This is Playful – London Games Week, Conway Hall, Oct 31

“To thine own self be true” read the inscription above the stage of the humanist community venue of Conway Hall in Holborn – an appropriate epitaph for an era where user-generated content and the collaborative nature of web 2.0 is pervading computer game technologies, and new forms of playfulness emerge from the fusion of game play with toys, theatre, web and movement – as explored at this one day event as part of London Games Festival games fringe week.

Organised by my fellow conspirators Pixel-Lab from Derby, This is Playful was a very chilled out laid back event full of interesting talking and stuff followed by a few light ales, and generally a good sense of community. A lot of the technicalities went over my bear-like-brain-when-it-comes-to-games, but a few talks stood out:

Chris Delay from Introversion talked about building high production values in graphics from a micro-indie’s budget using procedural generation – that is using patterns of nature in a generative progam to produce patterns – like tree branches spreading outwards, or even city scapes spawning more and more detailed roads. This can be split into everything – even building floors and windows on buildings, producing exterior textures, or internal building scapes to produce desks, computers and objects. This cuts out the handmade time of game artists, and would seem to be the future of much CGI and games generation in the increasingly expensive era when users demand higher-level graphics.

Kars Alfink from Leapfrog in Utrecht – the Netherlands’ epicentre of game design – talked about playing with form using the example of the Z-Boys from the film Lords of Dogtown, who formed what became now skateboarding technique from experimenting with their surroundings of disused swimming-pools. Now skate parks take the form of extreme hollowed-out bowls that were originally just the functional spaces available.

We consume media but we use tools – so game media is about creating tools for functional uses. Habbo Hotel, the virtual world for children, has very ‘underspecified’ tools – like rooms where children play at ‘horses’ – despite the fact that it’s not a stable and there are no horse-specific objects there – rather like kids will play at anything with a few limited props in the ‘sandbox’ of a garden or playroom.

Tom Armitage from Headshift talked about the Obama 08 campaign manager software for iPhone, and how you could rate your performance as a campaigner against others – a multiplayer game (of sorts). Everything is now a multiplayer environment – enabled by web 2.0 thinking and technologies. We all have ‘rings’ between us, our closest allies, friends of friends then everyone else; social media platforms ape this – e.g. email/SMS/IM for close contact, Facebook next, MySpace for the semi-unwashed and open spaces for everyone else.  Yet social networks are not merely spaces, they consist of people who are connected by a shared object or interest – like World of Warcraft for gamers or Flickr for photo lovers.

Armitage believes multi-player can take the form of differing contexts – not just MMO or simultaneous multi-player forms but a “super context” – shared information and shared fun asyncronously, in close but not necessarily simultaneous timespans – like sending links and sharing comments on Facebook or by email.  This also gives you more to talk about AFTER the event.

Eric Zimmerman from GameLab spoke about games being about rules and maths.  The play is the free movement within rigid structures – be that skateboarders in swimming pools or playing within the mathematical rules of the game. Gamestar Mechanic is his new venture allowing users to create their own user-generated online game to share and play with others, an interesting combination of web 2.0 and game technologies.

Lots of other interesting bits and bobs including a very interesting presentation on realism and expression in high-end games design from Jolyon Webb from Blitz Games using the example of how getting it right with teeth affects how you feel and interactive with the characters, and a very silly Singing Sock Puppet linking up Last.fm with, er, a sock puppet.  A fun end to the week.

Creative Partnerships: creative economy and the curriculum

I was invited to take part in a debate at Bristol’s Watershed on 7th November 2007 organised by Creative Partnerships, entitled: Space to think: UK – The world’s creative hub?

The ‘Space to Think’ series is held around the country as a forum for the creative, cultural, education and business sectors to meet and discuss a broad range of issues concerning creativity and learning.

Creative Partnerships is the Government’s flagship creativity programme for schools and young people, managed by Arts Council England and funded by the DCSF and DCMS. It enables schools to work with participatory artists (visuall artists, designers, musicians, theatre etc) to devise integrated creative learning programmes and activities – and at pilot stage it has been hugely successful with national roll-out looming.

