(Re-) Discover Brooklyn with New Travel App 'Vamonde'

Vamonde, a tour guide and a digital storyteller, uses geolocation data, text and multimedia to connect users with the stories that surround them every day and allows them to discover art, history, food, nature and culture

Vamonde, an interactive travel app, is coming to Brooklyn - thanks to a new partnership with Downtown Brooklyn, reports Technical.ly. The app allows neighborhood institutions to play virtual tour guide by publishing geotagged histories, stories and experiences for visitors - and locals -  accessible through their phones.

"Most city and cultural organizations are getting hammered in digital. If you google 'Brooklyn travel guide,' you'll go through over 100 results before you find a local org except for NYCGO," explained Nick Petit, the chief marketing officer at Vamonde. "In between is all for-profit blogs, Expedia, Travelocity. [With Vamonde} the city and cultural orgs can put their content in a place where people are trying to reach it."

Founded by the Chicago-based college professor and designer Anijo Mathew, Vamonde was initially conceived as a platform for museums and cultural nonprofits to create exciting experiences that attract travelers to places by utilizing smart technology. Through the simplicity of the platform, the institutions themselves can easily and affordably add content to the app. In Brooklyn, the company has launched partnerships with cultural institutions such as the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Transit Museum of New York, but also organizations such as the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

"What [cultural organizations] do have is the acumen to write really great stories," Petit continued. "Our software works like Medium does. It helps format all the pictures. … The idea is that they don't have to invest in this new software all the time, they just have to put their stories on it."

The app is both a tour guide and a digital storyteller; it uses geolocation data, text and multimedia to connect users with the stories that surround them every day. Vamonde allows visitors to discover art, architecture, history, food, design, nature and culture. With themed interactive adventures, urban explorers can follow the footsteps of local experts, artists and institutions as they reveal their insider secrets, allowing them to discover new places or to learn the stories hidden in the places they may already know.

"It's about storytelling," said Vamonde-founder Mathew. "We have had so many ways of telling stories in our lives — books, movies, radio, blogs — but one of the things we haven't seen is the ability for people to connect digital stories to physical space. Vamonde is about that."

Sounds like a lot of fun - for tourists, as well as new and old Brooklynites who want to (re-)discover the borough!