AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

• RIC Centre is announcing their first Digital Main Street Community Collaboration Project, delivering augmented reality walking tours for the Streetsville Business Improvement Area (BIA) in Mississauga in time for the holiday season.
• Ready Set Go Design was selected as the technology partner for this project using the ImagineAR ™ augmented reality (AR) platform.
• Ready Set Go will create engaging, interactive experiences that combine educational stops at key heritage locations with fun and promotional activations from local businesses.
• The walking tours for Streetsville will be live by December 8th, 2020 with surprise visits from Santa for anyone who participates in the tour before December 24th .

VANCOUVER, BC and ERIE , Pa. , Nov. 23, 2020 – ImagineAR (CSE: IP) (OTCQB: IPNFF) an Augmented Reality Company that enables sports teams, brands and businesses to instantly create their own mobile phone AR campaigns, is excited the RIC Centre is announcing their first Digital Main Street Community Collaboration Project, delivering augmented reality walking tours for the Streetsville Business Improvement Area (BIA) in Mississauga in time for the holiday season. Ready Set Go Design was selected as the technology partner for this project using the ImagineAR ™ augmented reality (AR) platform.

Home to the largest concentration of historic buildings in Mississauga , Streetsville’s main street blends old world charm with its 300+ small businesses in a mix of heritage and modern buildings. In lieu of hosting large group walking tours which were cancelled due to COVID-19, this Community Collaboration Project will help Streetsville BIA offer self-guided, interactive tours for anyone using their smart phone or mobile device.

Ready Set Go will create engaging, interactive experiences that combine educational stops at key heritage locations with fun and promotional activations from local businesses. The walking tours for Streetsville will be live by December 8th, 2020 with surprise visits from Santa for anyone who participates in the tour before December 24th .

“On behalf of the local business community, we are delighted to bring a Virtual Santa to downtown Streetsville as part of the new ImagineAR heritage walking tours so families can safely get photos with Santa as part of their holiday celebrations. We are thankful for the generous support of Heritage Mississauga for providing historical images of Streetsville , video content, and fascinating stories of the Village’s rich history. We encourage residents and visitors to walk through and learn about our village during winter 2020/2021 when COVID-19 restrictions prevent us from hosting in-person events and walking tours,” Amber Pajtasz , General Manager of the Streetsville BIA stated.

Pam Banks , Executive Director of RIC Centre, stated that the RIC Centre is delighted to bring technology innovators like Ready Set Go and ImagineAR together with local BIAs to strengthen the capacity of local businesses to recover from COVID-19 and thrive.

“The goals for this DMS Community Collaboration project are to test consumer and business acceptance of augmented reality walking tours and their impact on the local economy.”

Mark Silver , President of Ready Set Go, stated that using the ImagineAR mobile AR platform is an ideal way for BIAs to help local retailers drive in-store and online revenue.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to lend our experience and expertise to this project to bring families back into their communities for unique and socially-distanced activities this winter.”

The ImagineAR mobile app is available for download on the App Store and Google Play. Signage will be posted at various locations along Queen Street South in Streetsville to let people know how to activate and join the tours. The interactive walking tours will be updated regularly with new business promotions and fun activities to encourage people to come back and enjoy the outdoors and main street businesses safely.

About RIC Centre

RIC Centre is a not-for-profit innovation hub and business incubator based in Brampton , serving the Peel Region and Southern Ontario . RIC Centre’s focus is to be a dynamic catalyst for tech companies. The team consists of more than 100 expert advisors, industry, academic and government partners. RIC Centre helps companies in Advanced Manufacturing, Internet of Things, Hardware & Software, Cleantech and Life Sciences to commercialize their products and get them to market faster.

About Digital Main Street

Digital Main Street (DMS) is a program that helps main street businesses achieve digital transformation. DMS, in partnership with FedDev Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, announced its new Future Proof Program on August 19, 2020 . With Future Proof, DMS aims to expand their support to help small businesses across Ontario recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and prepare for future economic storms. The Future Proof program is designed to have regions explore what is possible when we bring the innovation ecosystem together with main street businesses. It offers three streams of support: Transformation Teams, DMS Lab Projects and Community Collaboration Projects.

