Public spaces are undergoing transformations as we navigate new rules and guidelines for social interaction. Lighting design reinvigorates places and brings them to life. Murals or large building surfaces can be transformed into glowing dreamlike creations when they would otherwise be obscured in shadow. Architectural lighting revitalizes our neighborhoods to support vibrant urban life, creates a sense of security and safety, and attracts new economic activity.
Groups like the Project for Public Spaces have valuable information on the best ways to move forward with engaging community spaces in this time of transition. In our recent Experiential Design Playbook: Solutions for Engagement During COVID-19 & Beyond, Alt Ethos outlines a number of inspirational designs for public spaces that bring joy and engagement to our communities in creative and safe ways. Via projection mapping, LED wash lighting, and no-touch interactive displays – an entire public square can be activated. Whether we are gathering six feet apart in a public square, or passing through our usual main street now filled with outdoor public seating options — an experience can be illuminated with creative lighting design in simple and impactful ways.
When people are venturing out with their families this summer, they will be on the hunt for engaging experiences, community events, and comfortable interactions that will give a much-needed lift to their spirits. Seeing their favorite public places brought to life with light would be a great way to do just that. Through public installations and interactive experiences, such as the Illuminous interactive projection-mapped mural in Fort Collins, CO, our communities can be welcomed back to shopping and spending time in public spaces with fresh, inspired eyes.
We encourage downtown development authorities and businesses to convert public spaces into interactive art using projectors, lighting effects, and sensors. These placemaking initiatives not only offer free public access to an immersive, child- and pet-friendly experience, but are proven to stimulate greater economic activity.
Alt Ethos, in partnership with Reactiv.io, recently illuminated Denver’s iconic brick mansion by the Downtown Aquarium and I-25. Together, Alt Ethos and Reactiv are creating experiential designs in Denver to inspire connection. Future immersive collaboration includes the Tennyson Street / Berkeley area – one of Denver’s most historic neighborhoods with private immersive themed bungalow experiences.
Architectural lighting in conjunction with an urban revitalization plan acts as a vehicle that reconnects people with a sense of place to emphasize the true strengths of a community. In 1989, the city of Lyon, France, introduced one of the earliest holistic lighting master plans to revitalize the dense historic core of the city. The origins of the festival date to 1643 when Lyon was struck by the plague. Today, Lyon is known as the “capital of light,” hosting the largest festival dedicated solely to illumination, the Fête des lumières, in part commemorating the day Lyon was consecrated to the Virgin Mary. The 2019 festival attracted 1.8 million visitors over 4 days.
Urban design has taken on a new level of importance to keep the residents of urban areas feeling safe. Alt Ethos works in collaboration with city planners and corporations to commit to the health and vitality of its community. Contact us to set up a complimentary consultation on how your downtown shopping area, municipal buildings, or public park can be activated with light.
To all of you, we at Alt Ethos have been working hard to innovate solutions for this changing time. Communities and organizations around the world are at a high level of confusion, overwhelm, and disconnection. Like you, we had our times of frustration as we navigated the rough waters of the unknown. We also saw it as an opportunity.
Our communities are starting to come out of stay at home orders around the globe. How shall we experience community spaces and not end up on national news like the Memorial Day waterpark parties? Watching these gatherings can make you feel unhinged and afraid to engage. In this desire to re-open and reconnect with our constituents, we intend on providing flexible solutions that retain ROI if and when another wave of shutdown orders occurs.
That is why Alt Ethos has been doing research and design since the closing of the first major international event in the United States, SXSW.
During this crisis, that feeling of isolation can make everyone feel disconnected. If municipalities and corporations can’t find a way to safely connect with their constituents, they miss the chance to provide support and a sense of well-being.
Now is the time to step up and activate your communities and create the future of placemaking, entertainment, and advertising. A culture that is resilient, fun, and provides an opportunity for connection. It is our destiny as humans to create new solutions, visions, and activations to reinvigorate the next steps in social healing. It is the responsibility of our cities, our libraries, our public art, and our local businesses to reconnect with our communities.
Your contribution to the recovery of this crisis is going to be massive. You are creating the future of community building and entertainment. We know we are a small percentage of the population that imagines the future even in the time of a world crisis. We are looking for you to create, to connect, and to activate new solutions.
Get started by downloading our new Experiential Design Playbook. First, to get an idea of what is possible and mutable in uncertain times. Second, to increase the support your constituents feel connecting a greater bond to your city or your brand. Create activations that make your message easier to hear, simultaneously inspiring engagement and making a contribution to your community.
Learn all about our COVID re-entry experiential design solutions:
Due to the global health pandemic, the landscape of the events industry is changing.
Countless in-person events – SXSW, the 74th Annual Tony Awards, and the Cannes International Film Festival, to name just a few – have been canceled or postponed in the past few months.
Meanwhile, other events like the REV’d Up Media Summit, Burning Man festival, F8 (Facebook’s live annual event), and Microsoft’s Build annual event will carry on. How?
