First Soofa Sign is up and running in Faneuil Hall, Boston

Today Soofa launched the Soofa Sign, a solar powered, digital display that updates wirelessly in real time.  The City of Boston and the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics is the first in the country to pilot this new technology which provides a new communication platform to connect with residents and visitors. The Soofa Sign is installed at Boston’s pedestrian epicenter, Faneuil Hall and currently shows Mayor Walsh's Twitter feed and upcoming events in Boston. This civic news oriented application is the first of many applications the startup has in store for the sign. The Soofa Sign is the latest product in Soofa's smart urban furniture ecosystem that improves the quality of life for people while generating data for city leaders to make more informed decisions.

The Soofa Sign is here to transform the way cities communicate with their citizens, businesses build relationships with their customers, and how citizens get to know their cities. Launched in Boston with Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics in September 2016, the Soofa Sign is the first and only solar powered digital display that updates wirelessly in real-time. The sign uses electronic paper from fellow MIT Media Lab spinout E-Ink Corporation which delivers advanced display products to the world's most influential brands and manufacturers, enabling them to install extremely durable, low power displays in previously impossible or unimaginable environments. 

The first sign in Boston serves as a platform for Mayor Walsh and the City to inform and engage with citizens and visitors. The always active Twitter aficionado, Mayor Walsh will now be able to share his tweets in real-time with citizens and visitors on the Soofa Sign in Faneuil Hall, Boston's pedestrian epicenter. The sign will also share top local events in the area, informing passerby about fun things to do that they otherwise may not have known about.

Closing the loop on Soofa's plug and play smart city technology ecosystem, the Soofa Sign lets cities, real estate developers, and businesses communicate with city dwellers at the right time with the right content. The Soofa Bench, equipped with sensors that measure pedestrian activity in public space, is paired with the Soofa Sign so decision makers can take action in real-time based on the patterns of use they observe in public spaces via data collected by the Soofa Bench. 

The Soofa Sign enables multiple content widgets to be displayed at the same time but updated at different times. This allows for valuable information like the time until the next bus or train to update in real-time while notifications about local events or sponsored content from small businesses can cycle in consistent intervals simultaneously. 

Following the launch in Boston, the Soofa Sign will soon be in Cambridge, MA and select early adopters cities across the United States. Like the Soofa Bench, the sign is designed to put people first. It is a vitally important component of the new model for the smart city where the focus is less on gathering data and more on using technology to improve the quality of life for all citizens equally. The sign can be placed anywhere under the sun and displays content that is most important for a particular location or neighborhood. Designed to be loved by the public and easy to install for cities and developers, its elegant form and light foot print allows it to stand gracefully among the historic statues and buildings in Faneuil Hall or in a quiet mixed use neighborhood. 

We are accepting three more early adopter cities for 2017. Do you want to be next?