Come Out & Play

Game submission for NYC's Come Out & Play festival closed yesterday so now the count down is on until we can take over the streets of NYC and turn the whole city into a playground! The festival will run from June 12-14. The Tank, a wonderful non-profit arts space, will play host and serve as the central headquarters.

Lets hope old favorites like Snap-Shot-City and Korean Laserball will return as well as a host of other awesome and exciting games!

Congratulations Six to Start!

I posted a while ago about the awesomeness of Six to Start and their We Tell Stories project.
They have just been awarded the Experimental and Best of Show awards at SXSW for the collaboration with Penguin Books.

Congratulations!

Read more here:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/03/17/six-to-start-wins-big-at-sxsw/

Other big winners:

Games: Why So Serious? The Dark Knight Alternate Reality Game from 42 Entertainment
Community and Peoples Choice: Lost Zombies
Activism: Tweet Congress


Full listing here:
http://sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/winners

Extreme Neighborliness

Local communities are organizing to become stronger together. Described by Allison Arieff as “Extreme Neighborliness” - a concept “so old-fashioned as to seem innovative” - this movement is gaining power as scalable local initiatives are applied to the social web.

Carrotmob.org from San Francisco, and WannaStartaCommune? from LA are leading the way in community organizing for local economic, social and environmental benefit.


So Easy
Carrotmob uses the power of the crowd to effect sustainable change through local shopping. By harnessing an action that people are doing anyway – grocery shopping - and organizes in a way that uses the power of the group to demand sustainable action. One customer, buying one carton of milk, may not be able to influence their local retailer, but 500 customers, buying 500 cartons of milk, have a combined buying power that would make any local store pay attention.

At no extra financial or logistical cost, customers are secure that their purchases are working for local sustainable good. Carrotmog explains it well: Carrotmob simply asks people to coordinate and plan the purchases they are already making. This model is not threatening, not expensive, not time-consuming, not uncomfortable, not “radical,” not confusing, and not negative. It’s the perfect level of involvement for most people.


How Organized Consumer Purchasing Can Change Business from carrotmob on Vimeo.

SoYouWannaStartaCommune? is providing tools for small groups of neighbors to organize the sharing of local resources to save money, time and energy. They provide a downloadable pdf http://www.wannastartacommune.com/store/cart.php?m=view guide that gives instructions for Getting Started, What's in a Commune, a Resource-sharing Guide, Potluck & Workshop Planning Tools, Simple Organizational Documents and Technology Tips to help you manage and grow your commune.



They too harness the assets available at a small community’s disposal when they work together – Linked back yards or disused land? Room for a vege patch. Limited car parking? Try car sharing. Combined energy usage? Solar or wind power becomes a viable option for a group of housing. Varied work schedules? Potential for shared child minding. These assets are already in the community. All it takes is to come together in an organized way to take advantage of them.

win + win = WIN
Carrotmob challenges businesses to compete for consumer loyalty. As a result, these stores get a ready made fan base willing to support them. Though they pledge a percentage of their profit to sustainable improvements, they increase their customer base and increase total sales. By implementing sustainable improvements to their stores, they will also reap the reward of long term cost savings from increased energy efficiency.

Carrotmob can put rewards in place that will make environmental responsibility the most profitable choice. Companies will do what we want, not because of negative pressure, or morality, or a boycott, or a petition…there are enough sticks out there. We need a big juicy carrot. They will do what we say because they won’t be able to resist the profits.

SoYouWannaStartaCommune? challenges neighbors to pool their talents, assets and expenses to find sustainable and communal solutions.

Scalable
Carrotmob have big plans. They are using the power of the local to effect small changes in family owned businesses. The power of their movement now is firmly rooted in a block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood engagement. With a little organization, they see potential to move up from local grocery stores, to big shiny corporations. As the consumer communities they create grow larger, the more power they wield.