About Ready Set Go Design Inc.

Ready Set Go Design is a digital product design company founded in 2016 and based in Waterloo, Ontario . Their mission is to help drive customers’ business growth by designing products and services around their customers, informed by research, data and experimentation.

About ImagineAR

ImagineAR Inc ., with headquarters in Vancouver, BC (CSE: IP) (OTC: IPNFF) offers an augmented reality (AR) platform that enables businesses of any size to create and implement their own AR campaigns with no programming or technology experience. Using the ImagineAR mobile app, any organization, from professional sports franchises to small retailers, can develop interactive AR campaigns that blend the real and digital worlds.

About Streetsville BIA

The Streetsville BIA’s mission is to maintain and promote a vibrant business community within the historic Village of Streetsville dedicated to serving the needs of local businesses and residents. The Streetsville BIA is directed by a volunteer Board of Management who meets monthly to deal with a full range of agenda items that impact the heritage sites and businesses along Queen Street South from Britannia Rd W to Reid Drive in Mississauga .

All trademarks of the property of respective owners.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Alen Paul Silverrstieen
President & CEO
(818) 850-2490
https://twitter.com/IPtechAR
https://www.facebook.com/imaginationparktechnologies
https://www.instagram.com/iptechar
https://www.linkedin.com/company/imagination-park-technologies-inc

We encourage you to do your own due diligence and ask your broker if Imagine AR Inc. (cse: IP) is suitable for your particular investment portfolio*.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. This press release may include ‘forward-looking information’ within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business of the Company. The forward- looking information is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by ImagineAR management. Although Imagine AR believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward- looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because Imagine AR can give no assurance that it will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and Imagine AR disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

SPONSOR: Imagine AR Inc. (IP:CSE) (IPNFF:OTCQB) is an Augmented Reality platform that allows businesses to easily launch AR campaigns. Clients Include: NBA Sacramento Kings, Mall of America, AT&T Shape and The Basketball Hall of Fame. ImagineAR and NFL Alumni Academy recently signed a 5 year partnership agreement. In addition, the company signed a two-year agreement with Valencia C.F. of La Liga to provide interactive Augmented Reality experiences for almost 7 million fans around the world. Learn More.

AR isn’t just ‘exciting’, it’s practical

• Augmented reality might seem like a daunting new frontier for the average business, but adopting this new technology is a lot easier than it seems
• With an anticipated 3.8 billion smartphone users in 2021, more people are using mobile tech to experience the world, from enhanced museum tours to Animoji
• If you haven’t already considered it, AR can be a smart, practical form of smart marketing and branding.

by Alexis Ong

Augmented reality might seem like a daunting new frontier for the average business, but adopting this new technology is a lot easier than it seems. With an anticipated 3.8 billion smartphone users in 2021, more people are using mobile tech to experience the world, from enhanced museum tours to Animoji. If you haven’t already considered it, AR can be a smart, practical form of smart marketing and branding.

First, it’s important to distinguish between augmented reality and virtual reality. Virtual reality is an almost wholly-digital experience that requires special hardware to immerse yourself in a new environment. Augmented reality is a combination of the digital and physical worlds, where the former is often “layered” over the latter. If you’ve used custom Snapchat filters or played Pokemon Go, you’ve already tried AR without even realizing it. 

But the great thing about AR is that it doesn’t require buying new hardware. Virtual reality, while still an exciting new realm, isn’t as widely accessible as AR. For starters, you need pricey new gadgets to play around in VR, but anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can tap into a well-crafted AR experience. 

“The biggest benefit of AR is the simplicity with which you can build on top of the existing world that a user is already familiar with to teach them new things or show them new information that was previously unavailable,” says Gal Oppenheimer, who manages Contentstack’s Solutions Architecture Team. AR has, for instance, become a huge part of our daily reality, with Zoom virtual backgrounds helping people continue to meet and work collaboratively regardless of their environment. 

