Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I was asked to fill in as a panelist for SXSWi this weekend. The details about our panel aren’t online yet, but it will be about ARGs (of course). Tony Walsh and Dan Hon will also be on it.

We’ll be in one of the rooms on Saturday at 3:30. Come by if you’re there! And don’t forget to keep voting for World Without Oil in the People’s Choice awards. A nice article about Jane McGonigal and WWO in the Austin Chronicle this week, by the way.

I ran into people talking about gutta percha three times in the last week. I’d never heard of it before.

I got invited to join the honors society at school.

I also submitted a paper about Disney’s parks and how they relate to Fisher’s Narrative Theory for presentation at SOURCE, my school’s annual conference, and it was accepted. I’ll be presenting it on April 11.

I submitted my application for graduate school and, once I get my degree plan signed, should be accepted with no problem. I also heard back from the new person assigned to evaluate my portfolio for Emerging Technologies and she said to expect to see that on my transcript sometime next week (I submitted the damned thing in November!).

I’m all registered for SXSWi, which ITVS was kind enough to do since World Without Oil is a finalist in the Web Awards. Don’t forget that you can vote EVERY DAY for WWO in the People’s Choice awards. It just takes one click a day.

We made reservations for a return trip to Disney World this August. This year we’re going to try The Polynesian Resort. Staying at the Villas at Wilderness Lodge was just heavenly last year, what with the full size fridge, washer/dryer, and separate living/sleeping areas, but the big drawback was that it wasn’t on the monorail. I think we can sacrifice a lot for that convenience. We’ll see if we end up speaking to each other when it’s all over.

Last, I’ve been bleaching my teeth for the last 9 days and haven’t had one stinking cup of coffee or tea since I started and I’m damned grouchy.

Ok, sorry, that wasn’t last; this is: we finally got an XBox 360 and picked up Rock Band and Guitar Hero III. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.

Sign up to vote for the SXSW Web Awards People’s Choice awards, especially if you want to vote for World Without Oil! 🙂

US Military Runs First Alternate Reality Game

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Several weeks ago, a tsunami devastated a small island off the southern coast of the US, and now an unexplained illness is spreading among the survivors. The joint task force formed to support the relief effort, originally focused on delivering essential services, now must contend with a medical epidemic as well. Are they prepared for this mission?

This is the scenario behind a new ARG created by BBN Technologies and Dave Szulborski, author of This Is Not a Game and creator of five well-know ARGs. ARGs have been used with great success to promote books, movies and television shows and BBN scientists proposed that the method could be applied to serious training with equal success. Now, the US military is testing that hypothesis with the first evaluation of an ARG as a tool for training military personnel. In a month-long demonstration, a group of 124 participants made up of active duty military, reservists, government staffers, and university students is working together to cope with the tsunami scenario. This is the kind of situation that is most difficult to train for; not an acute, episodic crisis than can be simulated in a short course or in a classroom, but a longer term situation that changes as the circumstances unfold. ARGS offer the benefit of allowing trainees to practice the skills needed for such exceptional situations while they continue to do their regular jobs and to develop real relationships in a virtual scenario that will help them respond effectively when they are required to cope with an unexpected situation such as the tsunami scenario.

Bill Ferguson, division scientist at BBN Technologies, one of the partner organizations for the demonstration, said, “The military needs a training solution for longer term, intermediate intensity situations that involve multiple agencies. Because ARGs are inherently distributed and built on complex, engaging scenarios, they are an effective and cost efficient way to train for the long duration, large-scale problems that require individuals to respond both collectively and individually.”

Jointly funded by the Joint Forces Command and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the demonstration is being executed by BBN Technologies, Dave Szulborski, and Aptima. BBN, which was contracted to develop the tools and pedagogy and administer the demonstration, provides tools to support ARGs under its trademark, Helical Training. BBN engaged Szulborski to develop the ARG’s initial scenario and to build on the rich content as the responses and changing circumstances affect the fictional situation. Aptima will evaluate the demonstration and measure participants’ responses against specific learning goals.

BBN’s Helical Training is a novel application of ideas inspired by ARGs that focuses on information management, distributed coordination, and organizational navigation. A Helical Training event is an immersive, interactive training course that virtually brings together many trainees from different locations to work together to accomplish both individual and group goals in a shared scenario.

About BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies solves real problems through the creation and disciplined application of advanced technology. With expertise spanning information security, speech and language processing, networking, distributed systems, and sensing and control systems, BBN scientists and engineers have amassed a substantial collection of innovations and patented solutions. Today, BBN is managing the planning and design of GENI, an advanced network facility spanning the United States; is saving lives in Iraq and Afghanistan with its Boomerang Shooter Detection System; operates the first metro quantum cryptography network; has deployed the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system; and has demonstrated the benefits of the world’s first stereoscopic digital mammography system in clinical trials. For more information, visit www.bbn.com.

I worked on that. 🙂

Rumor Scares Some KU Students Away from Campus

A viral marketing campaign incites yet another panic. Sheesh, people. I bet they all forwarded on the email about the headlights-off-gang-initiation, too.

Campfire wins gold and bronze at the Mixx awards

The bronze in Digital Video was for the campaign I worked on – The Battle Over Promicin. You can see the case study here. (I wrote that pro-Promicin ad script, woo!)

Congratulations to Campfire Media for the wins.

In most of life, but especially on the internet, there’s a disparity between those who have been in a community for a while and the newbies. The more established members, fairly or not, tend to look down on those who are still learning the ropes. It’s easy to forget what it was like to be new and confused and to pass the learning curve off as stupidity. And no matter how careful one is about not falling into the trap of being a smug oldbie, it’s entirely too easy to do.

I’m not sure why communities tend to gang up on others like that. I haven’t really seen an online culture where it didn’t happen. Reactions can vary anywhere from “new people are universally stupid” to “you have a low post count, so I’m going to discount what you say.” Maybe it’s a little extension of hazing, that trial by fire which welcomes people into the community. Those who are scared off by hostility don’t belong, anyway? Maybe it’s just a human tendency towards one-upmanship, to feel superior over someone else even though it’s a petty thing. Definitely something to be aware of when designing communities, though.

Here’s a post I wrote on the IGDA ARG mailing list in reference to someone asking about ARGs for kids:

I’m sure I’ll get shouted down by the anti-Disnites 😉 , but I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering lately about the nature of Disney World. They treat all the characters as absolutely real, to the degree that the person in the Mickey Mouse suit doesn’t say later, “I was in the Mickey Mouse suit,” but rather, “I was _working with_ MIckey Mouse.”

Everything that’s not roped off at Disney World is available to touch and play with. When the sign at the Muppet Show 3D says “Key’s under the mat,” the key is really under the mat. If there’s an old-timey phone in a store, you should pick it up and hear an old-timey conversation.

Those who take behind the scenes tours are warned not to say anything about the characters not being real while “on stage,” or in view of other guests. If they do, their guide will play absolutely dumb.

So while there’s not really a game (although they do have different scavenger hunts), it’s definitely an alternate reality. Obviously the curtain is hair-thin, but within the milieu of Disney World itself, the TINAG principle stands tall.