I was on a panel with two very illuminating people:

TC Jefferson - a creativity and learning consultant who has worked with Creative Partnerships and also Chew TV in Plymouth. TC expounded the failing of the curriculum as a mechanism, but also the need for continually investigating new ways of learning.

Lucy Byatt, the director of Spike Island (artist studios, galleries and design incubator) spoke about her own background crossing the rock path from education to practice, and also the story of how Spike transformed from a squatted community to a bastion of the cultural infrastructure of Bristol.

Feeling like the boring glue that sticks things together, I spoke about creative industries and the creative economy, both in the South West and nationally, with some statistics on the state of UK creativity and how this fits with Higher Education – including the shocking statistic that one year’s design undergraduates represents 50% of the commercial design industry – which is itself in rapid decline.

In a discussion, educators and creative professionals discussed how enterprise is becoming embedded, for better or worse, in curriculum, but it is a slow process. There needs to be also a sense of learning for learning’s sake with all levels of education, and also, I think, creativity for creativity’s sake.

Guide to social networks for creativity (or ‘I finally found a use for LinkedIn’)

This lengthily-titled (and length) post is about two things – creativity and social networks. Like many of my peers (and other self-proclaimed digital experts), social networks are both an intrinsic part of ‘building your online brand’, but also a neat thing to play around with, whether you’re a cyberspace digital geek, or a real-world social networker (who would have thought digital technology could connect two such diverse groups?).

So here’s my subjective take on the three I’ve used the most – LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace – and how they work (or not) for me to promote the different strands of my business.

LinkedIn

Particularly since the meteoric rise of Facebook, I’ve come to question, what exactly is the point of LinkedIn? It is designed to: ’strengthen and extend your existing network of trusted contacts’. When I first used it in 2004 it seemed well cool – freelancers or job-hunters could sponge up thousands of new contacts to boost their work, working on the ‘bow tie’ theory that it’s not your ‘inner circle’ of immediate friends, colleagues and family that get you work, it’s the much bigger grouping on the ‘outer circle’.

The problem is, LinkedIn doesn’t really DO anything – other social networks are about learning, connecting, joking and sharing – whereas the interactions of LinkedIn seem to be quite limited to just linking and…well that’s it. At least you don’t need to submit your ‘links’ work email now to connect (thus defeating the point of having a network which sits outside of your current job and transcends to past and future). You can pay to ‘get connected’ to the CEO of Sony Entertainment or whoever – but why would he/she want to read your email any more than if you’d sent it through their corporate website?

I conclude, LinkedIn is off the boil, its time has past. Even people I know who are very well connected tend to stick at 100-150 contacts. Mine is a mere pathetic 50 and no more people I know are using it. A network needs common identity and shared purpose, it can’t exist for its own sake. I guess the main problem with LinkedIn is it doesn’t feel very…well..friendly. It’s all about making ‘connections’, but not strengthening the human interaction behind those connections. I’d rather respond to a ‘thanks for the add’ friend request than a request to ‘get linked in’ – the call is not compelling. That said, it’s the most private of social networks and a great way to store all your email contacts in one place.

However lately I had a new revelation: you can use LinkedIn Answers to ask all your network, or indeed the whole community, a question – which is superb from a focus group/user-testing perspective. The questions tend to be quite highbrow, of the ‘How do we solve the problems of the Middle East?’ type or ‘Do CEOs of European VC backed technology companies get the necessary support, resources and time to succeed?‘ (hmm..axe to grind?). It’s useful for the question poser, but also a good brain-sharpener on those moments of downtime for CEOs of European VC-backed technology companies. Expect on average 15-20 answers from the global community within the week.

I answered an interesting question posed by James Stuart: What does creativity mean to you? Global answers ranged from:
“Creativity is the blending of imagination with reality.” (Marc Aniballi, Creative Technology Strategist)
“Creativity is an outcome of simple space and courage. The space that one needs to imagine, and then the courage to do.” (Abe Kasbo, CEO Versoni Worldwide)
“The ability to see things that can’t be seen yet and may never be” (Stephane Mot, Author and Chief Propagandist)
Through to…
“Creativity is what you do when your fly won’t zip up and your first-date is at the door.” (Edwin Hung, COO Utopia Printing)

I think what was interesting was the varied interpretations of the word creativity – some saw it as a force for innovation in business, some self-expressionism and an intrinsic part of the soul, others as a unique activity in itself (e.g. as in the ‘creative’ industries).