Speaking to Oppenheimer and Contentstack’s marketing director Varia Makagonova reveals that augmented reality is a particularly effective, forward-thinking strategy for companies in retail, museums/education, and home improvement; AR works best to convey important, relevant information to customers in a quick, intuitive way. Best of all, it’s surprisingly straightforward to implement, especially if you’re working with an experienced content management team. 

Great AR needs great content 

As a headless CMS, Contentstack leads the way in helping businesses create innovative content experiences. In 2020, blogs and websites are no longer the main avenues of brand communication – modern customer experiences can include everything from chatbots and apps to new types of streaming media. Contentstack helps you adapt to new technology quickly and seamlessly, no matter the platform. 

“When people look at AR, they only see the end experience,” says Oppenheimer. “And what people don’t realize is really there are two pieces to an AR experience. There’s the experience the consumer sees… and that is really just a 3D model, a color map, and a rendering library.” Then there’s the content, which can require just as much attention, depending on the scope of a company’s product lineup. This is where Contentstack comes into play. 

A great content platform needs to be streamlined and easy to use, especially if you’re going to be working with new channels and touchpoints like Augmented Reality applications. With the right tools, it’s easy to build a well-organized, flexible content library that can be used to power all kinds of content-rich experiences.   

And when it comes to retail, that often means making sure you can easily plug in personalization and e-commerce technologies into these experiences. As Oppenheimer points out, “it doesn’t matter if you have the biggest library of content available for your AR application to use. If the customer doesn’t see the one product that they are looking for to try on or learn more about, the app has not done its job for them.” 

Building and tending to a useful content experience doesn’t have to be painful, though. “We have customers that have well over 2 million products in their Contentstack,” Oppenheimer says. “And when they do a release, sometimes that’s 200 products going live the same day… being able to facilitate that process easily, and then making sure that content appears in the mobile application that has all the rich AR content at the end, that’s where we come in.”

Read More: https://thenextweb.com/augmented-reality/2020/10/28/ar-isnt-just-exciting-its-practical-heres-how-to-use-it-for-your-business/

• Announced that Andrew Beranbom has joined the Company as an Advisor to the CEO for the purpose of launching Immersive AR Engagement during Live Streaming Branded Music Concerts
• Mr. Beranbom is the CEO & Founder of First Tube Media with current clients including GrubHub, St. Jude’s Hospital and Tito’s Vodka
• ImagineAR believes Mr. Beranbom will significantly accelerate the Company’s presence and revenue in Live Streaming Branded Music Concerts.

VANCOUVER, BC and ERIE, Pa. , Oct. 26, 2020 – ImagineAR (CSE: IP) (OTCQB: IPNFF) an Augmented Reality Company that enables sports teams, brands and businesses to instantly create their own mobile phone AR campaigns, is pleased to announce that Andrew Beranbom has joined the Company as an Advisor to the CEO for the purpose of launching Immersive AR Engagement during Live Streaming Branded Music Concert s .  Mr. Beranbom is the CEO & Founder of First Tube Media with current clients including GrubHub, St. Jude’s Hospital and Tito’s Vodka.  ImagineAR believes Mr. Beranbom will significantly accelerate the Company’s presence and revenue in Live Streaming Branded Music Concerts.

Andrew Beranbom said; “ImagineAR is the most advanced AR platform in the market today and I am excited to have the opportunity to dig in deeper into their innovative capabilities and leverage the platform to bring next gen engagement experiences for brands.  With the explosion of livestream creation and consumer behavior it is an exciting time to think through the next phase of innovation around consumer engagement and how to bring in the 2 nd screen to live media experiences and create demonstrable ROI.

Since the pandemic started, First Tube Media has executed over 50+ brand owned exclusive livestreams with companies including Grubhub, Northwell Health, MasterCard, Chase, CDW, Tito’s Vodka creating must watch “tune in moments” that have engaged over 60 million fans via a variety of premier artists from Camila Cabello , Questlove, Meghan Trainor and just over the past 6 weeks most recently 3 #1 Billboard artists Morgan Wallen , Ian Diorr and 24kGolden.

