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Kogi Mobile and Download Festival launch Download Tribes

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Kogi Mobile Download Festival launches Download Tribes, giving Europe’s biggest rock and metal music festival an entirely new, interactive digital dimension.

The app allows users and their friends to connect with like-minded people, share plans and stories for this year’s festival.

Creativepool caught up with the people behind this groundbreaking app, Kogi Mobile.

 

What got you interested in working with Live Nation and Download?

Kogi is always interested in working with new ideas and new clients. This is our first project with Live Nation and it is a nice fit as they have a creative team and we have a technology team. Many brands have to outsource the whole project to a creative agency but if they have a strong creative department the option is there to work with companies like Kogi to fulfil the technical requirement without having to take on large internal technical teams or freelancers and project managers. Working with a specialist the brands gain from the experience of 100s of other projects that Kogi has worked on.

 

What’s the benefit of linking to Facebook?

Facebook serves two purposes in this project. 1 it has the easy login so users are not storing their password details in a system just for one experience. 2 it allows us to easy join people together within the communities of friends and virally connect the concept across Facebook. Doing this as a standalone registration and share would mean the users have the risk of entering a password they may use across various sensitive accounts and they would have to enter their friends email addresses. With the FB we can draw on all of this data as the user accepts the app has access to their details and we can easily group friends and other tribe members together, visually through their FB photos.

 

Any major challenges you had to face?

The major challenge is always time on these projects. We launched the whole thing in around 3 weeks and continue to work on the mobile compatible version to be launched in the next few days and then add more functionality to competition element. We work like a TV/Music production company on many projects where the ideas and technology are quite free flowing, instead of the more traditional style of planning and documenting everything for months before and then executing the idea. The idea is executed quickly and using all modern techniques such as Scrum and Agile we can adapt the experience as we go.

 

You’ve worked on some huge projects, what has been the most exciting?

Personally the most exciting project was coming to Colombia. Trying to start a new business in a country with a very negative (unjustified) reputation in the outside world and having to learn a new business culture as well as language. The investment of time and energy has paid off as Colombians despite having a poor reputation through the news media have a very strong work culture and are very creative technologists – this has allowed the business to grow in the direction of working with clients like Live Nation and many other international marketing agencies and start-ups. Kogi is now 30 people and has produced work for 5 different continents with many top 10 apps in the US and UK market places.

 

Tell us about the journey of Kogi Mobile

Kogi was founded in February 2011 as a Colombian business to serve initially international markets with highly talented and experienced resources which are in demand in the European and US market places – namely mobile developers in iOS and Android. We have branched out a little and include web and FB apps in our armoury. Kogi has grown to be one of the largest specialists of its type in Latin America with a mix of work with international clients across North America, Europe, Africa and Australia as well as working with local clients in Colombia and the Latin American region. Most employees are shareholders and are multilingual so we have tried to create a truly open, creative technology business that has the latin values of family but with an international focus.

 

Tell us more about your decision to work remotely from Columbia

Yes I am based in Colombia and have invested not only in Kogi but other companies and in property in Colombia. Colombia is one of the best countries to invest in, in the LATAM region for the following reasons. The government is one of the few open governments in the region with a focus on capital markets and foreign investment. Anyone can come here and start a business within a few weeks and operate on an international basis. Many neighbouring countries are not so open and put many hurdles of bureaucracy in the way. Many countries which should be attractive such as Argentina and Brazil are unstable with high inflation and are complex to invest in. Colombia has a population approaching 50 million people so it is not just a good place to set up because of the lower cost base, there is a strong local market here as well to develop the ever growing demand for digital services. Thirdly the people are fantastic. I have worked all over the world and many countries especially in Asia are very suspicious of foreigners and why they are investing. Colombians are very open and pleased that foreigners come to their country to help them grow their economy, this attitude as well as a lot of local government support helps anyone get through the more difficult elements of adjusting to a foreign culture and language.

 

Join a Tribe for this year's Download Festival downloadtribes.com.

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