Wireless Festival in Finland

Wireless Festival in Finland (aka. "Wireless Woodstock) is the Finnish part of the multinational CELTIC project Wireless Festival. It is managed, carried out and funded separately in Finland, but is implemented in close co-operation with participants in Sweden. The two and a half year project is studying, prototyping and evaluating mobile solutions for large-scale events, such as music festivals and sports events.

Based on the findings of a study at the Hultsfred Rock festival (S) and at the Neste Rally (Fin), we developed two prototype services: the Dynamic Booklet a mobile digital program of the event, and mGroup a mobile group media application for chatting and creating shared media albums.

In the first two quarters of 2005 (January - June) we finished the implemented mGroup, a client-server Java application for the Nokia 6630s (a Series60 smart phones), to be used in large-scale events. The application – mGroup – is a mobile media sharing application for groups of spectators and visitors, based on the following principles:

  1. Story-based communication spaces. Users create “media stories” inviting specific members forming different media spaces to support topical discourses.
  2. Threaded replies and presence features. Each message is delivered instantly to its members with reply possibility. mGroup visualises member’s online/offline status and the latest contributors in the stories.
  3. Combining spectators media and real time event content services. Spectators can access and comment dedicated stories with real-time event content (by event organisers, competitors, or performers).
  4. Automatic album creation for post-event re-experience. Each media story is also a shared album in an up-to-date web page protected by password.

Currently, the generally available solutions enable sharing of media and dialogue between two users by using SMS and MMS messages. These messages have to be sent individually to each member of the group, and chatting with the whole group is not possible. Possibilities to add instant media and near-field communications are studied.

In the third quarter (July – September 2005) the project focussed on trials, the prototype applications has been the object of trials in events in Sweden, Germany and Finland with the cooperation of TeliaSonera. The two largest trials were carried out at the Hultsfred Rockfestival June 2006, and the WRC Neste Rally August 2006. In additions TeliaSonera carried out at the World Atlhetic Championship trials of localised services based on near field communication.

In the fourth quarter 2005 (October - November) we have completed the analysis of the trials and completed the re-design of the application. In particular, mGroup will include a new component which will integrate the functionality of a dynamic booklet of the event. Also we are integrating presence and context aware features. TeliaSonera Finland tested rfid’s possibilities (basic interest, usage and challenges) in an event environment in two B2B events. The differences between B2C and B2B events were also discussed.

The project has been accepted in the Celtic review meeting in Stockholm the 11/10/2005.

People

  • Martti Mäntylä, project leader
  • Giulio Jacucci, project manager
  • Olli Pitkänen
  • Antti Salovaara
  • Pekka Kanerva

Research groups


Last updated on 16 Dec 2009 by WWW administrator - Page created on 13 Jan 2007 by Webmaster