“Andrew is a forward-thinking entrepreneur and truly understands the enormous potential of integrating Augmented Reality for Brand Sponsored Live Streaming Events to drive engagement,” said Alen Paul Silverrstieen, CEO and President of Imagine AR. “With today’s paradigm shift in digital live experiences, Mobile Augmented Reality is a perfect engagement technology to compliment First Tube Media’s innovative digital live experiences and drive revenue.”

This press release is available on the Company’s AGORACOM Discussion Forum , a moderated social media platform that enables civilized discussion and Q&A between Management and Shareholders.

About First Tube Media

First Tube Media brings the live industry together to create must-watch live cultural moments. Its platform enables talent, event creators and sponsors to find each other and connect via a full-service approach operating premium live stream creation and proprietary distribution services that deliver endless online exposure and clear ROI. The company is a full-service team of music industry experts, film makers, digital marketing experts, and software developers creating Tune-In worthy branded live content distributed and optimized for ROI. Clients Include GrubHub, Tito’s Vodka, MasterCard, Northwell Health and St. Jude’s Hospital. www.firsttubemedia.com

About ImagineAR

ImagineAR Inc. (CSE: IP) (OTC: IPNFF) is an augmented reality (AR) platform, ImagineAR.com, that enables businesses of any size to create and implement their own AR campaigns with no programming or technology experience. Every organization, from professional sports franchises to small retailers, can develop interactive AR campaigns that blend the real and digital worlds. Customers simply point their mobile device at logos, signs, buildings, products, landmarks and more to instantly engage videos, information, advertisements, coupons, 3D holograms and any interactive content all hosted in the cloud and managed using a menu-driven portal. Integrated real-time analytics means that all customer interaction is tracked and measured in real-time. The AR Enterprise platform supports both IOS and Android mobile devices and upcoming wearable technologies.

All trademarks of the property of respective owners.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Alen Paul Silverrstieen
President & CEO
(818) 850-2490
https://twitter.com/IPtechAR
https://www.facebook.com/imaginationparktechnologies
https://www.instagram.com/iptechar
https://www.linkedin.com/company/imagination-park-technologies-inc

We encourage you to do your own due diligence and ask your broker if Imagine AR Inc. (cse: IP) is suitable for your particular investment portfolio*.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. This press release may include ‘forward-looking information’ within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business of the Company. The forward- looking information is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Imagination Park’s management. Although Imagine AR believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward- looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because Imagine AR can give no assurance that it will prove to be correct. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and Imagine AR disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

SPONSOR: Imagine AR Inc. (IP:CSE) (IPNFF:OTCQB) is an Augmented Reality platform that allows businesses to easily launch AR campaigns. Clients Include: NBA Sacramento Kings, Mall of America, AT&T Shape and The Basketball Hall of Fame. ImagineAR and NFL Alumni Academy recently signed a 5 year partnership agreement. In addition, the company signed a two-year agreement with Valencia C.F. of La Liga to provide interactive Augmented Reality experiences for almost 7 million fans around the world. Learn More.

Augmented Reality’s Applications And Future In Business

• AR market alone is estimated to grow to $61.39 billion by 2023
• To meet the growing demand, an ecosystem of AR devices powered by platforms being developed by IT giants is evolving rapidly
• AR has now arrived in the industrial mainstream

Gautam Goswami Forbes Councils Member

Early versions of extended reality devices, or XR, began appearing years ago, as consumer gaming platforms. Nintendo’s pioneering 1995 Virtual Boy console was touted as “a 3-D game for a 3-D world!” But within months, it had become a marketplace flop.

Even so, the development of the two primary XR formats, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), never stopped. Today, 25 years after Virtual Boy, forward-looking investors have been encouraged by a strong interest in XR systems from major tech companies. Both technologies enhance the user’s visual world. But they work in different ways, and over time, the two have evolved in different directions.

With VR, the user wears a pair of goggles that display a world in which every image has either been captured on film, synthesized electronically or merged through a combination of the two. 