They’re going virtual.
ALT ETHOS AND VIRTUAL EVENTS
Today’s technology makes it possible to host full-scale events 100% online, keeping companies and organizations connected to their employees, clients, and customers even in times of crisis. Alt Ethos is leading the way for our clients by offering a wide range of engaging virtual event solutions for online conferences, events, and more that can be customized to fit any business’ needs.
Alt Ethos offers the best online streaming tools available, but we don’t stop there. We want our clients to be able to continue fully serving their employees and customers in creative and interactive ways that are memorable and meaningful. No matter what the event needs, Alt Ethos has a solution.
Check out four ways we help companies and organizations stay connected with their employees and clients.
Alt Ethos has an all-in-one solution for your events that bring conference and convention content straight to people’s homes. With the capacity to live stream keynote presentations with simultaneous break out sessions, our client’s event attendees can experience the full range of conference offerings.
We bring the face-to-face impact of conferences into a single company experience through video conference calling for small groups, virtual parties and shows with live VJs and performers, and virtual tours.
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE SOLUTIONS
Alt Ethos takes care of everything. Our real-time professional streaming service accommodates everything from small private breakout group streaming and keynote events with thousands of viewers.” Plus we either send our cinematographer to our clients with 4k streaming or work with their cinematographer and remotely manage the event. We also offer custom takeaways and conference experiences mailed to the guest’s door.
VIRTUAL WORLD TOURS AND EVENTS
Need something a little more creative? Our virtual world tours and events are fun, unique experiences people remember long after they’re done. We offer the following virtual experiences:
Second Life Tours
Second Life is one of the longest-running virtual world environments of all. From museum tours to themed destination tours, attendees can experience space exploration, natural disasters, dance clubs, Irish folklore, skill gaming, and more. The possibilities are endless!
Custom Virtual Experiences
We also offer customizable Virtual World experiences, where our designers create custom virtual environments for private events of up to 100 guests. This allows our clients to recreate their office, venue, or creative destination in 3D and throw events virtually.
We also create private virtual environments for highest-quality customizable experiences that include a streaming video input, voice and text chat among participants, and customizable avatars. These experiences are great for co-working and team projects.
Alt Ethos custom experiential virtual design is a great addition to any virtual party. Create a truly unique virtual experience that your group will keep talking about afterward.
VIRTUAL MEETINGS
Host meetings while sticking to social distancing guidelines with our Virtual Meeting experience. We create branded meeting environments, complete with logos and banners and the ability to cast video, images, or presentations on-screen. These experiences provide that in-person feel and can be attended with or without virtual reality headsets.
EXPERTS IN STREAMING AND VR
Alt Ethos is an experiential design studio creating meaningful moments for communities. The environments, installations, and objects we are designing for a rapidly growing clientele use light, sound, and technology to transform the everyday experience and promote creativity and well-being.
Alt Ethos brings years of steaming expertise to the table, and our virtual environments and experiential design for shared experiences create connection and engagement. Have us customize a virtual environment specific for your business or event, or join us in Alt Ethos’ virtual studio and event space.
Learn More About Alt Ethos
Want to create your own unique and memorable virtual conference or workshop experience but not sure where to start? We can help! Visit our website to learn more, or schedule a call to talk with our experts about your virtual event needs.
Here at Alt Ethos we thrive on finding creative and innovative ways to solve problems and help our community. The COVID-19 world crisis is no different. “We watched everything unfold as businesses were closed and friends and colleagues lost their jobs,” Ethan Bach says. “We wanted to help.”
We are using our powerful computer to run protein simulations of the COVID-19 virus to help understand how they function, providing new opportunities to develop a cure. Using the distributed computing project Folding@home, our computers now join thousands of other computers around the world to create a supercomputer. You can read the latest Westworld Article on this project here: Denver Design Company Alt Ethos Aids COVID-19 Research.
Stay up to date with the Folding@home progress on our social media: Facebook, Instagram, & LinkedIn.
Since coronavirus was declared a pandemic, the phrase “Just another day at the office” has taken on a whole new meaning. When nationwide social distancing was put into place, millions of face-to-face events and meetings were canceled or postponed.
Thankfully, video conferencing makes it possible to stay connected in work and in life without risking the health of yourself or others. Make virtual conferencing a breeze for your audience with Alt Ethos’ 8 things you can do in advance that will make the transition to virtual conferencing easier.
1. Choose a Platform
There are a number of video conferencing applications out there, and not all are created equal. FaceTime and Messenger are great for chatting person-to-person, but when it comes to virtual events and conferences, you will need more capabilities and features. Consider the following when choosing which platform to use:
How many people will be in the meeting?
Is it an interactive meeting or more one-sided?
Will you need screen share capabilities or other multimedia features?
What are your tech needs in terms of sound and lighting?
