Christy Dena

[BCS3 promo video from BCS2 pics by Ivo Brett]

I went to BarCampSydney 3 yesterday as an attendee, not an (un)organiser, for the first time. I pulled out of (un)organising because of the time needed to commit to the preparation, time which I had to put towards finishing my PhD. So, it was a real blast to be able to turn up when I felt like it and just move around listening to whatever talks I wanted. Previously I had blogged writeups of BCSs that spoke about the spirit of entrepeneurs and facilitating and feeling the effects of participation. This year I’ll just give a short run down of some of the highlights for me and a handful of observations.

Some Highlights:

Joseph Gentle’s talk about object-oriented operating systems. That isn’t what he called the idea (he hasn’t got a name for it yet), and it isn’t the first time it has been attempted, but I really liked hearing someone talking blue sky about making computing better.

Ryan Cross’s sensible talk about Drupal (Drupal Asia Pacific Conference) and Project Pier (open source project management and community system) and then sharing villager tactics during Werewolf.

Laim Hodge (Nick Hodge jnr) talking about Anonymous. I was really curious to find out some more information about Anonymous.

I have to admit, I only found out about them for the first time in January when the Chanology Project launched:

Laim said that he is a member of Anonymous (yes, you can be known and unknown at the same time). He explained that Anonymous began in Japan with the chan image sites (and have grown to English sites such as 4Chan and 7Chan and so on). [Warning, there are no restrictions on what is posted and you may need to clear your cache afterwards.] Anonymous has at least 20,000 members worldwide and is not governed by any leaders. There have been many events undertaken by members that are not accepted by the others, but there is no control or repurcussions within the community. Fox News did a report on Anonymous after Anonymous accessed Fox’s ftp site and changed the file names to those of a song.

And then Anonymous apparently posted a response (which it should be noted is authored by an individual or a small group — Anonymous does not speak as one voice):

Many members of anon and non members of anon (!) have also posted their extreme views on the Foxx11 report:

Haha! I couldn’t help myself.

The BCS Anonymous member explained that some of the events mentioned in the Fox11 report were not the work of Anonymous, some were denounced internally and others were just for laughs. Well, it was no surprise to find out that the main demographic of Anonymous is high-school male geeks (ITers). Project Chanology seems to be the only project they’ve done that attempts to do some good. It seems such a waste to have all these skills and dispersed power being used on destructive activities. I cannot help but juxtapose ARGers with Anonymous: both have alot of Net skills and are quite cyberculture literate, yet ARGers channel their skills in a more creative direction than Anonymous, whereas ARGers are perhaps not as proactive as Anonymous; ARGers have a strong sense of community whereas Anonymous are unified by their anonymity…I think perhaps it is an unfair juxtaposition but I find it interesting culturally nevertheless.

One thing I want to add to my comments about Liam’s presentation is his attitude. I spoke with Liam afterwards and he was sincerely interested if he got his message across. I believe he got up again on the second day and attempted to improve on his previous presentation. I just love that: being sincerely interested in getting your message across and improving yourself over and over again to make sure that happens. Impressive life skill to have so young Liam. Good on ya.

On that note, I did a quick presentation (with no prep) to get a t-shirt and some feedback. My talk was crap, but I’m not bothered. I learnt more about how tech people think and I was reminded of a lesson I’ve had the opportunity to learn over and over again (that is the funny thing about experience, it takes time to develop). The lesson I allude to is the need to start right from the beginning when explaining a problem or solution to something. I often presume some degree of shared knowledge or understanding and jump straight to a middle or end thought. In my experience, this approach has never, ever, worked! Start from step (A) always, but you can vary how long you take to get from (A) to (Z).

