Last September I took a training with the founder of Innovation Games Luke Hohmann (to be a game facilitator) and it was amazing set of fun “games” to play with the users/customers of one’s products. Quite different then a focus group in terms of the kind of information that you get about how to shape/design your products. (wikipedia article – details all 12 games and information about selecting the appropriate game)

I know what you are asking how is playing games going to help with my products, workplace or process. I wondered this too….here is a simple example.

I explained one of them (Buy a Feature) this way at the Online Community Unconference – say you have a next generation set of features to build for your product – you have 10 potential features but only time to build a few of them – how do you prioritize/decide about which ones to put in the next release?

Buy a Feature is a game you can play to do this (and it is both online and face to face)

You bring in 10 current customers together and give them each $200 of play money. You give each of your features a cost totaling $3000-$4000 (one might be $100 (really easy to build) $500 (harder/more time) etc.) They must amongst themselves figure out how to spend their $2000 to buy a limited set of the 10 features. You could play this with several sets of customers and then gather information about what they want. It helps you make decisions about what to build AND it is fun for them to play the game of “buying” the features they want.

The conference is not limited to “just” innovation games but also includes other design and “serious” games.

• Design games: Offering collaborative design activities within a game format improves idea generation and communication among stakeholders. By shifting focus to the game, power relations and other factors that might hamper idea generation, are downplayed

• Serious games: Ranging from theater improvisation to interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors, serious games have uses in education, government, health, military, science, corporate training, first responders, and social change

You don’t have to be an expert to attend – if you are just exploring these things we invite you along.

There have been a few companies in the identity space that have used these tools – I just can’t say who.

I am also happy to talk with folks if they are interested in using games to innovate and do better product design in the identity and social web space.

Here is the book if you are interested in learning more.

“Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (Luke Hohmann)

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The camp movement has been a really inspiring one and in some ways quite utopian. “Just throw it together and it will happen”. Unconferences, just like conferences, require work in the form of time to put on and resources in the form of money to provide for them.

Events are not Free
I don’t believe in “free” events because if an event costs nothing to sign up for it costs nothing to not show to. In the past several “camps” that I was involved with facilitating have had upwards of 50% no-show rates. It is almost impossible to buy food and provision space if you don’t know how many people are coming to an event. The cost should be very reasonable and in paying a fee the attendee makes a contract with the organizer to actually attend. Via the transaction, the organizer makes a contract with the attendee to provide food, physical space and good organization/facilitation.

I like to think of unconferences as basically 10x cheaper then regular technology conferences and 10x better.

Why 10x cheaper?
Many Technology Conferences cost between $1000 and $2000 to attend. Yep this is a normal price range for a regular ticket at a conference.
* JavaOne – $2,590.00, conference+ | $1,795.00 regular conference
* RSA security conference – $3,995 conference+ | $2,195 regular conference
* Hot Chips Symposium on high performing chips – $815
* ETech – $1690 conference+ | $1390 regular conference
* Web 2.0 – $1745 conference+ |$1445 regular conference

One reason is that many of these these events are for-profit, they are trying to make money and lots of it off convening the event. Another reason is that a coffee break at these events can cost $15 per person to provide and a meal upwards of $60 per person per meal – yes, that bad conference food you ate at your last event cost the organizer that much. These events have costs associated with complimentary passes for speakers, press, analysts etc. These costs are born by the other attendees.

Why 10x Better?
The best part of many conferences are the coffee breaks – they are the interactions with the people. Why pay $1000s of dollars when the best parts are in the lobby? It kinda makes more sense to just make the “way of the lobby” be the way the whole conference works. Open Space Technology -the facilitated method that we use for She’s Geeky- was invented over 20 years ago. It supports the emergence of incredible peer to peer learning opportunities and vibrant discussions. You leave the day full of amazing new ideas and conversations with amazing women. It is totally worth the approximately $10 an hour of conference. I would be very surprised if you don’t come away with knowledge and contacts that are in the long run worth many more times that.

