Five districts · one month · one challenge
Hear ye, hear ye: visit a business in all five Snoqualmie districts in a month, and every Towne Crier screen in the valley puts your initials up in lights — all day — and calls you what you are: a Community Champion.
Hear ye
Five districts, five personalities — and most of us only ever see two.
Snoqualmie has five business districts, and most of us live in one or two of them. A resident's ordinary week touches maybe two: the coffee shop you pass daily. The other four districts you drive past.
Storefronts on Railroad Ave.
Up the hill where the errands get run.
Where the whole world comes to look over the railing.
Humming past at seventy.
Where the town's working history still stands.
The Snoqualmie Passport exists to change that — and to say something out loud that towns almost never say: the people who show up for local business are the heroes of a local economy, and they deserve to be celebrated by name.
So we built a game where the whole town watches you win it. Visit a business in all five districts in a month, and every Towne Crier screen in the valley puts your initials up in lights — all day — and calls you what you are: a Community Champion. Then you walk into a local business one more time and claim a real prize, earned, not drawn.
The board celebrates the residents. The residents discover the businesses. The businesses get verified foot traffic and the halo of rewarding the people who support local.
Everybody in that loop is better off — which is the only kind of marketing this town needs.
The board behind the game
What the Towne Crier is.
The Towne Crier is the Snoqualmie Valley's interactive community split-flap board — the clattering station-board display, reborn on TVs around the valley and in any browser. It rotates through the valley's day: weather and pass conditions, local events, community news, shoutouts, and daily games people come back for. When the flaps move, people look up; that's the whole trick.
And because every board shows a QR that puts the same board on your phone, the Towne Crier isn't just a bulletin — it's a conversation. You can answer the daily question, cast a vote, send a shoutout. The Snoqualmie Passport is the board's biggest conversation yet: one that happens at real counters, in all five districts, one visit at a time.
The passport, on one page
Five districts, one month, one challenge.
The idea fits on one page.
No app, no account, no sign-up
Participating businesses across the valley display a district passport QR at their counter. Walk in during business hours, scan it with your phone camera, and your phone opens the Towne Crier board and celebrates the moment: a district-color welcome, a thank-you naming the business you're standing in, and your progress toward all five.
Every finisher earns it
Collect all five districts in a calendar month and you're a finisher. Your phone flips to PASSPORT COMPLETE with a prize code, the community's TVs celebrate you all day as a Community Champion, and you claim a prize from this month's sponsor. There is no drawing, because completing the five districts is the whole test.
Resets on the 1st
Free to play. Never a purchase required. Initials only, ever, on any screen. On the 1st of the month, everything resets and the race begins again.
Every stop and its QR lives at the public passports page: flapcast-itmedic.azurewebsites.net/passports
A resident's journey
Start to finish, exactly as it happens.
Meet a neighbor — better yet, be one. Here is the whole thing, start to finish, exactly as it happens.
The board catches your eye
You're waiting for coffee, or standing in a lobby, and the split-flap board on the TV clatters over to a new card: the Five Districts Challenge. Visit all five business districts this month; the town celebrates you. Or you find the board where it always lives, on the public URL, from your couch. Either way, the invitation is the same — and it costs nothing to accept.
You scan a code at the counter
You're picking up a sandwich Downtown, and there it is by the register: a passport QR in Downtown's brick-red. You point your phone camera at it. No app to install, no account to create, nothing to type. That's the entire onboarding.
Your phone celebrates
The board opens on your phone and makes a moment of it: Welcome to Downtown! in the district's color, a thank-you that names the business you're standing in, and the line that gives the whole game its heart — You're doing business in Downtown. Then your progress: 1 of 5 districts collected, and which four remain. The stamp lands where it should — at the counter, in the business, in the moment.
Your phone remembers
Your passport lives in a simple cookie on your phone. No sign-up, no password, no personal data beyond the initials you choose to fly. Come back tomorrow, scan the next district, and your passport picks up right where it left off.
Real visits, really counted
A stamp only counts while the business is genuinely open — every check-in is verified against business hours. That's by design: the passport measures real foot traffic through real doors, not drive-by scans in a dark parking lot. When a business sees passport visits, they're seeing people who actually walked in.
