Archive for category Events
Social gaming to gamification – March 14th
On a chilly Monday evening over 120 people attended our Social Gaming to Gamification panel debate with Speakers: Nicholas Lovell from Gamesbrief and Matt Maxwell from Blue Barracuda who were joined by Panellists: Brittney Bean, Sam Sethi, Odera from Groupon, and Katie Bell from Stardoll Network. We were gathered at Olswang to discuss the impacts of Social Gaming, the gamification of products and services, games mechanics and what the future holds.
Nicholas Lovell kicked off with supercharged enthusiasm describing how and how not to build a social gaming strategy and he warned – it is expensive. He suggested using some of your marketing spend, emphasized the need to understand your player, warned this is a “process, not a project” it doesn’t stop and there are unintended consequences. He suggested using the Bartle Test to find out if you / your targets are Killers, Socializers, Achievers or Explorers and save at least 50% of your budget for after Launch.
Matt expanded on the fact that everyday alot changes but the people haven’t, their motivations are the same and gamification has long existed but now we have new tools to play with.
Katie was challenged on the ethics of tweens gaming, she pointed out the fact that gaming helps you test out who you want to be and users are secure and have control over their profiles to delete/ start all over again providing a unique environment for them on Stardoll (97 million subscribers btw). Sam Sethi sugegsted children should not be given monetary rewards but achievements instead. but It was noted that games can effect behavioural change in children and society at large..
We touched on whether we harness the power of gaming to improve Health care, education, sustainability and low carbon economy services..(http://www.kiva.com mentioned as example) and for once, fraud, identity theft and security were barely mentioned.
Brittney pointed out “Gaming is supposed to be fun!” Her aim is develop games for real people to play and have fun. Should we be gamifying? Is it still fun?
Some clever spark mentioned that “Life is a Game” which lead to alot of speculation about who might be winning and in whose opinion, many of the (male dominated) audience were plumping for Charlie Sheen (definitely his first mention at @mashupevent).
Games are good for engagement and retention but not customer acquisition unless you are directing them off the game —> somewhere. Games are targetted at the time rich and cash poor.
Facebook fear reared it’s ugly head – ” are we all going to disappear down the black hole which is Facebook?” but Brands will go where the customers are. Odera believes we’re starting to design around the customer and Facebook is only the first step.
Foursquare came out badly as the audience felt it wasn’t a game … and people want access to rewards money can’t buy.
The crafty audience were point scoring and badge awarding on the twitter feed!
Photos from the night
Magicsolver demo’d their games and app along with Crowdscanner ’s networking product which attendees participated in you can see the results here and join in here
Techfluff were on site interviewing and filming See @ssethi @mattmax @Stardoll in video at http://ow.ly/4ftdY
NEXT EVENT: Our next event “Energy 2.0 – Energy goes Digital“ 31st March with @Forum4theFuture
Open Social – 8th July 2010 @ AMV BBDO
Despite a warm evening we enjoyed a great turn out last Thursday night at AMV BBDO who kindly hosted the Open Social event.
Speakers Jemima Gibbons and Matt Nash along with panellists Josh Feldberg, Mat Ryer and Nathan Guerra gave us snappy insights to many projects using Social Media fluently.
Examples such as:
The Orange Glastonbury photo http://glastonbury.orange.co.uk/ Where you can tag your friends – currently showing over 7,000 tags – What was the value? Just the pr gimmick, or are they collecting data?
Wagamama menu – liking what’s in the restaurant as you are in it and seeing what everyone else likesBakers tweet – fresh croissants – auto-tweeting when they are out of the oven ..
Zappos encourages new employees to use Twitter, is this still part of an overall marketing strategy or embracing the open social love?
Though we managed to steer clear of the banned topics of privacy and security, by assuming these would all be fixed in a foreseeable future, we kept on coming back to the Facebook Like button ( see previous event! ) There’s clearly huge frustration and dissatisfaction around the Like button .. do we want a Dislike button, a Support button, a Recommend button or simply an “I use” button ( HM has long had one of these)Or would data on how many people ignored the Like button be useful? And what does it mean to Like something in Facebook terms anyway?
As mentioned by Matt Nash – 65 million people are clicking Like every day on Facebook – but is this “Liking” products, brands and services or “Liking” a friends comment or photo?
Some people won’t use Facebook – where does that leave brands and those people?
Our social behaviour online emulates our “real”(!) lives but we recognised the difficulty of restricting our sharing of information between different groups of people.
In real life this is done fluidly and fluently, most of the time (!), but online it’s requiring some extra thought.
How exciting is Augmented Reality combined with Open Social? How can we confirm that these potential acquaintances are reliable – part of “our tribe” ?
There was a feeling that your locality will be enhanced with the abiltity to collect and share info recommending places nearby.. foursquare may be more effective on this but with it taking only 5 people to make Kings Cross a “trending” place and only 4 people at the event having “checked in” at AMV BBDO there appears to be some difficulty persuading people to adopt new social apps and participate.
