Westminster Business Forum Chaired by Julian Smith M.P. and Lord Harrison. Here we talk about open data, multi-lingual support and hyper local tourism.
Open for Tourism. Here I mean “Open” as in “open data” as well as in welcome. Why are we concentrating on falling budgets when the UK has been given such an advantage with our cultural heritage. This is a free resource which we can use. The picture at top right shows Westminster as it appears in the virtual world. This is the information available to anyone looking around for where to visit. The map shows an area of Westminster as it would be viewed in English by anyone. Its a rich picture. Every building is shown and large items like statues. This is a free map created by volunteers. Each of the red marks shows that a Wikipedia article is available. It looks brilliant. Its one of the best described areas of the UK. IT doesn't look this good in Chinese or Indonesian. One of the closest places that is described well in Indonesian is Gibraltar...
Vietnam presentation for intercultural communications class
Westminster Business Forum on Tourism in the UK - Open for Tourism
1. Open for Tourism
Westminster
English Content
Wikipedia &
Openstreetmap
Competiveness
2. Open for Tourism
●
QRpedia codes are
safer than QR codes
●
Collaboration is
freely licensed
●
They are compatible
with NFC (oyster)
technology
●
500 articles on Gib
3. Open for Tourism
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>450 m. users
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>20 m. articles
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100,000 editors
●
#5 Website
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Multi Lingual
●
Legacy &
Commerce
4. Open for Tourism
●
QRpedia joins 2
worlds
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Monmouth is
better than
London
●
Monmouth exists
in Hungary
●
Community help
5. Open for Tourism
●
550 articles
●
£2m (equiv)
media attention
●
Dozens of
volunteers
●
10,000 people
involved
●
No apps!
Open for Tourism. Here I mean “Open” as in “open data” as well as in welcome. Why are we concentrating on falling budgets when the UK has been given such an advantage with our cultural heritage. This is a free resource which we can use. The picture at top right shows Westminster as it appears in the virtual world. This is the information available to anyone looking around for where to visit. The map shows an area of Westminster as it would be viewed in English by anyone. Its a rich picture. Every building is shown and large items like statues. This is a free map created by volunteers. Each of the red marks shows that a Wikipedia article is available. It looks brilliant. Its one of the best described areas of the UK. IT doesn't look this good in Chinese or Indonesian. One of the closest places that is described well in Indonesian is Gibraltar...
Look at what we are doing to Gibraltar. If you look at the map then you can see where the history lies. This isnt a distortion of how Gibraltar appears to the world …. this is how the world sees you on the internet. And if you visit Gibraltar next year then there will be information points that enable you to download this to your smartphone via Qrpedia codes. The Qrpedia codes are useful but the permanent changes are to Google maps that use Open data. The data permits augmented reality and technologies that have not been concieved yet to feature Gibraltar in more detail. Many internet applications feed on open data. Is your data free? Or is it copyright? Wikipedia wants you to share your data with the world. Why do tourist destinations keep their information under copyright? Volunteers have written 500 new articles on subjects in and around Gibraltar in over a dozen languages. We needed to release thousands of images.
Wikipedia is vast and #5 website. Do you have problems getting people to view your tourist information? Do you complain that no one uses the expensive app you funded or do you record the hits on Wikipedia? Monmouthshire County Council decided to use Wikipedia and its own community. It allowed QRpedia codes to be placed on their buildings. But it also re-learnt about copyright. It allowed many old images to be ambassadors. The council allows anyone to edit the information on its website. 200 businesses, half a dozen universities, ministers, councillors and more importantly the community did this. They understand what Monmouth can be. Everyone knows they don't have a railway station or a conference centre, but they know why a leading conference on digital tourism is comping to Monmouth next year.
This is where our help came from. Monmouth is described in as much detail as Westminster in English. It is described much better in Hungarian than Westminster … and most towns in Hungary! This was done by the local community joining together with volunteers around the world. The map shows where they live although the editors in Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Korea are outside the range of this map.
Monmouthpedia had 550 articles and it was reported about in over 300 major media outlets. 10,000 people were involved, hundreds of businesses. We want to do the same for Wales, and the UK, and the world. Wikipedia dreams of sharing all the information with all the people. Monmouthpedia helps with that idea. The angel is from a cartoon that was created for Monmouth by a Taiwan TV company. We had help with adding sub-ttles to other videos from Canada. This was possible because we weren't using the “standards” created by IT companies. We used “open” standards and “open data”. Monmouth relicensed its expensive videos so they could be used in education around the world and in return they received useful digital resources and volunteer assistance.