Sydney's Broadway Shopping Centre has launched a campaign which merges Christmas, charity and digital innovation.
The centre has created a digital installation consisting of a 3m x 5m Digital Christmas tree made up of 110 LED display panels.
The tree, on the top floor of Broadway Shopping Centre, displays user-generated photos Christmas messages from shoppers.
Broadway Shopping Centre is donating $1 to Oz Harvest for every photo or message uploaded to the tree.
A live tally at the top of the tree updates as each submission is approved.
Shoppers are encouraged to have their photo taken or submit a message at one of four photo booths located within the centre.
The booths are staffed by promotional staff with iPads who take the photos and upload the user generated content to be-a-star.com.au website, which is powered by a customised content management system.
The Digital Tree installation is designed to rotate through 440 photos and messages, meaning that shoppers’ content will be displayed for one to two days encouraging return visits.
Behind the scenes, a cloud-hosted CMS is used for the moderation of uploaded photos and messages and remote publishing to the tree.
Once approved the photos are automatically cropped, centred and converted to transparent .png format allowing a video to display in the background.
Christmas messages are resized based on how much text is written and also converted to images for publishing.
A custom function was developed to read incoming emails and upload photos for moderation via the same path as photos taken with the iPads.
The tree is connected to the internet via a 4G usb internet stick which is programmed to effectively phone home, synchronizing content from the cloud on demand.
According to creators, this was one of the bigger challenges overcome with some tuning of the synchronization software keeping the connection live for consecutive days without intervention.
The be-a-star.com.au website uses a responsive design approach to automatically adjust for viewing on desktops, tablets and smart phones, eliminating the need for developing multiple sites.