The City of Adelaide’s AI chatbot partner is Australian-French startup, Hopstay. Started by a pair of Adelaide entrepreneurs, Hopstay won an international French Government competition to establish their business in a tech incubator in Paris. Nice work if you can get it! We’ve worked with Hopstay over the past 18 months to build an experimental…
Why I hate it when people say: ‘we need to build an app’
I hate it when people say ‘we need to build an app’. Here’s why… Reason #1 – They should stop thinking up ‘solutions’ before understanding the ‘problem’ (if indeed there is a problem) When you say ‘we need to build an app’, you’re focusing on the ‘solution’ before understanding ‘why’ an app is required. As…
Arrr, me hearties – MS Teams frivolity
Liz went above and beyond again. Pirate hat with a galleon in the background. Very nice.
Content marketing for Ramadan
Story-telling and digital content marketing are key pillars of our marketing strategy at the City of Adelaide. Take for example this great piece by my colleague Skye Murtagh about Ramadan. Skye reached out to members of Adelaide’s Muslim community to find out how they experience Ramadan in Adelaide, how it differs from their birth countries,…
Minecraft Adelaide now available in Education Edition
Our Minecraft project continues to grow and improve. We’ve now published versions of our Adelaide worlds in ‘Microsoft Minecraft Education Edition’, providing better access for schools and students. The two worlds are now available in Java, Bedrock, Portable (iPad/Android tablet) and Education versions from https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/minecraft
Video conference stitch up
The fun and games continue on Microsoft Teams…. This morning I joined our regular team meeting and was greeted by my own head looking back at me five times over. Cheeky buggers.
City of Adelaide digital program covered in CMO magazine
We’ve been featured in a piece in CMO Magazine, with the editor interviewing the boss, Ian Hill, about our digital program. URL to the article is: https://www.cmo.com.au/article/679012/how-city-adelaide-marketers-using-digital-content-drive-engagement/ Here’s the full text of the article: How City of Adelaide marketers are using digital and content to drive engagement Director of growth shares the digital innovations and…
Funnel visualisation for UPark Plus
We’ve just released a new parking product called UPark Plus. Good timing – we released it during COVID-19 as a ‘touchless parking’ option and attached a cheap $8 parking offer for parking in the CBD. Uptake has been pretty good. To create a UPark Plus account, it’s necessary to sign up on the UPark website…
Easy English Guide for COVID-19
The sheer volume of COVID-19 information out there makes it difficult for most people to absorb and comprehend, let alone those members of our community who have low English literacy, or have vision or cognitive impairments. To help, we’ve just published an “Easy English” guide on our website that explains which City of Adelaide services…
Chatbot case study from Hopstay
Hopstay have put together a nice case study PDF about the City of Adelaide chatbot.
Adelaide Living Podcast Ep.7 is live: Damon Gameau
You might recognise his face from his roles in films like ‘The Tracker’ and ‘Balibo’, or TV shows like ‘The Kettering Incident’, ‘Love My Way’ and ‘Underbelly’, but Adelaide-born Damon Gameau has found his true path behind the camera, as a filmmaker. His latest doco, ‘2040’, tackles the subject of the effects of climate change with a…
Minecraft Adelaide covered in Sunday Mail
The City of Adelaide’s Minecraft ‘Adelaide 2021’ world was covered in an article in yesterday’s Sunday Mail. Kudos to Jonathon Bailey and Josh Roberts, who together are the driving force behind our Minecraft project. Jonathan is a final-year Maths student at the University of Adelaide and worked on the project as a work experience student…
Our Mother’s Day video for 2020 (including an appearance from the clowns)
Mel Stewart produced this great Mother’s Day video with Shootsta’s help. Maddy and Alex both appear in it.
Minecraft ‘Adelaide 2021’ World is now live
We’ve taken the ‘Adelaide 2021’ Minecraft world live today at https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/minecraft. The new world has the built-form of Adelaide in place, created using GIS data. Today’s release follows on from the earlier release of ‘Adelaide 1836’, which contains Colonel Light’s original town plan, before building has commenced. The 1836 world has had over 820 downloads…
Nobody’s booking, so it’s the best time to work on our Adelaide accommodation options
We’ve done a bit of work on our accommodation listings on the City of Adelaide website over the past couple of months during the COVID-19 situation. These listings are powered by data from the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse. We’re trialling affiliate bookings through Booking.com to see if there’s a revenue source for the council. We’ve…
Many hats of video conferencing
Video conferencing fatigue was always going to set in at some stage with this COVID-19 business, so we decided from the outset to wear a new hat to every single meeting to keep it ‘fresh’. What I have learnt is that some of my team members have far deeper inventories of hats than I do.
Spring clean of our email marketing lists
We’ve done a bit of a spring clean of our email marketing mailing lists in City of Adelaide, and done a bit of an internal and external push to get as many new subscribers as possible… Who said email is dead? Despite the emergence of social media and messaging apps, many of us are still…
Adelaide Zoom, MS Teams and Google Meet Backgrounds
Wish you were back working in the city, Adelaideans? Help relieve your longing for normality by installing one of our special ‘City of Adelaide Virtual Meeting Backgrounds’ for your next online meeting! We’ve got 20+ great city backgrounds to download right now. Not only will you look great on camera, you’ll also impress your workmates…
Colouring-in is an adult pursuit
Colouring-in. There was a time when this pursuit was reserved for the kiddies, but today it’s also recognised as an activity for ‘grown ups’, bringing with it a host of positive mental health and wellbeing benefits. In the current circumstances, we need all the help we can get to stay sane, so we’ve published a…
Digital and marketing support for City of Adelaide’s COVID-19 effort
The City of Adelaide is continuing to provide essential services to the community during COVID-19, including public cleansing, waste management, horticultural care, business support and customer service. Rundle Mall and the Adelaide Central Market remain open, with the latter offering a fantastic drive-through pickup service. Our car parking business UPark is offering $8 capped parking…