Why any cost at all?
The way of the lobby is not zero cost though – the venue costs multiple thousands of dollars and so does food for 200 women. We also have a coffee barista coming both days so you can have fresh espresso. There is a time cost to organizing and logistics that requires money for compensation.

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An article was written in the Boston Globe this week Tech Leaders Hope “unConference” will inspire entrepreneurs I was interviewed by the reporter Rob Weisman on Friday. They did a good job of talking about Open Space Technology – however it came off as if it was all “me”. Sigh.

For the unConference, the Massachusetts technology group has tapped a Berkeley, Calif.-based professional facilitator, Kaliya Hamlin, who has run about 50 similar events worldwide, mostly on the West Coast. Hamlin, known as “Identity Woman” for her work in the movement to enable a single log-on for all websites, promotes gatherings based around “open space technology” with no preset agendas.

“Whoever comes are the right people,” she said, summarizing her philosophy. “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. And whenever it’s over, it’s over.”

Whether such a free-flowing approach can work in tradition-bound Massachusetts remains to be seen. But interest is heavy. Hopcroft said the council is “oversubscribed” on experts and already has fielded 85 applications from entrepreneurs for scholarships.

I shared about the history of the Open Space Technology and how Harrison Owen invented it 20+ years ago and lives in Camden Main. Apparently this blew his whole story line that this was “new” to New England.

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She’s Geeky got mainstream press coverage. We were in the San Jose Mercury News on the front page of the biz-tech section (I just saw the paper version today). There are lots of great notes up about the event.

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I would encourage you all to let women you know in tech know about the event.

We have three simple goals with the event.

• Exchange skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.
• Discuss topics about women and technology.
• Connect the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky fields.

We have aimed to make it affordable and accessible for women costing $125 (until Sept 30).

I have written more about my motivations and hopes over on Identity Woman. We are doing a blog/link campaign today so if you want to blog about the event today is the day to do it.

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First I will do picture filled “tour” of unconfernce processes and patterns for about 1/2 an hour and then answering some questions.

The irony of being asked to speak about designing unconferences is not lost on me because conferences have experts or distinguished speakers share their knowledge broadcast style to an audience. I decided that it would only be appropriate to do what happens at unconferences tap into the knowledge is in the room because the BayCHI community has been to many 100′s of events, conferences, workshops, meetings. They know more collectively then I do.

We will use the discovery process of Appreciative Inquiry to share the knowledge in the room about effective and inspiring process at conferences.

The audience will divide up into dyads and answer these questions:
Think of a time in your entire conference going experience, when have you felt most alive, most inspired and most proud. What was it that made it a high point? Please tell that story. Follow up question What seemed particularly effective or innovative?

Then we will gather in small groups of 6-10:
First tell each others story to the others in the group.
2. Merge lists of key qualities and circumstances of peak (un)conference going experiences.
3. Pick from this list the top two elements.

Then with the whole audience will hear from each group the key elements they found in their group.

BJ a Dialogue Mapper will capture the whole audience participation. I will collect the papers that have the merged list of each of the groups and will post them likely on the dCamp wiki.

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[...] The format of the workshop consisted of an introductory afternoon, and then, well, then there was a 2 day coffee break. The coffee break started with some serious retro-geekery as people were asked to write down (with pens, on paper) topics that they wished to discuss and to place them in a time slot on the wall for one of the 7 meeting places. From a purely tech standpoint the wall was an elegant example of a fully interactive calendar, or meeting agenda, with advanced features like undo, redo, merge and insert but without the computer – genius. I can only wonder what features Kaliya Hamlin has in store for us when she releases the much anticipated harderware, Wall 2.0. The unconference format is an interesting live study in self organizing systems, and it works. [...]

Technorati Tags: identity, iiw, iiw2006, unconference, workshop

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