A Festival-Wide Social Network Using 2D Barcodes, Mobile Phones and Situated Displays

This paper reports on the authors’ experiences with an exploratory prototype festival-wide social network. Unique 2D barcodes were applied to wristbands and mobile phones to uniquely identify the festival participants at the CO2PENHAGEN music festival in Denmark. The authors describe experiences from initial use of a set of social network applications involving participant profiles, a microblog and images shared on situated displays, and competitions created for the festival. The pilot study included 73 participants, each creating a unique profile. The novel approach had potential to enable anyone at the festival to participate in the festival-wide social network, as participants did not need any special hardware or mobile client application to be involved. The 2D barcodes was found to be a feasible lowcost approach for unique participant identification and social network interaction. Implications for the design of future systems of this nature are discussed. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2068-1.ch011