Using Interactive Campus Maps for Commencement
Making events a success with interactive mapsThe iconic Ole Miss, formerly known as the University of Mississippi, is the United States’ most historic public university. The team at Ole Miss knows the importance of maintaining that rich history while providing students with the best possible virtual tools for our digital age. That’s where Concept3D’s Interactive Map comes in.
Founded in 1844 in Oxford, Mississippi, Ole Miss is the oldest public university in America. This school taught the first African-American student, James Meredith, during the racial segregation of the 1960s. Ole Miss also saw the likes of football players, Michael Oher and both Eli and Archie Manning. In other words, people all around the nation know about Ole Miss. One thing they wanted to be known for is their ability to help students navigate the expansive and beautiful campus.
With a lot of interactive campus map competition, Ole Miss chose Concept3D as their virtual map provider in 2014. The team loved the dynamic flexibility of the solution. Compared to our competitors, the ability to utilize data feeds and live cameras around campus was a selling point for Ole Miss. The school also needed a map that would update immediately after they made a change, especially when it came to paramount events, like Commencement Day. Interactive Maps can do all that and more.
The map’s ability to integrate video within campus tours is also one of the best features that allow us to showcase our campus beauty and what sets us apart from others.
Ryan M. Whittington, Marketing & Brand Strategy Director , Ole Miss
The Ole Miss team is using Interactive Maps for both students and staff. Their live data feeds and cameras show lines at the coffee shop, on-campus restaurants, construction areas, convenience stores, and major thoroughfares around campus.
They are also using their map specifically for Commencement Day by implementing a graduation-specific overlay that they can save and reuse year after year. And if they have updates to make, with Concept3D’s zero coding content management system, it never takes long to make any necessary updates.
Here’s a few ways that Ole Miss uses Concept3D to highlight important commencement locations and information on their interactive campus map:
- Information booths: Because no matter how much information you provide online, people will still have questions.
- Line up locations: Specific student line up information by college or school.
- Parking: With the commencement overlay, the Ole Miss team highlights ADA accessible parking lots, and uses live parking feed data to show map users real-time parking lot occupancy indicated by color-coding.
- Refreshments: Ole Miss easily highlights the locations of refreshment locations, hours of operation and menu items.
- Restrooms: Important for every graduation-goer.
- Shuttle stops: Ole miss highlights in-depth where public transportation stops and where they are on their route with live data feeds. They use their Interactive Map to display on-campus shuttle service to assist people with disabilities and the elderly. Concept3D shuttle stop points provide pick-up and drop-off locations, phone numbers and other contact information for commencement day assistance.
Since integrating 14 live feed cameras across campus, Ole Miss has noticed a better traffic flow and knows students and staff love how they are showcasing on-campus activity. Concept3D provides a better, easier way. Ole Miss depends on Concept3D every spring because it’s easy to use and requires little back-end lifting.
The CMS makes integrating our data feeds a simple, easy process. We can update our content feed once and it updates within the CMS and our map simultaneously.
Robby Sietz, Webmaster , Ole Miss
Not only did Carnival-goers, estimated at 20,000 people, have the benefit of all the event information accessible from their mobile devices through a digital event map there are additional benefits to both the Carnival and Punahou School from having an interactive map.
For the Carnival, the overlay and printed materials also played a role. The overlay created with help from the Concept3D production team from a PDF is now a KML file. Spatially accurate, this master overlay is easily changed for the next Carnival if necessary. Additionally, Punahou printed two 4′ by 8′ posters of the map with the overlay for reference at major check-in areas.
The Carnival is just one way Punahou uses and plans to use the interactive map. The Carnival was part of ‘Phase 1,’ but the next phases include adding virtual tours and more information for prospective students and families. The interactive map is in good shape for the 2020 Carnival, but there is much more in store for the map, virtual tours, and Punahou School before then.
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