It’s a good time to be a late twenty-something adult these days; with many things from the late eighties and early nineties making a comeback, even things that we aren’t happy to see return; high-waist shorts, crop tops, jelly sandals….**groan**. From fashion to past-times, everything old is new again including a digital phenomenon taking the world by virtual storm! Pokemon Go is a digital reboot of a popular brand last celebrated in the nineties, and is capturing both old and new fans alike. It would be safe to say that this is no ordinary app, a more fitting title would be cultural phenomenon, on par with Star Wars in the 1970’s. Don’t believe us, check out some of the statistics:

• In just 3 days of its release, Pokemon Go became the biggest game of 2016 with more than 21 million peak active user. Candy Crush at its height, only had 20 million active users. At the rate its going, it isn’t far-fetched to say it will eventually become the biggest app of all time, keep in mind Pokemon Go has not been released in some major markets worldwide.
• Apple has officially shared that Pokemon Go has broken the record for the highest number of downloads during launch week in the App Store.
• Pokemon Go’s daily active users is also poised to smash another record; over 60% of those who have downloaded the app are using it daily, coming within reaching distance of Twitter!
• Nintendo’s stock has surged 20% since the app release.
• Tracking mentions of the game on social media went from zero to more than 1,250,000 in a single day!

More stats are available online, however we at CAT are seeing and feeling the Pokemon Go craze first-hand, not only are many current students already well into the augmented reality game, but we knew it would be a great way to make some new CAT friends as well. Last Friday we hosted our very first on-campus Pokemon Go Meet-up and it was a resounding success. The very same demographic interested in the game is also the same group interested in many of our programs. We managed to “lure” over 20 people to our Dickson Ave. location and proceeded on a campus poke-tour. Some Pokemon were caught, but more importantly we introduced some new members of the community to our school and programs, win-win!

Thanks to all our new “trainer-friends” who attended the event, and to KelownaNow and InfoNews Kelowna for featuring us in two awesome articles about our event. It was a huge success and we will be doing it again soon!