The Objective

The Row the Amazon team wanted to use technology that would allow them to share their progress with people following the expedition, to communicate with the outside world during the expedition, and to provide their exact location in the event of an emergency.

The Solution

Row the Amazon worked with Voyage Manager to achieve their objectives. Voyage Manager have supplied the expedition with an Iridium Extreme satellite tracker phone and created the map webpage showing the progress of the expedition as a 'breadcrumb trail'. The Extreme provides communication of voice and data (including location) from anywhere in the world using the Iridium network of sixty-six satellites. It has a truly robust, weatherproof and impact-resistant design. Using it, the expedition team's progress is regularly automatically updated to the Voyage Manager platform to be displayed on the map, with no input required from team-members - important when both hands are calloused from rowing! When stopping for the night or after dodging tree-trunks drifting down the river, expedition members use the Extreme in conjunction with a tablet computer to:

• update the world on progress
• share this expedition through the Voyage Manager platform
• update Twitter and FaceBook with text and pictures
• send and receive emails

Anton Wright of Clare College, Cambridge University said "We know there are lots of people who will be interested to know how our adventure is progressing, and it's great that Voyage Manager have been able to combine hardware technology and their web knowhow to provide real-time updates via the map and our Twitter feed". Mark de Rond from Cambridge Judge Business School added "It's good to know that the Extreme phone and the VM platform will be helping us to stay safe during our row - after all, since no one has done this before we don't really know what we're going to find!"

Click here to follow the progress of the journey.

About Voyage Manager

Voyage Manager is a Cambridge, UK based technology company providing software to help companies ensure the safety and security of their travelling staff. Its VM Suite platform is the only fully automated travel safety solution that monitors the actual location of travellers, comparing these with intended location to provide the earliest possible warning of potential problems and for corporate compliance. Contact us for more information on what we can do to help you keep your travellers safe.

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