Paramodic

Our mission is to enable and inspire Indigenous communities to embrace, build and adapt digital technologies to create real educational and commercial opportunities for themselves funded through digitally enhanced cultural experiences by visitors to their country. In addition to lifelong skills, communities will nominate one pressing need that requires resourcing to address.

How the idea was born

In a space no bigger than a garage, we worked with over 300 committed Indigenous people from 26 countries to start changing the world through art and story. While we painted, we talked. While we talked, we started to understand the global context of what we were all proud of, but also what we all were most afraid of.

Our Elders were most afraid of being the last ones – the last ones with the connection to land and sea, the last ones with the knowledge needed to shape a sustainable future. Their most pressing need was to share our stories and knowledge with other Indigenous people, our young people.

Over three days we talked about how we could engage our young people and what the barriers were in the eyes of the Elders. Over and over again they shared their frustrations about our young people and phones. “You can’t get their heads out of those phones,” said one Elder from the Central Desert.

We though about it and found an obvious solution – put our culture in the phone. Better still, integrate it with emerging hands-free technologies. 

When we were given an opportunity to tell our story at TedXCanberra we worked with the AR Studio and A+ Communications to develop a prototype to overcome intergenerational and intercultural story-sharing barriers.

What we have already done:

We have spent the last 12 months trialing the prototype, building and breaking augmented reality to work in all environmental conditions and connectivity environments, and co-designing our ideas with Indigenous communities, and with people wanting to better appreciate Indigenous cultures. It works.

1. Through an ACT Government ICon Grant and Paramodic investment, we have developed the augmented reality app and the backbone business framework
2. We have IP, Moral Rights, Waivers, and Consents secured through Australia's leading Indigenous lawyer to protect our people and our stories
3. We have selected the first 8 sites, including Ruby Hammond's Rock in Reconciliation Place, Canberra in honor of the 1967 Referendum.
4. We have a secure and transparent business model that ensures cultural narrative is economically valued, and that resources are determined by the community, for the community. The revenue generated by purchase of app content goes back to the community to address a pressing need, and an R&D fund.
5. We have ensured visitors have an excellent visitor experience that they can opt in or out of at any time.

All up we have invested more than $75,000 in the development of Digital Rangers. 

It costs $10,000 per site to train the community in developing augmented reality, recording the stories and hosting them on the platform – but the skills developed through our training package will last a lifetime, and can be used from practically everywhere on planet earth.

Our aim in the first twelve months is to have at least 10 Digital Rangers sites operational and delivering benefits to their communities.

We have used a human centered design approach to developing and prototyping Digital Rangers. This means, we have designed, with community, a sound business model to empower Indigenous communities to address their most pressing need through attaching an economic value to digital cultural tourism.

As part of business model development, we have carried out three significant prototypes to ensure the app works for visitors regardless of connectivity, or trigger. Stories can be layered from the landscape to item level through augmented reality recognition.

The app will initially be available for iPhone. Further investment will see it enhanced for other mobile device platforms, and integration with Google Glass.