Apptually, it’s harder to get lost
OPINION: It’s a great advance for farmerkind, but sadly it’s come a bit late for me.
News that an official Fieldays app was launched this week, well before the big event at Mystery Creek on June 13 will be welcomed by many.
Especially by those who are technically savvy. And by those who perpetually get lost at this pop-up rural town that sprawls across land the size of Holland. Or so it seems.
The free app uses GPS technology to make navigating the 114-hectare site much easier and quicker. So they say.
I was one of the people who got lost at Fieldays, several times a day, but let me start at the beginning. With a cruel sense of humour a former Taranaki Daily News editor assigned me to the role of covering Fieldays.
I mean, even the name of the event doesn’t make sense. Break it down and you have one sensible word ‘‘Field’ with a few letters ‘ays’ - stuck on the end. Consonants have their uses.
Anyway, a photographer and I were dispatched to cover this huge rural event because the farming reporter had chosen this particular week (and five others) to swan off to Europe.
No worries, off we set. Never mind that everything was left late and the only motel left in Hamilton was notable for what didn’t work in the rooms. Then there was the car park at Fieldays. It was bigger than Eltham but we got there. Eventually. Fortunately our media passes worked and what we found was every bit as intriguing as Disneyland, in its own way.
We’d marked all of the Taranaki exhibitors and each one had a reference number on a map, as in DM2, or XXXX for the bar. The terrain is far from flat and there were thousands of visitors vying for space with the aplomb of seasoned Japanese tourists cramming into a train before the doors automatically slammed shut.
But now that the fiendishly clever Fieldays organisers, or their kids, have designed an app, all of that will be in the past and visitors will no doubt get the promised enhanced experience.
For the record, the app is available as a free download via the App Store or Google Play.
If you don’t have a child to download the app you can always follow the signs.
For more information visit fieldays.co.nz