SoYouWannaStartaCommune? needs to be based in smaller local groups. As a community grows, and the less personal contact you have with each other, the less likely you are to go out of your way to compromise or help someone out. Working in groups based around culdesacs or apartment blocks defines a community and connects them with a strong bond of locality. That said, the suburban commune concept is infinitely scalable as communities form block by block, apartment complex by apartment complex.



Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Using the power of the group requires an organizer. Someone who is willing to lead and schedule and mediate. As demonstrated by these two initiatives, there are an increasing number of people out there willing to teach you the tools to organize. To enable you to harness the power of your local groups and challenge communities to effect change. In the words of Carrotmob – to “do it with the carrot not the stick”.

(PS. thanks to Will for the heads up on Carrotmob. x)

and Zombies

The new book by Seth Graham-Smith is feeding a Zombie frenzy. Just add “and Zombies” to a search and see what you can find.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton--and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers--and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.

By Seth Grahame-Smith

Road Signs and Zombies

Austin, Texas - Hackers perform public service warning commuters of Zombies in area: "Zombies ahead! Run for your lives!"

Interactive internet movies and Zombies

What would you do? This interactive horror film allows viewers to make their own decision to live or die. Make the right choice, and live on to the next scene. Make the wrong decision and it could be your last. Http://www.survivetheoutbreak.com

Banks and Zombies

Zombie Banks is “an apt label, given that zombies are basically "the outer husks" of what they once were, robbed of their inner soul and staying alive by feeding off the living”. Listen to Zombie Banks here at NPR.

Pirates and Zombies

Instructables.com - The World's Biggest Show and Tell - engages in a pirate attack on Threerings.com, makers of Whirled, an online game environment.

Three Rings gathers its zombie horde to defend its honor against the nefarious Instructables crew.

Reality TV & the Will to Participate

Is Big Brother responsible for the highest USA voter turnout since 1972?

• Youth Turnout Rate Rises to at Least 52% with 23 Million Voters Under 30
• 3.4 Million More Young People Vote than in 2004
• Young Voters Account for at Least 60% of Overall Increase
• 18% of All Voters Were Young

From CIRCLE – The Centre for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement


Have reality TV shows like Big Brother or American Idol - which challenge the audience to vote to determine the outcome of their entertainment - trained a generation of Americans to get to the polls?

Has voting for reality TV, trained us to vote in reality?

I went to a Communications Forum at MIT last week that focused on: Popular Culture and the Political Imagination. The panel included Johanna Blakley, David Carr, and Stephen Duncombe, with Henry Jenkins as moderator. The conversation focused on the new political consciousness taking shape in and around popular culture and raised the concept of the election as entertainment.



With larger than life villains and heroes, a classical “sword from a stone” story arc, celebrity cameos, unlimited interactive multi-platform media, and MC’d nightly by Colbert, Stewart, and Fey, the recent election played out like a blockbuster series of American Political Idol.

According to a 2001 survey of over 2000 Americans (aged 8 to 54): "The No. 1 reason people watch (reality TV) is the thrill of "guessing who will win or be eliminated from the show." That thrill is the reason cited by 69 percent of all reality TV watchers, and 84 percent of regular viewers, who make a point to watch. The second and third most common reasons viewers tune in are to "see people face challenging situations" and "imagining how I would perform in similar situations," stated by 63 percent and 42 percent of all viewers, respectively."

It is easy to see how these motivations for engagement could be transferred to the recent election. As the panel discussed, Obama was able to build an engaging and relatable brand that people really cared about, his message of HOPE was able to become a generic vessel for peoples aspirations and he became a symbol for people apply their own beliefs to. Like many reality show contestants, he started out as just a regular guy, he let people imagine how they would perform in his situation.



We have now been exposed to about 10 years of reality TV. As a society we understand the format, the tricks and what is expected of us as an audience. Audience responses demonstrate a sophisticated approach to what they are seeing that has been honed over long periods:
"The fact that audiences apply a sliding scale of factuality to reality programs suggests one of the ways they have learned to live with this genre over the past decade. Audiences watch popular factual television with a critical eye, judging the degree of factuality in each reality format based on their experience of other types of factual programming. In this sense, viewers are evaluators of the reality genre, and of factual programming as a whole."

