Later this month, hundreds of thousands tourists will be ‘playing mas’ at Scotiabank Caribana in Toronto – wearing stately headpieces and parading in glittery thongs. But for the first time ever they’ll be able to share photos and videos and find out exactly where the party is on their mobile phones with the launch of the Scotiabank Caribana Navigator.

Developed by Toronto-based Simply Good Technologies, the app, which is free on BlackBerry, iPhone and Android platforms, allows users to upload photos, rate others’ hotness from mild to spicy, ‘find de vibe’ using maps and GPS and ‘get more tings’ by entering contests and downloading the festival guide.

Bill McLean, co-founder Simply Good Technologies, tells MiC about the objectives of the app for Scotiabank Caribana, which is heavily promoting the festival via social media this year with a YouTube channel, a Twitter page and on Facebook. The festival runs from July 15 to Aug. 13, and besides the annual mas parade, this year it also includes a food festival, art shows and live after-party performances.

Q: Tell us about the goal for this app: why did you develop it?
A: The objective is to take the existing experience that enthusiasts have attending the event and allow them the visibility and information to be able to physically orient themselves to the event, and to make real-time decisions in terms of where they want to go and how they want to get there.

Q: What does it do?
A: Everything has been integrated to manage all of the locations with GPS mapping within all of these devices. There’s also total integration of contesting so the contests that exist with Scotiabank Caribana have all been available for participation within the mobile application. Then there’s a full social media connectivity within the application itself that allows people to stay connected via the dedicated Facebook and Twitter pages for a particular event.

Q: What was Scotiabank’s role in the development of this app?
A: Since last October, with the launch of the Midnight Navigator for the Nuit Blanche contemporary art event in Toronto, they have recognized that this is a new distribution, if you will, to make content available and to create a better experience for enthusiasts of an event.

Q: How will the app be promoted?
A: The approach almost always is to create a centre of focus within the dedicated event website, so that enthusiasts who go to these websites to gain content become immediately aware of the fact that the free application is available for download to various mobile devices.