Are we going to tire of adopting new social apps, maybe the early adopters won’t but will non geeks tire of having to keep up?!
For example there was a lot of noise surrounding Google Wave/ buzz? But how successful has take up been? Apparently those in the States have been suddenly adopting buzz in past few weeks – starting to use buzz to control outputs to tw/ fb/ etc Platforms v embedded - would embedded mean more fluid conversation less waiting for each individual to “join” an app etc etc
Matt felt something new was in the air and ultimately wanted to know where are the cool kids? Will the subversive counter culture provide the next best Social movement?
Josh was buzzing with ideas and visions of our future enhanced Social lives – imagining a foursquare-esque scenario when a visitor who visits an animal at London zoo would own the lion or the monkey etc And those visiting “Josh’s chimpanzee” could send updates/ photos to the “owner”.Jemima concluded that the impact ultimately of an increasingly Open Social world should be coercing companies and brands to create services and products people actually want .. maybe more sustainable.. rather than pushing an undesirable product or service.
We had Demos from Gerrard Wilcoxson promoting the Europeam Satellite Navigation Competition – Win £10000 cash, 6 months business incubation and more – full details here: http://ukesnc.com/
Kumbooka also demo’d their neat service which will “Socialise your stuff”. Gary Edmonstone, founder of Kumbooka later said “We saw a very positive response from a meeting of some of the key industry watchers.
We have turned social networking around and placed people’s stuff, their personal possessions, right at the heart of a new social network. It’s their stuff that mostly defines who they are
and with Kumbooka, they can attach digital content like photos to their camera or recipes to their food mixer and give a personal dimension to the possessions that reflect their personality.”
SLIDES
from @jemimag
http://www.slideshare.net/jemimag/truly-social
from Matt Nash @oosocial
Being Social ‘10 – post event catchup
We had a fabulous afternoon at the King’s Fund on Thursday 13th May in the company of many authorative voices from the world of Social Media.
@Dom_AsdaPR went down a storm with his tales of Asda’s use of Twitter – very much a “just get in there and do it”. At Asda HQ they have a board with an “Asda” twitter stream and employees are encouraged to engage with the twitter conversation whenever they have a few minutes to spare (as well as having a more formal approach obviously! ).
The subject of ROI was something which speakers, panellists and the audience referred to again and again – it’s the instant question demanded of those proposing Social Media use and there were varied responses, including analysis of the usefulness of monitoring but also “how long is a piece of string?” Will McInnes noted that the benefits are also not necessarily instantaneous and may take 9 months or more to become apparent.
In the evening we held a “Politics and Social Media” panel which can only be described as the most animated of all the debates. My takeaway comment came from @Tom_Watson who, in regard to point being made regarding the lack of take up of Social media by politicians, noted that many would-be politicians had failed to be selected as PPC’s precisely because of the way that they had used Social Media e.g. innappropriate comments on Twitter causing sufficient backlash. So whilst Social Media has yet to be adopted widely across British politics it is apparent that it has made plenty of ripples, so watch this space. My personal thought would be that for politicians social media allows a level of transparency and instant interaction which, at the moment, most are not ready for.
Blogs below:
@gabrielleNYC http://sociable.net/
@Chris_Reed from Brew Digital http://www.brewdigital.com/blog/being-social-2010-few-thoughts-0
@Paul_Clarke – Photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_clarke/sets/72157623935361977/
@socialoptic http://socialoptic.com/2010/05/really-social-business-the-key-to-collaboration/
@benjaminellis http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamin2/4608742548/
@leebryant http://www.slideshare.net/leebryant/social-on-the-outside-needs-social-business-on-the-inside
@abisignorelli http://abisignorelli.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/social-media-roi/
TwapperKeeper hashtag archive #beingsocial to download at http://bit.ly/9By6rz
The Internet of Things – Rise of the Machines 4th May @BCS
The outcome of the event was that “The Internet of Things” is still coming ……!
And confusion/privacy/ security appear to be factors that hold back both adoption and growth.
Probably technology is not the issue, inter-operability and standards could
be preventing faster adoption, but this seems unlikely.
Business models are built and will be justified on future cost savings, but
during recession when cash is short the future remains the future.
Also component and usage costs are still too high, but that is more of a volume issue.
So why is it not working – maybe, like the UK government, there is no natural leader?
Post event write ups:
Phillip Sheldrake (panel moderator) @sheldrake
Caroline Tarbett – Fierce PR
Pre event posts:
From David Wood @dw2
and Nigel Whiteoak
Digital Identity – 25th March – post event
Digital Identity : The value of digital you.
