Think the cloud has no place at the State Fair? Think again!

Most people go to the Great Minnesota Get Together to enjoy food (on a stick!), entertainment (lumberjack contest anyone?), and vendors (why yes, I do need a bat house).  However, I never really associated a good old, time-honored state fair with cloud technology until I kept my eye out this year.

My first Minnesota State Fair cloud experience was actually a couple of days before the fair when I downloaded the State Fair app on my Smartphone.  I generally have the flow of the fairgrounds down.  I know where all of my favorite attractions are located, what route to take to hit most of my favorite food booths, and the perfect time to hit the Midway.  But this year I knew there were some new foods I was excited to try (how can you pass on deep fried, blue cheese stuffed olives on a stick?), so I thought the app might help me locate them while I was walking around. 

Then came fair day.  Beautiful weather.  Smell of fried foods in the air.  And cloud computing usage everywhere I looked!  The first thing I noticed was how many vendors were using iPads for one reason or another.  I stopped in the Education Building to check out my old graduate school’s booth, Hamline University and they were using the cloud.  They had IPad’s set up give prospective students a virtual campus tour.  I wish that had been an option when I was looking at prospective colleges!  The Ford booth was also using the cloud via iPads as a way to accept entries in to their database for a free car drawing.  Of course I entered, why not?

Another common use of cloud technology that I encountered was merchants using mobile payment solutions, such as Square, to accept credit and debit cards.  I love these things!  I only brought a set amount of cash with me, assuming I would just need it for food and drink, but then I saw an amazing Australian made hiking hat that would have taken half of my cash (and I was not willing to give up the bacon infused corn dog or deep fried veggies I had my eye on).  Luckily for me, they had the Square and I am now the proud owner of a hat from Australia.

The last thing I observed was the use of social media.  Vendors were sending live Tweets and Facebook status updates right from their booths and fair attendees were posting pictures of themselves with giant snakes or a foot long corndog.  I also noticed some booths had posters with QR codes for people to scan with their smart phone, to either enter in to a drawing or be taken directly to the vendor’s website. 

All in all, the Great Minnesota Get Together did not disappoint.  I ate a lot of food, saw some great shows, and was excited to see how the cloud is utilized in even the most unlikely of places.  Who knows where cloud technology could pop up next year?