Today i spent more than a few hours hunting for
@vodafoneliveguy - you can see my twitter feed on the day at
http://twitter.com/weblivz. This is a treasure hunt style contest where you need to
find the vodafone live guy who is constantly moving throughout the city. It is a really nice idea, something i read about a while back in
SmartMobs. You need to follow his updates via GPS, blog, twitter and more and try and guess where he is.
It was more than just winning the
laptop i was interested in. I wanted to participate in something like this - as well as livestream it as much as possible, armed with a PDA, a laptop with some web access and my feet (i wasn't in a car, nor considered paying for taxi's to travel around).
The MorningAt 9.10 AM after dropping my son off at school, i got the train into Glasgow and the game started. I was pretty determined to find him - but i wanted to see how i would use technology to do so.
I went to Queens Street and immediately headed to
Bothwell Street tracing the path from the old Herald offices opposite
Livingstone Tower at
Strathclyde Univeristy. I went to
Bothwell Street and after looking around, figured he had went into the centre of town. So then i checked into
Borders to fire up the laptop and check his map.... it said he was in Bothwell Street, but much further up. So back i headed and outside central approached a
rather worried looking chap dressed in red and put my hand out to shake it. Perhaps he was a tourist thinking were were always thing friendly, but nevertheless he just kind of looked at me as I realized this was not my man. I felt pretty stupid, but onwards i went.
I was then at Bothwell Street and despite me being roughly where he was for about 15 minutes before anyone else turned up (i could tell the instant a challenger arrived, just outside
Weatherspoons on Bothwell Street) and despite the
picture of the car park, i just couldn't locate him.
I tried to think of where he could head... the
Clyde was my thought - a fairly major part of Glasgow. So i walked down that way, only to discover he had been found. Fek... and i think it was the guy who ran past me who found him (i'd love to hear that story too!).
I was beaten but not out and the day was young. I
recorded a video on my mobile where i talk about the fact he started at
Colville Building of Strathclyde University (which is where the Headquarters are in detective series
Taggart) and how he was at the Livingstone Tower, named after David Livingstone.
The AfternoonAs i sat in
St Enoch (suggested by my wife), i read that he was at the
Sas Raddison and spent 15 mins there before realizing i was never going to find him. I then read he had to moved into MY backyard - the
West End! On the
underground to Hillhead - guessing he would go to
Glasgow University and the
Hunterian Museum, only to find he was going to
Kelvingrove.
So i walked pretty quickly to the museum and figured i'd go in the back way and surprise him. But as i went round the corner, what do i see? A big red jacket and a bunch of people around him. I approached to congratulate the winner(s) only to find none of them knew the phrase. I immediately said "You're the LiveGuy and I'm a Vodafone Winner" and sure enough, the prize was mine.
It turns out
Jon Sykes, a lecturer at
Glasgow Caladonian University had taxied
two lots of students to Kelvingrove, but none of them knew the crucial phrase. So i was either lucky, or had studied harder! Put it this way, it wasn't exactly
Maradona handball in the box - more like that
second goal ;)
I had a nice chat with
liveguy and friend for a while telling them of my day and the close misses and they went their way and i went mine. I
recorded a video just after i had spoken with them.
I then went into the
BeanScene cafe opposite the Galleries and relaxed for an hour or so, checked from mail, read some papers.
There's MoreI do some work for
Conscia and sometimes use their desks. Now, yesterday i had told them of the game and figured they had just ignored me - especially as i had heard nothing from any of them all day. Well, turns out they had been keeping tabs on the live guy.
I walked into the office and said "Yes, I won" only to be told, "Yes, so did Chris". Now, i assumed this to be a wind up, but it turns out that @vodafoneliveguy had left his GPS on and he made his way into town and stopped around the corner from the offices. About 10 of them apparently ran out in various directions and the first guy (Mark) didn't know the phrase either - "Can I have the laptop please" is apparently what he said. In fact the one that did (Chris) had made a call back to someone else (Dominic) in the office who told him what it was.
To end it, one of the guys (Jim) had went to the bank which is nearby where this all happened and came out only to see much of this going on. He had been there the whole time and despite HIM being the one i initially told AND HIM being the one that reminded everyone else this morning after i had told them yesterday, he had temporarily let his guard down. Otherwise he would be a happy owner of a new laptop.
Update: Apparently Mark had an iPhone with GPS tracking on it and could literally watch them drive into town, stop and emerge from the offices they had been in - with lots of people following him as they knew this! The only problem was he didn't know the winning phrase and Chris jumped in (ouch!).What a mad day. Feet are sore, but happy that i won a laptop and even happier that i was part of all this, especially as by the time it hits London he's need to wear a disguise.
So i guess the moral to all of this is that social networking works - but only when you know a bit about the detail. Deeplinking is cool even in a social sense so long as you read what's at the end of that link.