The chase across the month
Now it's a game you carry around. The Ridge on Saturday errands. The Falls when the in-laws visit. The I-90 Corridor on the way home. The Mill, because honestly, when did you last stop at The Mill? That's the point — the passport is a nudge to cross the whole map, and somewhere in district four you find a business you didn't know you loved.
The fifth stamp
You scan the fifth QR and your phone flips to Passport complete — with a prize QR and a six-character claim code. That code is your ticket, and you earned every character of it.
Your initials, all day, on every TV
Here's the part no punch card ever did. All day long, the community's TVs around the valley celebrate you: a Community Champion board with your initials — visited every business district — this person truly cares — repeating through every rotation, on every screen. The room where you got your first coffee this morning is now telling the whole town about you.
You claim your prize
You bring your claim code to the month's prize sponsor and show it at the counter. That's it — you walk out with a prize from this month's sponsor. And this matters: every finisher earns it. No raffle, no drawing, no "winners will be notified." You did the thing; you get the prize.
District Leaders, and the fresh start
A monthly District Leaders leaderboard ranks the month's collectors — initials only — on the boards and on every player's phone, keeping the race visible all month. Then, on the 1st, everything resets: leaderboard, passports, champions, codes. A new month is a new race, and the whole town lines up at the start again.
For businesses
How businesses take part.
Three ways in, each concrete, each with its own payoff.
Host a passport stop
Your business displays your district's QR at the counter — we hand you a print-ready page. From then on, the celebration moment happens at your counter: the district-color welcome, your business named on the customer's own phone, "doing business in [your district]" while they're standing on your floor. You also appear on the public Snoqualmie Passports page all month.
- Foot traffic you can count — verified visits, gated to your open hours, not ad impressions
- The identity moment happens at your counter, on the customer's own phone
- A print-ready QR page, and a listing on the public passports page all month
Local Spotlight sponsors
The Local Spotlight is the board's advertising program — your business in the rotation on the community's screens. Spotlight sponsors get their district passport stop as part of the package: one local sponsorship puts you on the board all day and makes you a destination in the game the town is playing.
- Presence on the screen, footsteps at the door — the same budget buys both
- Your district stop is included; no separate arrangement to make
Sponsor the monthly prize
Donate the month's prize — a gift card is the classic — and your name goes on the prize card every single finisher sees: the screen they show at pickup. Finishers come to you to claim.
- The town's most engaged people, standing at your counter in a winning mood — in the very month they proved they show up for local business
- Every finisher earns a prize, so choose something you'd be happy to hand to each person who genuinely visited all five districts
- Enjoy being the business that rewarded them
Fair play, by design
The passport earns trust the same way it earns foot traffic: honestly.
These promises are built into the game, not bolted on.
No purchase, ever
No purchase is ever required to play, check in, or win. Walking into a business and scanning a code costs nothing — and that's the whole ask.
Effort, not a lottery
This is a contest of effort, not a lottery. There is no drawing and no random winner; completing the five districts is the entire test, and everyone who passes it collects.
Two or three letters, your choice
Every public surface — TVs, phones, leaderboard — shows the two or three letters you chose. Never full names, never anything else.
No tracking profiles
Your passport is a simple cookie on your own phone. We don't know who you are, and we like it that way.
Open to the whole town
Monthly prizes come from general-audience sponsors — never alcohol or cannabis — so the game stays open to the whole town.
Real doors, real people
Check-ins only count during a business's open hours. Real doors, real people, real foot traffic — for players and businesses alike, the numbers mean something.
The monthly rhythm
A punch card ends. The passport renews.
The passport breathes in months. All month, the DISTRICT LEADERS leaderboard keeps the race visible on the boards and on every phone — initials climbing as stamps land across the valley. All month, each new finisher gets their Community Champion day: their initials on every screen, every rotation, sunrise to sign-off.
Then the 1st arrives and everything resets — the challenge, the leaderboard, the champions' roll, and every prize code. Unredeemed codes expire with their month, so prize sponsors are never carrying old promises forward. A new month is a new race: new finishers, new celebrations, and a fresh reason for the whole town to walk into all five districts again.
That rhythm is the quiet genius of the thing. A punch card ends. The passport renews — and every month, the town gets another chance to find out what's in the districts it's been driving past.
Get involved
The board is live, the districts are waiting.
Hear ye one last time: the board is live, the districts are waiting, and there's room at the counter for your business.
Towne Crier is an ITMedic (Snoqualmie, WA) service.