Back to BCS3. I also enjoyed Brett Welch’s talk about how GoodBarry has faired since the last BarCampSydney. GoodBarry is an integrated system for running an online business. It is pretty cool the way it bundles together website management, customer database, web analytics and customer profiling. Brett’s ‘5 Lessons in 5 Months’:

1. Advertising is useful but measure it carefully.
2. Leverage PR around (before, during and after) your tech releases.
3. Take a punt on marketing.
4. Make mistakes properly.
5. Everything takes longer than you think.
Bonus: Be UnConventional. Unlike some tech businesses, they’ve created a ‘storybook‘ to share the beginning of GoodBarry. (See below)

Now, the lessons Brett has learnt are nothing new, but what I appreciated was his desire to share these lessons. As with previous BarCampSydney’s, the discussion after Brett’s talk started to move into general entrepeneur discussions with Mike of Atlassian throwing in some gems. However, the conversation was cut short to keep to the alloted time. This is something I’d recommend to change as the entrepeneurship sessions are great discussions (and since they even ran into 2 hour sessions at the last BarCampSydneys we had decided to put a longer dedicated session.) Unfortunately this lesson didn’t rollover into BCS3, but maybe the next one.

Speaking of Atlassian, I just peaked again at Mike’s blog and saw their recently articulated company values. Very nice.

• Open company. No bullshit.
• Build with heart and balance.
• Don’t fuck the customer.
• Play, as a team.
• Be the change you seek.

In terms of the BCS (un)organisation. The Great stuff:

• Ideal new venue (finally!)
• Timekeepers who told you what is happening in the other rooms so you could choose where to go
• Alison R’s great idea of the Geek-i-odic Table of Elements (you put your elemental abbreviation on your name tag)
• Great breakout room
• Great to have a free meal! and drinks (thanks to Atlassian for the drinkies and Tangler for putting towards the din dins)
• BCS tweets
• Playing Werewolf for hours was the best! (Thanks Mike!)

Stuff to change?:

• In the previous BCS (do I sound like an old fart? “back in my day!”), we made sure in blog posts and on the day that everyone knew what BCS was about and primed with the spirit. I missed the intro session at BCS3 so this may have been covered.
• Although the t-shirt for presenters-only was a good incentive (I did a random talk to get one), it would of been nice to just have a t-shirt. There wasn’t any problem getting people to present in the last BCSs, but maybe it encouraged newbies. I don’t know, from what I saw the majority of presentations were prepared in some manner.
• A dedicated long entrepeneur discussion session (as well as the pitch session)
• We tried to arrange podcasts of the talks last time (Nick Hodge did some in the first BCS), but it never happened. Hope it will happen sometime.
• One thing I requested and so I’m not sure if anyone else wants it, is a way to know the handles and avatars of the people there. I know most people that way and would of loved to have been able to track them down (through a board perhaps where people bring their own avatar print out or something?). They did run a speed networking session which was very popular I believe.
• Mick came up with the great idea of a sausage sizzle for lunch (though they had free pizzas on Sunday, supplied by acidlabs)

Speaking of Mick. It was fab to catch up with Mick and find out about his great new business: Pollenizer. He and Phil are a start-up swat team that come into a business and help solve problems etc. Fab stuff.

Well, that is it for another few months of BCS. I had a great time. Congrats to the unorganisers, sponsors and participants…and I can’t believe I missed the paper plane session:

Oh yeah — postscript — to all those who were friendly, interesting, intelligent, helpful, generous, curious, funny and brave @ BCS3:

Recently pervasive game designer & researcher Jane McGonigal’s idea about ‘Alternate Reality Business’ mades the Harvard Business Review annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas”. Here is a snippet from Jane’s blog:

In the coming decade, many businesses will achieve their greatest breakthroughs by playing games—specifically, alternate reality games, or ARGs. Custom-designed ARGs will enable companies to build powerful collaboration networks, discover solutions to specific business problems, forecast opportunities, and innovate more reliably and quickly.

Why? ARGs train people in hard-to-master skills that make collaboration more productive and satisfying. Playing an ARG teaches 10 collective-intelligence competencies. These include cooperation radar, a knack for identifying the very best collaborators for a given task, and protovation, the ability to rapidly prototype and test experimental solutions. Using these skills, players amplify and augment one another’s knowledge, talents, and capabilities. Because ARGs draw on the same collective-intelligence infrastructure that employees use for “official” business, games will map directly to a familiar reality—no translation required.