2. Set Expectations Ahead of Time
Have you ever walked into an event or meeting expecting one thing and come out having experienced something entirely different? That can easily happen with video conferences too, and it’s not an experience you want to give your attendees. Set the tone for smooth interactions online before attendees sign up by clearly outlining:
Which platform the event or meeting will be held. Is there a capacity limit or deadline for signing up?
What their role in the virtual conference will be. Is it an interactive session where they’ll need to be ready to provide feedback and commentary?
What level of engagement you expect from them. Will they need to show up with video on, or is audio only okay?
3. Create a Workable Agenda
Because everything is virtual, it’s tempting to think you can pack more in a short window of time. Resist the urge, says Jeff Cobb of Leading Learning in his article “12 Tips for a Successful Virtual Conference”.
“The brain can only absorb what the butt can endure. Shorter is often better for sessions. And don’t forget to build in breaks—attendees will appreciate 15 minutes to check voicemail and e-mail and address other needs. Even in the virtual world, people have to go to the bathroom.”
4. Prep Your Attendees
Once your attendees have signed up, you’ll need to let them know some basic information about the virtual sessions. what you’ll be discussing, who will be there, and what they can do ahead of time to be ready for the meeting. Send out an email with a basic outline of the virtual session. Don’t forget to tell them if there’s anything they’ll want to have on hand to help them get the most out of the session, like a notebook and pen.
5. Be Available to Answer Questions
Virtual conferencing is going to be a new experience for some. The more education and answers you can provide BEFORE the conference call or virtual event starts, the less you’ll have to provide during the actual event.
“Folks will be more likely to pay—whether for a big-ticket sponsorship or a simple registration—if they can see for themselves what the virtual conference will be like,” said Cobb. Make a screen share video with step-by-step instructions on how to sign up for and install the video conference app you’ll be using, and plan to have extra tech support available to answer questions. Designate a specific email, messenger chatbot, or phone line for questions.
6. Do a Trial Run
If you have staff, speakers, or sponsors who will also be involved in the online event, spend time before the event putting resources in place so they feel comfortable and ready to do their part when the time comes.
Consider giving speakers and sponsors a free pass to test out the platform ahead of time, and don’t be afraid to do a trial run or two. You can’t always troubleshoot issues if you don’t know what issues to look for. A trial run will give you a chance to identify any bumps that need to be smoothed over.
The more prepared your staff is, the less stressed you’ll be. Run some contingency plans for customer service issues and create clear guidelines for how staff can help with things like Q&As and breakout sessions.
7. Don’t Forget the Reminder
People are busy, so a virtual event is appealing for many reasons outside of the current health situation. No making travel plans, packing, hotels, or flights. For the attendees, not having to do all the physical planning and prep for an in-person event can make it easy to forget to show up. You’ll need to remind them.
There are several ways to remind your registered attendees. We recommend sending out email or text reminders. Cobb suggests sending reminders a week before, one day before, and the day of the event. You could also create an exclusive group on social media to hype the event. Only registered attendees can join, and you can drop video teasers, downloadable resources, Live video, and more to keep attendees engaged and excited.
No matter how you choose to keep the virtual event top of mind for your attendees, always make sure to include all the pertinent information about how to access the conference and where to go for help.
8. Outline Virtual Etiquette Guidelines
Once you have everyone live in the session, you’ll want to set the tone. Virtual conferencing is a new world for a lot of people. Don’t assume everyone understands good etiquette when it comes to online meetings and events. Let them know how they can do things like:
Ask or send questions without interrupting
Stay engaged with the content
Respect other attendees and the speakers by muting their microphones when there’s background noise
Access supplemental content like side decks and PDF documents
Request help with technical issues
Enjoy Your Virtual Conferencing Event
The better prepared you are before your event, the more relaxed and engaged you can be during the event. These tips give you guidelines on things you can do ahead of time that will not only help you but your staff, speakers, sponsors, and attendees.
Learn More About Alt Ethos
Want to create your own unique and memorable virtual conference or workshop experience but not sure where to start? We can help! Visit us at www.altethos.com.
Groups like the Project for Public Spaces have valuable information on the best ways to move forward with engaging community spaces in this time of transition. In our recent Experiential Design Playbook: Solutions for Engagement During COVID-19 & Beyond, Alt Ethos outlines a number of inspirational designs for public spaces that bring joy and engagement to our communities in creative and safe ways. Via projection mapping, LED wash lighting, and no-touch interactive displays – an entire public square can be activated. Whether we are gathering six feet apart in a public square, or passing through our usual main street now filled with outdoor public seating options — an experience can be illuminated with creative lighting design in simple and impactful ways.
When people are venturing out with their families this summer, they will be on the hunt for engaging experiences, community events, and comfortable interactions that will give a much-needed lift to their spirits. Seeing their favorite public places brought to life with light would be a great way to do just that. Through public installations and interactive experiences, such as the Illuminous interactive projection-mapped mural in Fort Collins, CO, our communities can be welcomed back to shopping and spending time in public spaces with fresh, inspired eyes.
