I was lucky enough to sit down with Dr. Lou Marciani, Director and Co-Founder of the Innovation Institute for Fan Experience (IIFX) to talk about their new virtual destination, the IIFX Hall of Honor.
The IIFX Hall of Honor was built with the goal of creating an experience where people from around the world could come to celebrate and explore the achievements of their Hall of Fame winners.
Visit the case study page to get the full story and see a video highlighting the Hall of Honor.
Sports and entertainment is a huge part of our culture. Whether it’s concerts or sporting events, people seek out and enjoy experiences that pull them outside of their normal lives.
The mission of the IIFX is to be the leading global authority on the fan experience, relative to sports and entertainment. We look at the journey of the fan, starting from the time they leave their home, until the time they return home.
We work with the different agencies that deliver and support the live event to focus on every touchpoint in the journey to assure it’s a seamless experience for the fan. Right now, we’re working with all the professional leagues in the US, along with the NCAA High School Federation globally, the Premier League, and FIFA. We help the owners of teams to increase revenues, increase attendance, to be operationally efficient, and so on. It’s a big responsibility to manage how we conduct events now and in the future.
As we look down the road, we look for role models for the industry as the industry grows. It’s very important to recognize those that have contributed. We established the IIFX Hall of Fame and held our first induction at the IIFX Fancentric conference last year. It was a very emotional afternoon for many professionals in our field and their families.
I was inspired when we inducted the first class. To hear their speeches and feel their emotions. It really got to me. So I thought, we’d better do something so that we can not just recognize them just one day a year, but recognize them over the long haul with something permanent.
We decided that we wanted to create a place where we could celebrate our Hall of Fame inductees. A place where anyone, from anywhere in the world could visit. A place where we could preserve our history for generations to come.
We never intended to build a brick and mortar space. We didn’t have the ability to draw our global audience to a single physical location. We thought, if we could create a virtual destination that delivers the same excitement and spectacle of a live experience, in the same way that a physical destination could, that we’d have our solution.
We began researching who we could work with to build our virtual Hall of Honor. We didn’t think it was possible to do what we were looking to do, until we found Linkroom…
Linkroom brings the best of video conferencing and augmented reality together. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. We created a beautiful hall where we can acknowledge people’s great contribution to their profession. We have an innovation center where we can host events and fundraisers. We even have a conference room where we can conduct our business.
Entering the Hall is like stepping into a real space. You get this transformational experience like you’re really there. But you don’t need to leave your home. You don’t need to download anything or buy expensive gear to experience it.
When we selected Linkroom, it was clear that we can do all we need to do now and in the future. It’s going to allow us to save money and enable people from around the world to visit. I’m so grateful for the people who are pushing our industry forward and I’m proud that we were able to create this amazing place where anyone can visit and see their accomplishments.