As these competencies mature within a business, ARGs will provide a truly stimulating framework for doing everyday work. Few meetings are as engaging as an ARG, whose emerging narrative evokes players’ shared sense of urgency and whose puzzles and clues deepen their curiosity. The structure for collaboration is clear, with players rallying around explicit goals and continually sharing theories, tactics, and results. Playing also generates compelling momentum: The puppet master monitors and rewards participants’ efforts, and times the release of new challenges so that players experience multiple cycles of success.

Of course, Jane was also involved in the design and community management of the biggest serious ARG World Without Oil. There have been many examples of small-scale ARGs being created for education and training though. Well, recently, ARG designer Dave Szulborski was involved in the design of an ARG for the military. Here is some info from their release:

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.

Congrats Dave and Jane!

Last year DIY filmmaking pioneers Lance Weiler (The Last Broadcast, Head Trauma, WorkBookProject), Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) and M dot Strange (We Are The Strange) got together and came up with the idea for a film festival in which audiences can watch films they choose in theatres, in their living room, online and via mobile phones. Not only does this give audiences choice and the filmmakers a global audience, all filmmakers are welcome to submit, they retain their rights, pay no fees AND get revenue directly from the distribution outlets. They’ll also be running virtual panels. Here is some more info about their goals:

The festival’s goal is to create a direct connection between filmmaker and audience. There are no submission fees for filmmakers. FHTA attempts to create multiple revenue opportunities for the festival filmmakers by providing a platform that enables distribution across multiple outlets - mobile, online, living rooms and theaters. Filmmakers retain all their rights and choose how to price their work.

In an interesting twist we’ve decided to put the programming of the festival directly in the hands of the audience. By harnessing the power of social tools, audience members will be able to discover, share and assist in programming the festival.

FROM HERE TO AWESOME consists of four main parts.

1. Discovery – filmmakers and audience members use core features and functions of youTube and myspace to submit and select projects that will be showcased in FHTA.

2. Education – audience members learn filmmaking in an engaging and fun way that has them interacting with their peers and directly with showcased filmmakers.

3. Sharing – audience members enjoy interesting feature length and
short form entertainment which they have helped to program.

4. New Models - the goal of FHTA is to experiment with new distribution models for filmmakers that give them realistic options for reaching global audiences and seeing a return for their creative efforts.

In their generous style, they’re already sharing tips and tricks:

So check it out! It is going to be AWESOME!

I’ve gone a bit New Year crazy and posted four items on UC101:

Ep 002: Transcript of Evan Jones Interview

The first is the text transcript of Evan Jones’s interview – he’s got some great quotes in there (and my conversational style doesn’t translate too well) :/

Admin Update: What’s Happening?

The admin update is a quick overview of what I think this exciting area needs, changes to the UC101 site and a call for contributors. So let me know if you’re interested!

Launching Strategy: Birth Your Alternate Reality in an ARG Community

The launching strategy post is the first in single-topic articles that share some of the lessons learnt so far. In this article I tackle how one can get around the ‘hoax’ issue in ARGs.

Possibility Post: Will Integrated Media Homes Kick the Holodeck’s Butt?

This article is the first exploring possibilities for the future. In particular I look at storytelling and gaming possibilities in a media integrated home.

I look forward to hearing any feedback and ideas you may have.

I participated in three panels this past week, three panels that I really enjoyed.

Designing, Experiencing and Analysing Games in the Age of Integration, Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference
The first panel was actually my own panel at the 2007 Interactive Entertainment Conference. Here is the blurb:

The contextual framing of this panel is that this age is not about digital media, but the relationships between all media, digital and not. This panel addresses, therefore, the design, experience and analysis of games in an integrating media context. The specially selected panel addresses these media proliferation concerns.

