Droidcon UK Hackathon Challenge: The Future of Identity
As a print company, MOO has become used to hearing proclamations heralding ‘the death of print’ or ‘the death of the business card’ — and yet the past decade has seen our business continue to grow, with sales of business cards at an all-time high.
Why is this? Why doesn’t digital technology make print obsolete?
It’s because our brains aren’t digital.
We need physical objects to understand our reality. Children need to touch and feel material objects- they need to play with actual building blocks- before they can understand virtual ones or abstract concepts. This material understanding is the foundation that stays with us as adults and informs how we perceive things- even digital things and online things.
So let’s revisit the business card conundrum. If it’s not the easiest or most efficient way to exchange details — why do people still like to use them?
It’s about identity.
When you give someone a business card, you’re giving them a token of your identity and something that person can use as a memory device to remind them to get back in touch with you again.
It’s also something that can be personal, unique and memorable — something that a link or an email address is not.
Our Hackathon Challenge
We would like you to imagine how NFC Business Cards+ could be used as a personal identity token.
Whether this is to identify yourself to an Android app, or to connect your identity to your social media connections, or even to personalise your Audi in-vehicle tablet.
Identity need not be limited to a person. Identity tokens can represent a person, a place, a thing.
Read more about Understanding NFC & the Role of the Token
Materials and Tools
We will be providing samples of MOO’s newly launched NFC Business Cards+
Each of these cards can be uniquely identified by the URL data stored on them.
Additionally, the cards are rewritable using any standard NFC tag writer such as:
Prizes
On Sunday, Nick Ludlam from our team will be judging and choosing the best, most innovative application of our NFC cards.
The winner will receive:
- 1 Year worth of free printing on moo.com (total value £1,200)
- 100 free NFC Business Cards+
- Ongoing support from the Paper+ team if you develop something you’d like to bring to the market.
