To strengthen connections between citizens and local government through a weekly podcast and follow-up roundtable, in which government representatives and millennials engage on local issues.
Program Area: Community Impact
Knight Foundation has made significant investments in vibrant public spaces and places that can bring people in communities together. So it was hard not to take notice last summer when image and after image popped up on our Twitter feeds showing crowds of people—around the world—swarming public places at all hours. As we quickly learned, they were playing Pokémon GO, a location-based, augmented-reality game made by the Silicon Valley firm Niantic, Inc.
The premise of the game is simple—find and catch as many Pokémon (cute, cartoonish creatures) as you can. But the technology underneath may presage an important new phase of our digital future.
The game is location-based in that its features correspond to real places. If your phone tells you there’s a Pokémon lurking at the corner of 1st and Main Streets, then that’s where you must physically travel to catch him. And it’s “augmented reality” in that, when you approach 1st and Main, your phone will show a live, real-time image of the street corner and then layer in a graphically-generated Pokémon.
Our founders, Jack and Jim Knight, embraced technology in their newspaper business. They recognized that openness to new technology was critical to building and a sustaining a thriving and resilient business. It’s clear in our turbulent, rapidly changing present that technology will remake our world and our communities—whether we’re ready or not.
We try to embrace that same openness at the Knight Foundation of today, and it led us to partner with Niantic to jointly explore the ways in which technology like Pokémon GO might enliven and engage public life in our communities.
This is no small matter. Concern over what many believe is our modern addiction to screens, large and small, is pervasive. And any parent watching his or her child focused on a phone, tablet or computer screen may rightfully wonder if technology too easily pulls us away from the physical world.
But last summer, Pokémon GO showed us that the opposite could be true as well. That innovative technology could yank us out of our homes, and that staring at our mobile phone screen might be a new way to see and interact with the physical world and with each other.
We don’t know, but we believe that in embracing change, we might get a glimpse of how to build cities and communities of the future that are even more active and engaging than today.
Our plan in this partnership is to learn. This year, Knight Foundation and Niantic will work together to explore how Pokémon GO can bring more people, more energy and more excitement to great public places in some of the 26 communities where Knight Foundation invests. We’ll start next week in Charlotte at the OpenStreets704 event, which will shut down about three miles of road to traffic. Niantic will arrange in-game elements to help draw people to interesting places and sights, and will throw in some fun gear and other incentives.
Neither of us knows exactly where this partnership will lead us, but we hope that, together, we’ll learn something about the power—and limits—of technology to support more engaged communities.
Sam Gill is vice president for learning and impact at Knight Foundation. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @thesamgill.
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Community Impact / Article
May 4, 2017 — MIAMI — Niantic Inc., creators of hit augmented reality games Pokémon GO and Ingress, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation have formed a multiyear partnership to advance civic engagement in local communities around the United States through augmented reality experiences. The partnership will foster discovery, bring communities together and promote engagement within public spaces by leveraging Niantic’s mobile location-based technology and experiences at select community events supported by Knight Foundation.
“We founded Niantic to give people the chance to connect with the world around them using technology and games in innovative ways,” said John Hanke, CEO of Niantic. “The partnership with Knight Foundation is a great forum to explore how technology can drive civic engagement.”
The collaboration will play out at community events in several cities, including Knight-sponsored Open Streets events. These temporarily close the streets to traffic so people can use them for walking, bicycling, dancing, playing and socializing. The initiative will also tap unique facets of a city’s public spaces such as parks and libraries to bring together people of diverse backgrounds and build a sense of shared community. Over the next year, Niantic will collaborate with civic leaders in several cities where Knight Foundation supports community engagement. The initiative will work to enhance these events featuring special content within its augmented reality mobile games, Ingress and Pokémon GO.
“Pokémon Go has already showed us the impact technology can have on getting people out into public,” said Sam Gill, Knight vice president for learning and impact. “We’re excited to work with Niantic to explore new ways to help people engage with each other and their neighborhoods.”
The first event in the collaboration between Niantic and Knight Foundation will be May 7 in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of the Open Streets 704 event. Though this first event will be experimental, fans of Pokémon GO can look forward to interacting with 16 PokéStops and two Gyms selected by the city of Charlotte at significant sites along the route. These locations will be highlighted on the official Open Streets 704 route map displayed at the event. To further immerse fans in the real-world experience, the physical location of each PokéStop will be physically marked along the route.
About Niantic, Inc.:
Niantic, Inc. builds mobile real-world experiences that foster fun, exploration, discovery and social interaction. Originally incubated within Google, Niantic, Inc., spun off in 2015, with investments from Google, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo. The company’s immersive real-world mobile game Ingress has been downloaded more than 20 million times and is played in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. Niantic, Inc., also developed and published Pokémon GO, the real-world Pokémon game for iOS and Android mobile devices that has been downloaded more than 650 million times. For more information on Niantic, please visit www.nianticlabs.com.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation:
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
Contact:
Anusha Alikhan, Communications Director, Knight Foundation, [email protected], 305-908-2677.