I did something different with this panel. Instead of the usual presentation with Q&A at the end, I did a mix of the unconference style (I learnt from organising BarCampSydney) and chairing in general. I repositioned all the chairs into a circle and told everyone that not only can they ask a question at any time, they can answer one at anytime too! The idea is that everyone has something to add, and that the panelists were provocateurs rather than the only experts in the room. I facilitated discussion by asking the panelists about the ideas they presented in their papers and encouraging conversational exploration of issues. I’m thrilled to say the experiment worked well, I received alot of great positive feedback from the panelists and participants. Well done to the panelists for jumping wholeheartedly into the experiment and doing so well on the day. They were fabulous! Here is the info about their papers:

In his paper, ‘Citizenship and Consumption: Convergence Culture, Transmedia Narratives and the Digital Divide’, media studies Research Fellow and PhD candidate Tom Apperley problematises the experience of ‘transmedia storytelling’ in the context of gaming in Venezuela. In his paper, ‘Place as Media in Pervasive Games’, game designer and lecturer Hugh Davies explores the role of space in pervasive games. Games and interactivity lecturer Christian McCrea charts a synchronic and diachronic course through the co-presence of media within digital games in his paper: ‘Then, Suddenly, I Was Moved: Nostalgia and the Media History of Games’. In ‘Capturing Polymorphic Creations: Towards Ontological Heterogeneity and Transmodiology’, Christy Dena discusses methodologies to analyse polymorphism (from transmedia storytelling to pervasive games to telematic arts).

All the papers are online

Also, I would like to note it was great to spend time getting to know some interesting minds: Robin Hunicke, Troy Innocent, Adam Nash and Kevin McGee.

What Happened to New Media Art?, Australasian Interactive Entertainment Conference

So was it the mobile phone or changes at the OzCo? Why has new media art apparently disappeared from the cultural landscape? Key cultural institutions such as ACMI have made the transition from pixels to Pixar. Games criticism is thriving at a time when discussions of media art histories recede into the background. Or do we need to revise our definitions of what is new media art? Does anyone really care about interactivity any more? In the age of machinima and Second Life, is there still a place for “new” media art?

In this panel discussion key media artists, curators and writers will debate these issues.

Interactivity may, or may not, be present during the discussion.

This panel was organised by new media arts critic and educator Darren Tofts. It included educator, critic and curator Shiralee Saul; director, critic, writer and curator Philip Brophy; new media artist Marcia Jane and myself. I found the discussion very interesting because, to me, it made it very clear that there are generational issues with the question that are related to how much someone identifies themselves through ‘new media arts’. I’ve been commissioned to write an opinion peice on it for RealTime, so more in a couple of months.

Cyber-Born Film, Destination Film Festival

The revolution will be downloaded… It’s an exciting time in filmmaking right now. Using Four-Eyed Monsters as a starting point - the superb ’YouTube feature’ - our panel will explore how online and digital culture has r/evolutionised and challenged traditional means of production, distribution and exhibition. Has the internet made these conventional methods all but redundant? How? And where are things moving to? A range of viewpoints will be heard across the spectrum - from filmmakers and producers to artists and web designers.

This panel was organised by film critic, journalist and director Megan Spencer. The panelists included Arin Crumley of Four Eyed Monsters fame (via video Skype); remix artists Dan & Dominique Angeloro of Soda_Jerk ; highly regarded film producer Rosemary Blight; Rachael Lucas, the director of cult hit Bondi Tsunami; DOP, Producer/Cinematographer Streetsweeper Toby Ralph; director and composer Jason Sweeney and me.

It was a great panel, discussing contemporary strategies for film distribution, marketing, filmmaking and emerging transmedia film forms. I’ve been commissioned to write an opinion piece on this too, so more coming soon.

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in these panels, catching up with people I haven’t seen for a while and meeting new people. Lots of great minds bursting to get out there…and I’m happy to be riding the wave - no - creating it with them.

OK, cheesy title aside…I’m really excited about this guy: Taylor Mali, a slam poet and educator. I have a past life as a poet and comedian and am currently an educator too. I have always drawn on these past experiences, but Taylor has inspired me to go even further! I love passionate people. Here are some of his poem videos:

“Totally Like Whatever”

“What Teachers Make”

“The the Impotence of Proofreading”

“Miracle Workers”

“Where is Your Favourite Place to Write?”

• Check out Taylor Mali