And look who won the swot prize for best answer

Anyway, here’s my LinkedIn profile – please become ‘linked’ to me as I need some more links/friends!

Facebook

I got into Facebook a few week back and, like many new converts, am hooked. The premise is, it’s like MySpace for students and (not really quite) grown-ups, where you link with your real life college friends and share photos, news, entertainment recommendations and sometimes turn them into a zombie (in the form of 1000s of games and silly plug-in applications you can install with one click for maximum goofing around).

What’s most amazing about how Facebook’s technology influences the community, is that every action you take, you send out a slug trail (or feed) to all of your Facebook friends (aka your real friends) telling them you’ve joined a group, made a new friend, posted an announcement etc. This is an amazingly intuitive way of sharing fun, light bits of transient knowledge (a bit like Twitter, which I see as being part and parcel of the Facebook type of social networks) – particularly as the feeds only stay live for a couple of days – thus the need to log back in regularly to see what’s happening in your personalised community.

Rather than write a formal email requiring a formal response, I can post a ‘hows tricks?’ email to a friend or colleague through their Facebook email or write on their ‘wall’ (which will be visible to all, but you can only see the reply if you’re friends with both people corresponding), making communication more light, fluid, informal and fun. Of course, living your life so publicly can have big repercussions in protecting your identity (one in five employers admit to using Facebook to vet potential employees’ suitability).

Today, I found out that one friend in my locality is going to my local for Sunday lunch (handy if I wasn’t stuck 300 miles away due to the floods), some guys I used to be in a band with are doing a gig, and an old friend is ‘no longer married’ and a work contact is ‘now single’ (the latter may be a result of a change to their profile as oppose to a final decree.). So here are my five tips tips for using Facebook:

1. If you value your privacy very highly, don’t use it
2. If you value privacy quite highly, don’t use a photo or join a regional network, and only link with people you really know and trust
3. Don’t put up anything you aren’t proud of doing, especially photos, or write about places or things (like work) you don’t want some people to know you’ve been to – i.e. keep it light!
4. Learn how to delete stuff off your mini-feed (grey cross) if you change something (like joining the Patridge Family Appreciation group) but you don’t want everyone to know.
5. Try and create an identity where you are around open people and can be open about the kind of person you are and the live you lead (desirable, but obviously not always possible).

The language, tone and main user groups for Facebook is under 25s US college students and alumni (e.g. how to I say I’ve worked as a contact/associate with someone but not at the same company?) – so how does it work as a business tool? As well as the ‘light touch’ informal contact, you could download the Happy Hour application and buy your real life contact a virtual drink – handy if you’re 100s of miles away! You could also pose a question to your group, as you can in LinkedIn, but it’s better to keep it more of the fun and frivolous rather than deep and meaningful (I was bitten by a zombie by a digital media colleague!) – and be careful you can guess your contacts share a similar humour. You can gain a deeper, richer idea of your clients/contacts through learning what they are up to – what their hobbies are, what films they like etc. It’s legal snooping! As a business tool, it’s better for younger people as oppose to more traditional colleagues or formal relationships, although, the Vice Chancellor of University of Bristol tells me he has a Facebook profile, and the recent contest for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was described in the press as a ‘facebook off’ for popularity. For me, there needs to be more critical mass among my business contacts and more business-focused applications for it to be more useful, but it is growing.

Here’s my Facebook profile (or ‘I am not a number’).

MySpace

The mother-ship of all social networks, MySpace (aka MurdochSpace) is not just a website, it’s a terms used to describe a whole generation – the previous Generation X. But you’re not included. Except maybe you are. It accounts for 80% of all social networks traffic, is rumoured to have over 100 million worldwide users (though typically only 20% may be active at one time) , and was valued at $580 million when bought by NewsCorps in 2005. It’s total value could reach $15 billion within years, though on paper (or should that be wires?).

