It’s been five, long, jam-packed days. Koz and I will keep working to post more sights, sounds, and insights from South by Southwest Interactive 2010.
There’s certainly no shortage of interesting spaces where “digital creatives” connect during SXSW to do what they do. Here’s a peek …
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Panel: Dustin Clingman – Full Sail University, Dave Werner – Atmosphir, Michael Agustin – GameSalad, Adam Saltsman – Flixel, Troy Gilbert – Mockingbirdgames, Shanna Tellerman – Wildpockets
Building a game is getting easier and easier, and the panelists build tools to help people without tech skills/knowledge build video games. From simple to complex, it sounds like the video game industry is hungry for new ideas since many games are built upon the same premise – shoot ’em up, explore, etc.
Games don’t have to be just fun and/or entertaining, they have proven to be used to teach very effectively. While it can obviously be used to teach simple tasks, games are tremendously good at teaching individuals organization or organizational models such as world-politics, physics, math, science. If you have trouble explaining your business model to employees, consider a game that teaches them what the elements/values/principles of your model are. When used for good, these games can communicate and engage users in things like the impact of natural disasters, geopolitics, and other significant societal issues.
Some games and systems choose to take advantage of “regular operative conditioning” which rewards you for a repetitive task. It has been proven that people have an innate need to solve things and with things like gambling, people become addicted to the dopamine that is released when they are challenged and rewarded. This is a tremendously effective tool for getting people engaged in your game, but it can also be dangerous if people start working toward “points” rather than pursuing the true purpose of the game. However, reward structures – in the form of points, virtual items, money, etc. – can be a tremendously effective way of hooking people in and keeping them engaged. Feedback, recognition, rewarding, earning, and achieving are human urges that come through in games. You don’t necessarily have to make a “game” in order to incorporate this or exploit these urges.
If you are interested in getting started building your own game, here are a few resources to consider:
There are only two of us, and we’re making it to as many sessions as we can, but if you’d like to see some slides from additional sessions at SXSW, take a look here (if you have access to slideshare.net) – http://www.slideshare.net/tag/sxsw2010
Imagine a work environment where you work when you want, how you want, and where you choose. A work environment where strict accountability for results is the norm. It’s simple: If you don’t deliver results, you don’t have a job.
That’s the premise of the Results-Oriented Work Environment (ROWE), a concept pioneered and implemented by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson when they were co-workers at Best Buy. It’s also the topic of their book, “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix it.”
I met them at a South by Southwest panel today, where they were by joined by workplace author and Wall Street Journal columnist, Alexandria Levit, and two CEOs of organizations that have implemented ROWE.
It was an honest discussion of the challenges and benefits, and the cultural shift required for ROWE to work. There’s a summary of the discussion here and more at GO ROWE.
Panelists: @jessicalawrence, @jeffgunther, @caliandjody, @alevit. Meet them on YouTube.
It’s Sunday night and I’ve landed in one of the many South by Southwest lounges – with a cold Lone Star Beer at my side and blisters on my feet.
Make no mistake about it: SXSWi is a five-day marathon. The choice of sessions, panels, workshops, keynotes, and meetups is overwhelming. And with two more days yet to go, it was energizing to hear from many of you over the weekend who were following along on Twitter and foursquare. What a great blend of technology and inclusion.
Thanks to a tip from @briansullan, I tracked down Web standards guru and author, Jeffrey Zeldman, and co-author, Ethan Marcotte. Ed Matesevac, @ep3runs, turned me on to Dan Ariely––an acclaimed professor at Duke University and best-selling author of “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions.”I also noted Company partners outside our department tapping into Twitter and retweeting some of our live-blogging. Thanks for joining us!
SXSW Interactive ends Tuesday night and we’ll keep bringing it to you until then.
Presenter: Sara Summers, User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft
Play is important, particularly in the workplace. Science (lead by Dr. Stuart Brown at The Institute of Play) has proven that a life without play leads to depression, rigidity, and dissocial activities. It’s critical, not just to our well being, but for adaptation and idea generation. It’s proven that play drives us to seek novelty and newness.
Play elicits our best qualities – it inspires empathy, helpfulness, hopefulness, and betters emotions. It’s crucial to visual thinking and processing. Dr. Robert Epstein’s “Shifting” suggests a period of individual ideation, followed by group building and generation produces significantly better ideas.
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” -Thomas Edison
It’s a short blog post, but most of this workshop involved hands on play and brainstorming to illustrate the points made.
Presenters: @livethelushlife, @bebellanti, @johnwise, @titosvodka, @thrillist
It’s 5 pm on Saturday, so I’m “off the clock.” That’s why my last SXSW session was this one. BONUS: This one involved trying booze while I was blogging this (see the picture here).
First, I learned that the first “viral drink” is the “Pickelback” (seen here) which involves taking a shot of Jamison Whisky and then a shot of pickel juice. The pickel juice completely eliminates the whisky flavor and leaves a little warm spot in your belly. It became a “viral drink” after it was reported that Pickles were more popular than Canadian rockers Nickelback on Facebook.
Tito’s Vodka has become a “word of mouth” brand here in Austin and has spread. It started to spread locally, but took off with the introduction of Twitter. Now they’ve moved to Facebook and try to enable others to “share the Tito’s love.” They’ve started doing a newsletter and videos on Twitter. There’s more to it than just vodka, Tito has a real story and according to the presenter, he’s a “love bomb.” His video outakes are “YouTube gold.” There is a man behind the brand and their marketing team makes efforts to be personable and show that there are real people behind the brand.
It’s not all fun and drinking. Bloggers/marketers in this area have to follow liquor laws and regulations and are held to the same marketing measurement standards as any other group. However, social media is social and it is particularly effective in this industry.
Koz and I were leaving the Austin Convention Center tonight and saw these guys playing four square right outside the doors. We stopped to watch and take a few pictures.
While other up-and-coming brands are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their buzz on at South by Southwest Interactive, this simple game (which cost about $5.99 in sidewalk chalk) had people lined up to play.
Well, I just found out – via a friend’s status update on Facebook – that there was a U.S. Air plane that crash landed in the Hudson River (about an hour ago). I first turned to the usual places, CNN, NBC, etc. and thought I’d see if there was anything on Twitter. Sure enough, I found a person on twitter who was actually on one of the Ferry boats going out to rescue people(http://twitter.com/JKrums) and had taken a picture with his (I assume) cellphone and also posted it to Twitter. Not only did “JKrums” photo posting to twitpic.com seemingly shut down the site (due to heavy traffic), but I watched as his Twitter “followers” grew from around 500 to nearly 1000 in the last 15 minutes or so (that guy’s email must be insane with Twitter notifications of new followers… although he seems to be responding as the number of people he’s “following” seems to be growing almost as fast). It’s a sign of the rise of citizen journalism and by being in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment can make you an instant “journalist.”
UPDATE: In the time it took for me to write this, JKrums added an additional 150 followers (he’s up to around 1100) and is now following that many more people as well.
UPDATE 1/16/09: JKrums is up to over 2700 followers now and twits that he’s making appearances on Good Morning America and other shows.
UPDATE 1/16/09 approx. Midnight: JKrums now has over 3100 followers.
I’ve had Skype for a while now, but could never find anyone else I knew on their search tool. Finally, over the holidays my brother-in-law mentioned he had it as well. We used it to video conference with his family a few times over the holidays. It was great to be able to see them and chat face to face. Now I only wish my parents were able to get a high-speed connection out where they live… I know they’d enjoy video chatting with the kids.
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