As savvy evaluators of our media, we are now versed to demand certain things from our entertainment. One of those things is the ability to participate in the outcome of events.

In 2005, the Super Girls phenomenon hit mainland China. Super Girls is a pop star making program modeled on American Idol where contestants sing and are voted off by the audience. The final episode of the 2005 season was one of the most popular shows in Chinese broadcast history, drawing over 400 million viewers.




"One of the main factors contributing to the show's popularity was that viewers are able to participate in the judging process by sending text messages with their mobile phones to vote for their favorite contestants. During the 2005 regional contest in Chengdu alone, 307,071 message votes were cast for the top three contestants, each vote costing 0.5 to 3 yuan. This was considered as one of the largest "democratic" voting exercises in mainland China."

Audience participation has been cited as the most crucial factor in its success. As winners were determined by cellphone short messaging votes... the show "blazed a trail for cultural democracy," said Zhu Dake, a renowned critic of cultural matters. "It's like a gigantic game that has swept so many people into a euphoria of voting and selecting, which is testament of a society opening up," Zhu argued.

A further comment: An even more noteworthy thing is that the Super Girls have stimulated the will to participate. The SMS voting seems to have introduced a new form for direct election. It is direct, it is convenient, it is fast and it works. It can simplify the voting process. It can be done in a few minutes' time. It seems to be just a technical problem to make it become the main means of voting.

Politics as entertainment has the potential to both open doors to engagement and also trivialize important and serious issues. The key driver I see for encouraging a blend lies in the comment above – Stimulating the will to participate. If politics is entertainment, and people are taught to engage with their entertainment in a meaningful and critical manner, then people will learn the tools to increasingly engage in the debate, in the creation, and in the management of their society.

As we move towards increasingly interactive and pervasive entertainment, and audiences progressively demand the ability to influence and author the outcomes of events, it seems inevitable that we will learn to become more socially engaged in our communities.


Note – I would love to find some more recent data to dis/prove this. Who can help?

Shhhh...

Recently I’ve been posting a lot about growing trends for pop-ups and guerilla activities. Increasingly, these niche events are gathering operational momentum through the development of online communities accessed predominately through Facebook, blogs and mobile organizing tools. Secret-ish societies are forming to host underground events that are available only to a select crowd of people in the know, and are providing personalized individual experiences just for you and a select group of friends.

Not always entirely legal, in that they don’t always comply with licensing and fire code legislation, or are cash only, they are becoming an increasingly popular option for a good night out or intimate online experience.

Food

Kilburn The Underground Restaurant is a popup restaurant in London that has just caught my attention. Held in the chefs house, her blog acts as menu and chronicles the trials and tribulations of running a fine dining establishment in your front room. The blog is a great read, and based on reviews/photos, a pretty decent meal. Quite interesting that her paypal account, originally used to process guests payments, has been blocked – but luckily wegottickets.com has taken over this service. Now that it has started to get a bit of mainstream press I can only hope the exposure doesn’t kill it off. If you are in London, you better get in quick to experience the next Mexican themed meal.

(Note - You could also try a similar set up at the Secret Ingredient on Facebook)

Film

Secret Cinema started up in 2008 as a way to view films in a themed location with a select group of people. Quickly sponsored by Nokia, the group is now staging monthly film extravaganzas in secret locations around the UK. Sign up for updates, but Tell No One!

Sounds

Black Cab Sessions puts your favorite musicians into a black cab to record a song. They are simple and intimate moments with incredible artists as they sing their way through a city. This session with Brian Wilson is a must see. (Thanks Annette!)

Freeconomics

Before the economic collapse of the world as we knew it, there had been a little early freakshow interest and media coverage on the growing Freegan movement in the UK. Freegans are urban foragers who stalk the overflowing bins of supermarkets searching for tasty food just past its sell-by date.