Money aside – what’s it for? Think: the social network with multimedia. You create a profile or identity (typically a pseudonym) and start off with a friend they give you called Tom (ditch him quick or he’ll skew your number of connection profiles). Then you search and hit ‘add to friends’ to connect with your real friends – and if you like, the bands, actors or people you admire (sometimes run by their labels, sometimes by fans or as parodies) and even make friends will people the world over you don’t yet know. You can upload, share and comments on videos, pictures and music and ‘tag’ your profile (like a teenager would their bedroom) with multimedia badges of interest, or ‘pimp my myspace‘ with some extra colour, backgrounds and HTML.

But where MySpace has come into its own is as a means of promoting new music – Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen claim to have been ‘created’ by MySpace, but remember they both had significant record deals at the tim. The website provided a good platform for promoting their music, cheaply, to an international audience.

I’m a musician and have a profile for my music on MySpace. As a musician, it’s indispensable. I like it because I know I can check out a band and always get the same ‘ingredients’ – four songs, pictures, a list of influences and friends, and a means of getting in touch – I can add or read comments if I want. (Although I wish people didn’t abuse their profiles with nasty background images and bad design – there’s no accounting for people’s tastes ) It saves going through a hard to navigate band website to find all that. I can ‘re-discover’ musical artists from the past, and new ones. It’s enabled me to hook up with ‘friends of friends’ and meet old bands I’ve played with or know from before in London. The downside is, lots of requests from people with tenuous connections musically, and I do like to check out all the requests I get to see whether I think they’re suitable or related enough to be a friend – I have my own ‘brand’ to consider and it becomes a time-consuming activity which may be distracted from me doing more direct forms of marketing.

From a commercial point of view, I haven’t found MySpace great for upselling music – I’ve only sold one CD through a MySpace contact. It tends to be a bit of a ‘free lunch’ scenario where people want it all for free. And the ‘rot’ has already set in with opportunistic pluggers using ‘friends’ profiles to post adverts (often dubious porn type content too) or general meaningless self promotion or the ubiquitous ‘thanks for the add’ message (post one of these and I will delete it!).

MySpace is much more about the mass connectivity than the more intimate experience of Facebook, it’s about a sense of playfulness, parody, and what I’d glibly call ‘youth’. But what’s the business benefit? I think it’s limited for most – if you have a youth brand (music venue, band, T-Shirt manufacturing, photographer) it’s an invaluable way of making links but the connection isn’t ‘deep’, it’s very surface level. The commissioning editors of Channel 5 all have MySpace profiles and other business figures – but it can be hard to control – competitors could post negative comments on your message board. If you can work the network and build up a significant volume of ‘leads’, you can message them through MySpace in a less intrusive way than email – but you’ll need extra software to navigate MySpace’s crumbling, poor and sluggish interfaces (it’s stuck in Web 1.9 rather than 2.0 and above as an online experience – frustrating). You can’t control your brand through the platform (one reason big advertisers have stayed away), but others can abuse it – my friends include Prince Harry and Cillit Bang man (from the advert), who has more friends than Gordon Brown (tag line: ‘don’t you wish your MP was hot like me?). Use MySpace as a platform if you have a product to showcase or you just want to use it as a means of ‘bookmarking’ interesting stuff.

Social networking: make it work for you

So these are my experiences – what about you? Let me know how you find these sites for your own business connections. Of course, I’m not being remiss by missing out YouTube, Flickr or Last FM etc. – while these are major social network sites, I see them more as platforms than communities – you go to YouTube to watch a video, not make a friend or business lead.

I don’t think the perfect tool is yet how there for business – but perhaps there never will be. Web 2.0 to 3.0 is much more about forming niche communities of interest, and perhaps that will be through existing portals and brands – e.g. Internet Movie Database (IMDB) builds a community around the existing names in its catalogue.

To make a social network effective for you, remember it is not ‘free’, like all contacts, you have to put in significant time into searching, seeking, cajoling and mining your friends’ friends contact to increase your network. But there’s no point in having 50,000 ‘friends’ as many MySpacers do (mainly through software like Badder Adder), each connection has to be meaningful and regularly nourished with extended contact – on and off line.

Not all social websites are for you – decide your goals, maybe as a means to ‘bookmark’ some work colleagues (they may stay with the network longer than their job) that is as fine as using one to announce your next divorce…