Dave and I are in the early stages of putting together a system here at SVA to check in at foursquare with our SVA ID cards, which we’re already swiping to get in the doors in the morning.

Last week, we were invited over to foursquare HQ to meet with Ted Power, who developed the system to check in at foursquare using an Android Nexus 1 with NFC. Ted took an hour out of his day to meet with us, hear our idea, and help guide some of our thinking.

I was surprised to learn that in the system he developed, the swipe doesn’t actually check you in, but rather, loads the foursquare app with the venue. You still have to complete the action of checking yourself in via your phone. I’m excited about the possibility of taking this a step further. He seems to think its entirely possibly, we’ll just need to work with a developer that has a thorough knowledge of APIs and oAuth.

He also pointed us to a company called TouchaTag, who makes an NFC / RFID “starter kit” for beginning to experiment with prototyping in this space. We’re also going to look into an RFID reader from Sparkfun that will hopefully allow us simultaneously prototype with our own SVA ID cards.

Finally, he demonstrated the large video board that he created, pictured above, that shows people currently checked in at foursquare using the Here Now API. His open source code is a great jumping off point for us creating our virtual guestbook in the lobby of the department.

I owe Ted Power a beer.

Dave and I are interested in building a foursquare checkin system for the SVA ixd studio using RFID or some other form of near field communication. We met last week to outline our approach. From what we can tell, we have 2 options.

1) Use the existing SVA ID card reader system that people use to unlock the doors. We’d either need to intervene at the controller or software level, make sense of the user ID numbers that are being passed in, and oAuth from there.

2) Create our own RFID reader, separate from the system. While this might be an extra behavior for people, we think it’d be better to have full control over the system. We won’t have to worry about getting the third party of the SVA security system, etc involved.

Whichever approach we decide on, we’ll need to create a system for people to easily OAuth their RFID identifier into foursquare. The first step will be getting people checked in. From there, we’re interested in creating a virtual guest book on the flat screen TV, and then possibly offering tangible benefits back, unique to each person, such as turning on their desk light, etc when they arrive.

Let’s do this.