Though they share some values, Freegans are not to be confused with Urban Foragers, who hunt through parks, gardens and roadsides for edible plants and berries to make a meal.


Sky Full of Bacon 07: Eat This City from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.

Once held up as radical examples of alternative lifestyles, they are now part of a growing movement of people seeking separation from the mainstream capitalist market economy. They join a growing group of people who are living a lifestyle based not on buy buy sell sell, but on barter and trade, on skill share, and on a currency of goodwill.

Called a Shareconomy, a Goodwill Economy, a Moneyless Economy, or Freeconomy, these people are forging a new way of living more communally or “off the grid”.

A Goodwill Economy can work in a number of ways. The simplest is through basic barter and exchange – I need a cake and I have a pair of shoes, you need some shoes and have a cake. We swap. We are happy. Hooray.

This is a long proven model that works in localized and engaged communities worldwide. In co-operatives and community farms food is often exchanged for physical labor. Between groups of friends clothing is pooled and exchanged to update wardrobes. What limits this as a more formal economic model is the direct relationship between the two parties – if our needs don’t align, then it doesn’t work.

As societies become larger and more complex, the model of barter and exchange limits expansion and growth. The introduction of a standard measurement or currency allows for greater scope for exchange of goods and services. Once we measured the worth of goods and services in gold weight – for example, a pair of shoes is worth so many grams in gold. Over time, this has evolved into our modern system of currency. Though modern paper money and coinage is, in itself, practically worthless, it is given value through the belief of that which is represents. So a five dollar bill is merely the idea of something given the value of five dollars.

What goodwill economists are experimenting with is changing the ideology of the currency. Instead of paying for a cake with dollars and cents, or trading it for a pair of shoes, the cake becomes worth a value of goodwill. This goodwill can be traded for other goods and services, or stored and accumulated for later use.

This still sounds like money right? Well it is, kind of. It performs the function of currency, but also has a collective effect of working to build social capital.

Robert Putnum, expert in social capital and author of Bowling Alone, writes about how more socially engaged communities perform acts of kindness and community action with a trusting belief that these gifts of goodwill will be returned at some undefined point in the future. Not valued in monetary terms, the act of giving time to community pursuits and taking part in communal activities are critical ways to sustain a more healthy and engaged community.

In a goodwill or share economy, these acts of kindness and generosity generate status for the individual, and contribute to a more efficient community. In a goodwill economy, wealth is redefined through active participation in your community, being rich means accumulating goodwill status through your engagement with others. These are communities defined by trust, participation status and personal experience.

Wikipedia works on the principles of a shareconomy rewarding the community as a whole for the input of individuals. Web based recommendation and rating models, as popularized by Amazon or Ebay, reward engaged users with higher status and build connection and trust among the community.

Goodwill economy websites have potential to combine similar status models with online banking hybrids to track personal progress. People are rewarded with greater opportunity the more they meaningfully participate, to create insular economies of highly engaged individuals on a broad and complex global scale.

Examples:

The hub for international Freeconomists is justfortheloveofit.org – you go to the site to give and get given – build up goodwill, engage with a global community of like minded individuals, and feel good about spending up big!



Couchsurfing.com is a site that uses community status to generate an economy of sleepovers and short stay accommodation. Couchsurfing founder Joe Edelman has recently launched his new venture Groundcrew.us, a mobile tool designed to mobilize crowds with individual missions and messages. Joe has aims of using Groundcrew to create a new goodwill economy of mobile experiences generated by a community of engaged individuals.



Swappler.com is a highly anticipated new site from the Portable Content crew that acts as

“an online fashion portal and brand that takes designers, stores and consumers online. As an entry level it allows style and eco-conscious people to upload their clothes and swap them with other people from around the world.”

Even the Freegans, early radical activists against over consumption and economic excess, are now touching a mainstream audience more broadly concerned with living a socially engaged and sustainable lifestyle.





Who would have thought that digging around in bins would be a precursor to a new age of social engagement and enlightenment!