This year if you go to the Australian Open there are a few new things you can do for the first time. The first is you can connect to free, fast wifi at Rod Laver arena so you can Tweet, Instagram and Facebook with ease.
And the second is the ability to interact with CrowdTracker. Content from social media and smart phones will be collected and actually affect in live time what is happening at the venue. The information will be used to improve attending the matches for the crowds. It is also a platform which is collecting live match data which can be viewed along with social media streams.
For example if CrowdTracker sees there are extremely long queues at one of the entrances, they can respond by opening additional gates. Or if there is a buzz on Twitter around a match and there are going to be more people attending than expected more resources can be sent to support the crowds.
Once the additional staff or resources have been deployed the Australian Open will use social media to alert people so they can use the newly opened gates or merchandising queues.
If you are interested in checking out the live match data on CrowdTracker, visit the Australian Open website here. There are also several articles online about how technology is changing the way we attend the matches. For additional information about how the platform is being used, read the article published by iTWire here.
Don’t forget there is an app for everything. This year’s app can be found on iTunes here or for Android here.
And perhaps the most exciting technology development of them all at 2015’s first Grand Slam tournament was Rafael Nadal’s “smart” tennis racquet. It records absolutely everything related to Raffa’s tennis technique for later download and detailed review.
If only it could teach you how to serve, then they really would be on to a winner.
Game, set, match. Thank you linesmen, thank you ball boys.
Best,
David Bower
CEO
Neo Technologies
thefuture@neotechnologies.com.au
