Growing from hundreds of visitors to fifteen thousand visitors has brought logistical challenges for Slush – Which is now one of the biggest startup events in Europe.
Slush size and complexity has grown over the years, and the thousands of visitors communicated that there’s a need for navigation help at the event. Last year, a new approach was tried – and rather than just increasing personnel and info desks, Slush chose a mobile app with indoor maps, positioning and routing as the key source of information to visitors.
Now Finnish Nimble Devices, a startup providing Steerpath – an indoor positioning, mapping and navigation solution for mobile applications – takes care for the second time that the Slush visitors find the right stages, demo stands and restaurants really easily at Finland’s biggest exhibition space Messukeskus.
Steerpath is the only indoor positioning solution which can be deployed without onsite calibrations and that provides automated map creation from existing digital building models. To enable navigation available for anyone in all environments, the technology doesn’t require internet connection or Wi-Fi.
By using the service, the CAD plans for the spaces and exhibitor locations can be directly used in the mobile application. This means that data is still centrally managed in the CAD and when an exhibitor’s location is changed in the CAD, regenerating the information for the mobile maps is an automated process.
“Slush is a great example how indoor positioning cannot rely on time consuming calibrations, uninterrupted internet connectivity or static maps. Scaling indoor positioning as well as navigation so it will be available to everyone everywhere requires overcoming those stumbling blocks and this is exactly what we are happy to demonstrate at Slush,” says Tuomas Ilola, the co-founder of Nimble Devices.
While Steerpath is this time used for navigating at a two-day event, usually the company goes for long-term projects. The company founded in 2013 has their GeoFenced beacon network used at Grand Central Terminal in New York – which is actually the train station with most platforms in the world.
Nimble Devices also works in close cooperation with Messukeskus where it allows visitors to easily locate exhibitors while at a fair as well as receive promotions from the stands close to you. Steerpath’s indoor positioning at the space makes it possible to not just show where the exhibitor is – but to show the user where they are and the route that they can take to the exhibitor.
As now it’s possible to locate yourself at the event and find your path there – What would you say if all participants could see in future events where you’re located at the venue?
