DJORN'S DJOURNAL: It's All Coming Together!
What a fun day we had yesterday! Along with our partners at US Soccer, NEC Corporation of America, and Cortina Productions, we had the opportunity to play with all the digital experiences that will live inside of the National Soccer Hall of Fame when we open in October. This has certainly been a labor of love and to see the group’s concepts, suggestions, and crazy ideas coming to life is extremely rewarding!
Now that we are this close to opening, we can start to share with you some of these experiences. As we announced in August, we will be utilizing facial recognition as the driving force behind the NSHOF Experience. The facial recognition will customize your experience based on your preferences. There will be several large digital touch screens that will teach visitors about the history of the sport. Some of these include reliving the 10 greatest moments in US Women’s National Team history, celebrating all US Women’s players with at least 100 caps, the Rise of Major League Soccer showcasing the greatest players that have played in the league, and a touch screen HOF Wall where all of our HOF members will live virtually.
In addition, we will have a skills challenge using gesture technology where you can learn to juggle, take penalty kicks, and perfect the header. These are each hosted by legends of the game in Alexi Lalas, Cobi Jones, and Shannon Boxx. There is also virtual reality where you can become either Tim Howard or Briana Scurry, relive some of their greatest saves, and see if you can make the same saves they did. There are kiosks where you can create your own unique scarf and pick it up in the new Soccer 90 store at the end of your visit. You can also insert yourself into some of the greatest photos of our soccer history at our green screen interactive and share your photo with your friends online. You can choose your greatest all-time men’s or women’s US National Team and see how your team ranks amongst other visitor’s creations. You can view, through projection mapping, any MLS jersey in the modern era and even create your own digital MLS jersey. And to finish off your visit, you can participate in a live action digital trivia game and see how much you learned!
This Hall of Fame is going to be like no other, I can promise you that. We can’t wait to show you when we open to the public on October 24th.