Pokemon GO developer partners with Knight Foundation to revitalize Macon’s public spaces

Macon is one of five cities picked to test how the company behind 2016’s mobile gaming phenomenon, Pokemon GO, can use its augmented reality technology to help residents re-imagine public spaces.

Niantic partnered with the Knight Foundation to form the Niantic/Knight Fellows Program.

The six-month long project assigns five fellows to lead community events in their respective cities. Each event focuses on using Niantic’s technology to provide residents and visitors with engaging new ways to interact with public spaces.

Macon’s designated fellow is Joey Allen, a Mercer alumnus and lifetime local. He decided to apply for the position after receiving an email about the program.

“I had done some work in augmented reality and social computing, and I’ve always been really excited to see how technology will positively impact the world, so I figured I would apply,” Allen said.

The development of the Niantic/Knight Fellows program comes after the two companies announced their multi-year collaboration last year and began organizing events in small communities nationwide.

“Last year, we sort of focused on nature events happening in communities,” said Lilian Coral, Knight’s lead on the Fellows Program and director of National Strategy and Technology Innovation. “We wanted to see if the assumption that you could use technology to draw more people into those events actually was right, and we found that it very much was right. In some cases, the population growth at the event was a thousand fold.”

Based on the success of these events, Niantic and the Knight Foundation decided to shift their efforts this year toward hosting events in larger cities with a greater interest in giving individuals the opportunity to positively influence their communities through technology.

“This year we decided to build on that and say, ‘OK, we know that the technology works. Now what happens if we put it in the hands of individuals in the communities?’” Coral said. “So we came up with this idea of the fellowship model.”

Allen said, “I hope to use this opportunity to encourage local players to explore and discover, or rediscover, what great things Macon has to offer — from downtown’s rich history, to Macon’s rising tech scene, and to the great and often overlooked resource that is our public library system.”

With the public libraries of Macon-Bibb County struggling to stay open while commissioners wrangled over the fiscal 2019 budget, Allen hopes to use his position in the Niantic/Knight Fellowship Program to garner support for their survival.

“I am especially excited to use these AR games to bring people to our libraries,” Allen said. “Given Macon’s recent temporary library shutdown, this is the opportune moment to highlight the importance of the library to our community and spotlight what awesome and technologically relevant things are going on in our public library system.”

Macon’s Fellowship Program will host its first event downtown during Open Streets Macon, which is 2-6 p.m. Oct. 7. Sections of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Cherry Street will be closed to traffic, allowing pedestrians to walk freely. Pokemon GO Trainers will have the chance to explore this area to receive in-game and real world items and prizes.