Making changes to this app was one of my first assigned tasks upon beginning my life with NASCAR Digital Media as a contractor in May 2015. The application ran on a small computer stored in the A/V room and showed on 4 television monitors residing in the elevator vestibule at NASCAR Digital Media (the entrance). This is the app that greeted guests upon their arrival on the 8th floor. It is the first thing they saw when the elevator doors opened (2 42″ monitors facing each bank of 3 elevators). Therefore, having the potential to leave lasting and (sometimes) memorable impressions.
I accepted this application as an inherited codebase originally built by Sapient Technologies when NASCAR digital properties where built and maintained by Turner Broadcasting (pre-2013). A .NET application dependent on several feeds (XML and JSON) for data and contained a forward facing GUI app for administration. This was a compiled application and the .exe had to be installed on whichever computer was chosen to run it.
Visually speaking the application ran as a Mondrian’ish collage showing images from the past week of racing at whatever track was scheduled that week. Images were added in the NASCAR galleries application JSON feed, cached then grabbed by the .NET app to be used in the collage. In addition, the application tapped into drivers Twitter feeds showing their latest posts. As you can imagine this could and did become problematic when drivers entered unknown special characters breaking the string or deliberately dropping an F-Bomb or two to have it unwittingly greet guests as they were exiting the elevators at NASCAR Digital Media. Nothing like seeing an incredible super-hero caliber image of Kyle Busch and a quote, “Fu&k*** Goodyear ruined my day…blah, blah and blah”. Get it?
This was exciting to me because you never knew what your favorite or least favorite would say to gain attention so I argued fixing the special character issue to continue allowing the tweets to be processed at face-value. This also included word swapping for those notorious F-Bombs but I was advised to simply shut it down. Don’t “fix” it.
I shut down the driver Twitter feeds having the app sequentially skip “twitter” as it ran its course. Problem solved although I did miss seeing what driver would be showcased that day for stating his disdain for Goodyear or NASCAR in an oh-so-eloquently written and timed Tweets.
Although this application has been archived and no longer greets guests when they hop off on the 8th, I still believe it to be the best choice of an application for several reasons:
1. It is highly scalable and has mechanisms for doing a ton of things we weren’t tapping.
2. Currently the monitors are running 2 galleries that sit in 2 Google Chrome tabs and simply iterate through a loop of current galleries. This was being done in the Mondrian’ish application with a JSON feed and simply changing the path and updating the template would allow for the same thing without making a ton of requests or relying for uninterrupted internet access.
3. This application had numerous inner apps that when turned ON ran within the Mondrian’ish collage. When accessing the settings of the application a list of options are made available for the developer all relating to how the content will be shown. We already shut down Twitter but running a series of cost-effective animated galleries was the goal. No need to re-invent here. The Sapient app was built for longevity. A copy of the app still resides at NDM, so maybe, someday will come when we see it again upon exiting the elevator doors on the 8th floor.