed a map to help users of the app to explore one of the festival’s art projects using their phones.

Contact us to learn more about how we can work with you to help with video, mobile and other digital projects for your events and festivals.

THE SWARM recently teamed up with the Oxjam Camberwell Takeover and created an augmented reality guide to the one-day festival.

The Challenge

One of the aims of the music festival was to re-establish Camberwell as a great neighbourhood in London for going out at night – particularly for live music.  The organisers needed a cool way to get party-goers between 6 venues in one neighbourhood, without them getting lost or distracted.

The Solution

THE SWARM created an augmented reality guide for mobile.  This is a guide that allowed users to look through the cameras on their smartphones and then laid information about the location of the venues directly into their field of vision.  With a “Take Me There” button, the music lovers could get a map directly from where they were standing to their next desired venue.

Get in touch with us to find out about getting an augmented mobile guide to your next big event or exhibition!

More about Oxjam Camberwell Takeover.

THE SWARM has been working with world-renowned arts charity Visiting Arts on the development of a global arts portal designed to be the ultimate business-to-business tool for the culture sector.

The Challenge

Visiting Arts has a 35-year history of collecting and cataloging the world’s largest resource of information about the cultural sector in its Cultural Profiles books.  There is extensive content for every country in the world.  THE SWARM’s challenge has been to help the small charity turn this into a world-leading digital product.

The Solution

We have worked with Visiting Arts and other partners for the past year to help shape the overall strategy and business model, researching and creating product definitions, delivering visual designs, supervising the build and carrying out brand development work.  A beta version of the site launches soon and this work continues – look out for the site and more news soon!

Download the full executive summary for the project from the Visiting Arts website.

Leave Your Phone at Home: THIS is Mobile Media is the name of the talk Jason DaPonte presented at the Edinburgh Interactive 2011 festival.

In the talk, Jason challenged the games industry to think beyond the world of console and handset games and to think about a world where every object is a ‘connected thing’ in the internet of things and therefore, a potential part of the digital gaming world.  He gave the audience examples of how items like digital hoodie sweatshirts, connected cars and even wi-fi contact lenses are preparing to shake up the way consumers get media.

“Working across platforms will no longer be about web, mobile and TV.  It will be about delivering contextual content and services in the most relevant place for users.  Competition for attention will be via ambient media,” he told the audience.

“We need to create Story Systems that create value for users.  They need to allow content and context to create meaning, regardless of what device they’re consumed on.”

Jason delivered a similar talk at the Nordisk Panorama DocXChange where he presented the same connected world as a potential opportunity for both gathering and distributing documentary content.

THE SWARM is proud to be a pro-bono sponsor and advisor to Endz2Endz – the place for young urban talent.

The project – started by 4 youths from South London estates and THE SWARM’s executive producer, Jason DaPonte – starts from the belief that showcasing positive stories about young people and giving them a home for showcasing their talent will promote positive behaviour as an alternative to violence.

The project has been featured in The Sun and The Guardian and was part of Sheffield DocFest’s community media programme.  The site and its members have also won a number of awards for their work on the project including: the Spirit of London Award, the Tomorrow’s People Award and the Life Changers Award.

The site gives young people the opportunity to learn about how to run a digital media company and to publish and showcase their work.  Young creatives from rappers to graphic designers to fashion designers regularly collaborate on the site and the community of youths visiting and participating is growing.

THE SWARM has worked with the youths involved to develop their product, create content and to build partnerships with the likes of Pearson Innov8 and Arbonne.

THE SWARM’s first independent smartphone app, TubeTap has launched.

You can download the app here.

TubeTap is a new app, developed by The Swarm and Turned On Digital, which automatically identifies a travelers’ Underground route, calculates the journey-time and then requests a refund when the traveler is delayed by more than 15 minutes from the estimated journey time. The app submits a refund request to TFL automatically, requiring only one click from the user to consent to their data being used.  A refund cheque is then sent directly to customers.

It is estimated that £34m worth of refunds are owed to Tube commuters each year but – shockingly – only £2m in actual refunds are made, according to some estimates. Unlike other apps, TubeTap offers an automated service.  All users need to do is use it like an Oyster Card – touching it when they enter and leave the station and the app does the rest.

Representing  a breakthrough in the way public data can be used to empower citizens, TubeTap has been built entirely using open data from Transport For London’s and TfL’s travel API.  It builds on the conditions of carriage for commuters that state that if a passenger is delayed by more than 15 minutes from the estimated journey time, they are owed a refund.  Until now, this has required that users manually track the delays and then apply when they get to a PC (after a frustrating journey) or by letter.  Mobile technology lets passengers do this in the palm of their hand, while they’re travelling.

The project is being done in conjunction with Turned On Digital.

Follow TubeTap to keep up-to-date and hear about the launch.

Web: http://tubetap.co.uk/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TubeTap

Twitter: @TubeTap

THE SWARM recently worked with students in California to develop and pitch new ideas for the use of mobile technologies to several prominent news organisations.

The lab was an 10-day incubator run by the Annenberg Innovation Lab with students from the university’s Journalism, Business and Engineering Schools that brought them together to create new mobile products for the Associated Press (AP), La Opinion, KCRW radio and Variety.

THE SWARM provided a portion of the coursework and workshops for the students with services ranging from knowledge-building lectures, to workshop facilitation to mentoring.  The photos above show Jason DaPonte, Managing Director, running a half-day workshop that used LEGO to help the student create the very first prototypes of their products.

Get in touch with THE SWARM to find out more about how we can help you build the future of mobile.

THE SWARM is currently in development creating a multi-platform documentary about Francis Firebrace – an aboriginal storyteller who has spent the last 10 years in the UK and who will soon be making his final emotional trip back to Australia.

The project is being done with documentary director Kevin Lee Brown, producer Sandra Whipham (London Fields Pictures) and co-producer Kylee Ingham (Australian Documentaries).

Francis will be going back to Australia with his stories – and participants in the project will be given the opportunity to work collaboratively with him online to create digital versions of these ancient stories so they are preserved online forever.

See a promotional video for the project here:

We are currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.  More here: