At Applications for Good we are proud to support other agencies as they help people thrive in diverse circumstances of life. We understand that media plays a vital role informing, inspiring and educating people to make positive change. To this end we co-authored a Challenge Brief withCenter for Asian American Media to develop a mobile engagement app that will accompany their upcoming film festival. And now the app is getting built. “It has been an exciting experience to work with CAAM to develop a mobile application that facilitates community outreach and engagement”, claimed Julien Bassan from ShivaMedia. Here’s to hoping excitement leads to engagement.
The iOS, Android native and webapp will engage users with both the media they are watching at the festival and with the issues underlying the subject matter. Features of the app include live poling, action and activity links, social sharing and follow up engagement through push. The application is being produced with Shivamedia and the staff at CAAM.
Applications for Good, CAAM and ShivaMedia are working together to create skinned, portable versions of the app for other engagements. Our goal is to create a template app that will be useful across multiple festivals and for a variety of outcomes. An app like this could be used to engage specific niche audiences like those who resonate with the SFIAAFF opening film White Frog. In the film Nick, who lives with Asperger’s syndrome, struggles to survive his family’s neglect and misunderstanding. We believe an app like ours will help those in similar situations to access and act upon vital information long after the film festival is over. We see the app being versatile so that webisodic shows like Urban Organic on our Public Internet Channel that shows viewers tips on growing their own food or a film feature like Bang Bang that focuses in on gang violence and immigrant culture, would each be able to use the app in their own way to get the word out about issues underlying the subject matter.
Join us as we look forward to the March festival launch of this next generation of civic engagement.