Join Shelton Johnson and others who hope to inspire urban youth to have an interest in the national parks and experiencing the outdoors, by contributing to the production of a feature-length documentary about the first African-American expedition to tackle North America’s highest peak at Denali National Park. Please click the link at the end of this video to contribute now.
Tag Archive for the 'National Parks' Tag
Five New Mobile Apps Premiere During National Park Week
In honor of National Park Week (Apr. 22 – 26), Chimani – a leader developing national park mobile applications – will release a new park app each day of the week.The new Chimani mobile apps include Grand Teton National Park, Glacier National Park, Olympic National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and Bryce Canyon National Park. These, as well as all other Chimani apps, will be available for FREE on Apple iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon AppStore starting Monday, April 22 – the first day of National Park Week.
Each app delivers constantly updated content, detailed maps, ranger-led event schedules, auto touring points of interest, hiking details, restroom locations, free shuttle bus schedules, and breaking news alerts. Users can also view sunset and sunrise times for the most memorable scenic overlooks, access tide schedules along the coast, review lodging options, and much, much more. And, each Chimani app is designed to work without a cell phone signal.
Chimani’s new Viewport tool – an augmented reality viewer – available as a $1.99 in-app purchase – allows users to pan around scenic outlooks and identify points of interest that are often left undiscovered. Because cell phone signals are poor and non-existent in most national parks, Chimani apps are designed to function without any type of data connection. This also applies to the new Chimani augmented reality viewer.
New to Chimani are topographic maps based on data from Openstreetmaps.org, which allows Chimani to produce rich topographic maps that are updated monthly with the most recent data available. Chimani users are also able to actively contribute to the national park community and help build better geo-spatial data for each of the parks. Kerry Gallivan, co-founder of Chimani said, “An example of this is Openstreetmaps.org’s user “Tomthepom” who spent winter meticulously editing park data within Grand Canyon making the data found within the Chimani maps the most detailed and up-to-date available anywhere - digital or print.” Kerry added that “Many visitors don’t realize how often trail data changes, so having access to the latest details helps enhance the park experience.”
For the Android versions of the apps, Chimani has introduced a beta feature of a social-sharing tool that uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to connect with other Chimani users and share contact information. “We modeled this after the tradition on the Appalachian Trail of hikers exchanging something with people they meet along the trail,” said Gallivan. By touching two Android phones together, the users profile is exchanged using NFC. No cell phone signal is required and when the exchange occurs within a particular park, a unique badge is unlocked between users as a bonus.
Chimani now offers a suite apps from 14 of the most visited national parks in the United States, including: Acadia National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cape Cod National Seashore, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Olympic National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park and its National Parks app - which is a virtual passport tool for all National Park Service units.
Each of the national park apps deliver constantly updated content, ranger-led event schedules, auto touring points of interest, hiking details, restroom locations, free shuttle bus schedules, and breaking news alerts. Users can also view sunset and sunrise times for the most memorable scenic overlooks, access tide schedules along the coast, review lodging options, and more.
The Chimani apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Amazon Kindle and Android devices. They can be downloaded directly fromApple’s iTunes App Store, Google Play and Amazon AppStore (keyword: “chimani”). Founded in 2010, Chimani apps have totaled over 450,000 downloads and rank #1 in each of the major app marketplaces for individual parks. For more information visit http://www.chimani.com or view the app demo filmed in the Grand Canyon National Park: https://vimeo.com/58183356
Black Hiker
Click the following link to see Blair Underwood’s uproarious take on the plight of the black hiker in the outdoors.
Children and the Vacation Decision
Over Thanksgiving dinner, a public television travelog producer was discussing with family members where they planned to take their next vacation. His sister, who has taken her family to many resort destinations in the past, said she was considering a Disney Cruise. He asked if she’d ever taken the kids to a national park. She hadn’t and wasn’t considering visiting the parks. He was surprised and disappointed, and related the following.
His sister didn’t consider national parks as places her family would vacation, based on these factors:
1) Children greatly influence where the family vacations, today. They see advertising on national television programs that depict certain family vacations as filled with enticiing and fun activities for children and the entire family, but they never see commercials about the national parks. So, when parents ask kids where they would you like to go on vacation… the kids respond with places familiar to them or those they’ve seen on TV.
2) Working moms and dads want to relax on vacation. It’s their time to kick back and they’re not sure they can do that on a national park vacation.
3) National parks are a total unknown to today’s parents. Many have never visited the parks or have faint memories of them from visiting in their youth. They don’t know what they’d do on vacation in a national park, where they’re located, how to get there or why they should go. When they are considering where to vacation, they only think of places they can imagine themselves visiting and enjoying.
As my friend in public television cautioned, ocean conservationist Jacques Cousteau said, “People will only preserve that they love.” If today’s Americans have little interest or experience in visiting national parks today, will they fight to preserve them in the future?
The National Park Service and National Park Foundation, with the assistance of GREY are developing a million dollar promotional campaign. It begins with market research to better understand domestic visitation and opportunities to expand it. A $500,000 social media campaign follows, but far more promotion is needed to change family travel patterns. AdAge reports Disney spends “$124 million on measured media for its parks and resorts businesses.” That’s what the national parks are up against for share of voice.
Innovative means of funding a competitive advertising effort must be considered, or we risk failing to connect this millennium’s generation to the parks.
American Dreams
A creative videographer gets to the heart of the relevance of national parks to American youth in this video.
The Mountain Doesn’t Care If You’re Black
To inspire youth of color—and particularly African American youth—to get outside, get active, and become stewards of our wild places, the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) will run an expedition with African American participants who will attempt to summit Denali, the highest peak in North America, in June, 2013, the 100th anniversary of the first ascent of the peak. This journey will involve a group of role models in the African American outdoor community learning and using valuable leadership skills, including expedition behavior, communication, and tolerance for adversity and uncertainty, to work together toward achieving a common goal.
As one participant says in the following preview video, “The mountain doesn’t care if you’re Black,” but the example set by these black mountaineers could inspire a new generation to care about the outdoors. See more by playing this video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYSByxcCSFE&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
NPS Picks Famous & Effective GREY
GREY, a marketing and advertising agency known for its “famous and effective” campaigns, has been selected by the Centennial Committee – comprised of members of the National Park Foundation Board along with National Park Service leadership and members of the National Park System Advisory Board — to design the national centennial campaign.
Since its inception in 1917, GREY has been behind numerous campaigns representing a wide range of clients, including the NFL, E*Trade, P&G, DirecTV, and the TED conference. Here’s more about what GREY has done for its clients…
[youtube]httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB4q5RXH0Xc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
