An Update from the Street Tag Team

STREET TAG'S PLAN FOR MITIGATING THE EFFECT OF CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) ON FAMILIES PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES.

We are all aware of the current coronavirus challenge facing the UK and the world. On Saturday 14th we released our first update on coronavirus, this can be viewed here. We have since had a team meeting (audio group call) within Street Tag to review and develop our plan that we believe we can deploy to mitigate the effect of the coronavirus on families physical activities, especially if and when the UK and more countries around the world have to adopt home isolation and social distancing. In this strategy, our vision remains to get Every Family, Everywhere, Physically Active. We have also shared this strategy with our stakeholders for their feedback, and their feedback has been fed into strengthening our plans as explained below. 

These are our steps to encourage physical activities at home and making physical activities fun remotely.

Step 1, tagging in your home - Street Tag is taking an active step to integrate fitness trackers to convert step counts into Street Tag points towards the regular leaderboard. With this integration, families can keep physically active as a family from home. 100 points will equal 10 points, the famous bonus points on Street Tag will also play a part i.e. taggers will receive 200 bonus points when they've earned 180 points, this works out to be the standard 18 tags or 1800 steps. This integration requires some development work, this has already commenced and will be ready very soon for testing. The first fitness tracker integration will be Fitbit, at a later date we will follow with Garmin, then the Apple Watch and more.

Step 2, be cautious - Walking and cycling to shops, schools, and places of work are naturally social distancing in their nature, Street Tag supports this with virtual tagging as most taggers either walk or cycle alone or in their family, we will review this however if the government advice changes on spending time outdoors. Whenever the app detects that you've been outdoors scanning the virtual tags, Street Tag will remind families up to three times a day with a reminder message "Please remember to wash your hands", this update will be released soon. We are also looking to embed an underlying heatmap data using the coronavirus report data from official websites, so that if/when you are walking outdoor, the app will show you in real-time the level of the virus spread in the surrounding area. Although the second part in step 2 is not guaranteed. 

Step 3, connected communities - As taggers know, we are more than just the physical activities as a community, we love our interactions, group pictures, and we also consistently discourage isolation. However group pictures are currently not advisable for the time being, with this in mind, we will be introducing the "Relayton" baton feature. 

As a natural tradition of Street Tag features of being playful and fun, we want to make it fun in home isolation and social distancing by keeping taggers in the community connected and active even whilst we are temporarily practicing social distancing. The "Relayton" feature will allow taggers to be eligible to either receive (from a tagger that's currently holding it) or send a "Relayton" to other taggers, to be eligible, you need to reach 500 points without the bonus points. The "Relayton" can only be sent from teams to teams. To send, all taggers on a leaderboard will be able to detect which team is currently holding the "Relayton" baton. A team will also be able to recognize the teams that are eligible to receive it, tap on an eligible team, leave a kind message and send the Relayton baton to them. The aim is for 100 minimum families on a given Leaderboard to hold it at least once, you can hold it more than once. However, the more taggers that hold it, the better an increase in the total bonus points to be distributed. There will be 500,000 bonus points to be distributed.

All team member(s) in a team will automatically receive 200 bonus points each if a team ensures that they've manually sent the "Relayton" with a kind message to another eligible team within 24hours of receiving it. If you don't, the "Relayton" will be automatically sent to another eligible team and thus your team will miss out on the 200 bonus points. 

Step 4 - We will continue to set up the Saturday Special Tags for the next two Saturdays this month of March, after which we may pause the Saturday special tags temporarily for up to 4 weeks depending on the latest national update from the NHS and the government. Just as we did last Saturday, rather than the group pictures in the parks, we advocated and supported selfies, with lots of families opting for that. We will keep sharing updates on Friday's latest before Saturday's special tags in your local parks. 

Step 5 - From Thursday 19th March, Street Tag will start hosting live Q&A on our Facebook page, and they will be regular on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays evenings at 7 pm for 20minutes, for March. Please tune in with your questions on physical activities and Street Tag related.

Step 6 - Street Tag is due to launch in some new places, we have agreed to adjust the launch dates by a few weeks with our new partners before the announcement and kickoff of the new locations. 

We are very much open to further suggestions to build into our strategy for the next possibly challenging few months. More than ever, being physically active and staying healthy has never been more important. We can all be physically active and healthy in our homes and small pockets of the community if necessary. In our spirit of openness, we will continue to monitor the progress of the coronavirus and communicate with you as well as with the families. We will listen and be flexible to the needs of the community. 

Finally, in terms of our own internal team operations, we are very well accustomed to remote working, we will continue on the path of remote working for the time being, and we will be having most of our meetings remotely via video or audio platforms. 

With love, good health, and kindness
Seun and the Street Tag Team