With AR, the images are seen using a smartphone, a tablet or special glasses. The basis of this imagery is whatever is seen by the device’s camera, with real-time overlays of computer-generated 2D, 3D and text, simulated by computer or from the remote input of another user.

One of AR’s biggest splashes happened in 2016 when Nintendo released its Pokémon Go game. It brought the magic of AR to millions around the world for the first time and helped to legitimize its use in everyday life.

Leading global corporations, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony and Samsung, are already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the development of both AR and VR. And the AR market alone is estimated to grow to $61.39 billion by 2023.

AR’s Practical Uses In Business Today 

AR applications seem to have evolved toward more practical business applications. For example, sportswear company Lacoste has an app that allows in-store shoppers to place their foot on a designated spot to view the shoes of their choice through their smartphone, showing product details, custom sizes and how it would look on the customer. And The New York Times used an AR app in connection with its 2018 Winter Olympics coverage to allow users to bring up athletes on the screen to explain their maneuvers just as those moves were taking place.

The latest Apple iPad and Google smartphones feature enhanced AR capabilities through advances in camera technologies. And applications from companies like Warby Parker (virtual eyeglasses try-on) and IKEA (virtual furniture placement in rooms), among others, are providing enhanced AR experiences without the need for specialized hardware. 

Further, until this year, the primary method for installing or repairing a complex piece of industrial machinery was to have an expert from the machine’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) jump on a plane and fly out to service the company’s equipment on site. Then Covid-19 hit. One of its many consequences has been a sharp reduction in business travel. But the need to service sophisticated industrial equipment in factories, airline hangars, power plants, offshore oil platforms and other continuously operated facilities hasn’t declined.

At TeamViewer, one of our solutions is remote virtual assistance and visual instructions enabled by AR. For many of the business leaders I’ve spoken with recently, AR has been the key solution for their equipment repairs during this time. 

The way this type of AI solution works is a technician at the facility, using only a smartphone with an AR app, can point their camera toward the machine while an expert views that image on their own device. Using a variety of techniques to highlight critical features of that image, including drop arrows, finger-drawn circles, graphics, colors, text, Internet of Things (IoT) data and more, the expert can talk the on-site technician through diagnostics, repair procedures, replacement part identification and any other support needed to enable on-site personnel and enhance the facility’s workflow. Sessions can be easily recorded and retained for step-by-step training and instruction for real-time use in similar situations at other locations.

The Future Of AR In Workforce Training

The way I see it, the AR capability is particularly important now due to the industrial world’s shifting workforce demographics. For one thing, many technically skilled workers are aging out of the workforce. As they leave, the decades of experience and expertise they had accumulated leave with them. Those who replace them, including millennials, contractors and workers retrained and recruited from other industries, simply don’t have the experience of older workers and, in many cases, can be more difficult to retain.

Despite the much-touted journeys of digital transformation being undertaken by many companies, when it comes to their operations on the factory floor, manual manufacturing techniques often still rely on legacy tools and methods to capture information and share knowledge. A 2018 white paper by ARC Advisory Group noted that most workers on the factory floor remain disconnected from the rich informational ecosystem that the rest of the organization has come to rely on. By adopting AR solutions, the paper states, manufacturing organizations can empower their factory workers in training and guidance applications.

By integrating AR, you can lead your team toward the democratization of knowledge and solve a key roadblock shared by logistics, manufacturing and field service: the experience gap. Based on my perspective in the industry, AR has moved well beyond the proof-of-concept stage, particularly where it involves guided manual assembly and maintenance. Using it, we can equip our young employees and newcomers to perform complex tasks, leading to reduced costs, higher quality and increased on-time delivery. 

To meet the growing demand, an ecosystem of AR devices powered by platforms being developed by IT giants is evolving rapidly. AR has now arrived in the industrial mainstream. In the next few years, I believe we will see it grow exponentially, transforming business processes and mitigating the knowledge gap resulting from today’s retiring generation of experienced workers.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2020/10/15/augmented-realitys-applications-and-future-in-business/#35c81bf82b3c