Panel: Tony Fish, Nicky Hickman, Robin Wilton, Alan Moore and David Rennie
Digital Identity is still at the early stages of debate and discussion even though there is an increasing number of experts who deeply understand the issues, the overriding focus is still an argument about what “words” mean
Digital Identity is a complex issue crossing many boundaries and professional disciplines. We tend to have many persona, we are no longer owned by a Brand, we know many people to a different degree and understanding, we don’t tend to reveal all to everyone, who owns your data, people are lazy and don’t do things even though they could, value depends on giver and receiver. Identity is a negotiation and in reality we are the product that is traded.
“privacy is no longer the social norm” Mark Zuckerberg Facebook
“It’s not our data, it’s our life…” Bruce Schneier
Blog posts: Jude Umeh, BCS: http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conBlogPost.1597
Here is the list of words that we crossed in the conversation on Digital Identity:
Location – we found it!
What didn’t we learn about Location last night?
Even choosing an hidden away venue didn’t stop the Geo Bunch from tracking down #mashupevent last night at the superb LBi offices.
Some conclusions:
Location based services need to be aggregated onto one platform but, whilst that may come, as yet there isn’t a big enough body to both regulate this and share the data – we’re simply not there yet.
We’re only in Phase 1 of Location based services and technology – just for geeks, early adopters and innovators. The cool stuff will happen during the second phase.
We will see more Game dynamics embedded into products and services – Foursquare, Gowalla just testing the water.
Eventually “Location” will be ubiquitous and we won’t notice or think about it – all press fuelled anxieties will disappear apparently (via Steven Feldman) when a B-list celeb ends up divorcing after being caught by said Location based Services in the wrong bedroom presumably wearing the wrong pants.
David Glennie reminded us of the historical context/ impacts.
Lots of potential in B2B market – think Logistics/ transport.
Geomium, Tigerspike, Armchair-Travel.com and SecretCities.com demo’d their innovative Location orientated services.
@secret-london astounded the audience with their stats, by yesterday the 200,000th user had joined their FB group after just one month.
There was a lot of mention of people needing to be drunk and horny (sorry!) and strange goings on in toilets..and could someone please donate a mobile phone to @osbornec ?
Photos
Slides
Gary Gale
http://www.slideshare.net/vicchi/location-its-moving-on-3283075
Alan Patrick ( Slides and blog)
http://broadstuff.com/archives/2115-Pinpointing-the-Location-Based-Service-Market.html
Steven Feldman – despite his absence he made his presence felt. Here’s a map of tweets he made earlier: http://www.umapper.com/maps/view/id/56895/
@duygu_wilson .. For those interested, here is the Debenhams case. http://goo.gl/PuQE
Video – coming soon
Blogs – coming soon
Apps Mixer* 9th Feb @SUN
mixer* has been renamed banter after last nights lively session. Phil Hofmeyr, in his signature floral, lead what was possibly the most
intimate mashup* event in history.
First upwas Jon Moore, from the famed Guardian iPhone app, who expanded on some of
the thoughts from his talk at Ogilvy. And then Caroline Van Den Bergh from
Golden Gekko gave a perspective on Vodafone360 and a variety of other
platforms. The great contradiction came from Caroline Van Den Bergh who told us rule
101 is know your customer, but their most successful application was a bit
of fun with a customer in mind.The questions and retorts about how to deliver apps and
services following the talks led to the usual lively debate which we eventually had
to curtail in order to enjoy our luke-warm pizza.
We had stand ups from Joshua Rex, Jay Marathe
Iris Lapinski and David Wood. Even iKebab got it’s much-hyped moment on stage. Favourite ask was from
Iris Lapinski from CDI (Centre for Digital Inclusion) who is need of
developers to work with her charity. And just as
the evening was drawing to a close, in pranced Shed Simove, still in his
audition outfit (unless he dresses like that normally…), who gave an
inspired 60 sec pitch on Apparazzi – a cool crowd-sourced iphone paparazzi
app he is looking for a developer for.
Apps mixer* event 9th Feb at SUN
Program:
6-7pm - registration and networking
7pm – Jon Moore (Guardian) & Caroline van den Bergh (Golden Gekko)
7:30pm – 30 second stand ups (Who you are and what you need – see requirements below)
8 pm on - Pizza and Beer with lashings of networking
Venue: SUN office, Regis House, 45 King William Street, London, EC4R 9AN
Price: £15 + VAT (Includes: beer, wine, pizza and salad)
REGISTER: http://www.mashupevent.com/apps-mixer
Apps – What’s your Strategy?
We had a great sell-out event last week @Ogilvy’s plush offices ( love the red..)
Watch the full video of the event here:
mashupApps from Simon Grice on Vimeo.
Many thanks to Jo and Nicole from Ogilvy and their friendly bar staff for aiding and abetting us throughout the evening.
The room was packed and the cameras were clicking whilst all brains concentrated on the words of the speakers.
Thanks to Vikki Chowney for keeping the debate constructive.
Gerd Leonhardt, Jon Moore, Taron Maberry, Mark Curtis and Charles Weir spoke about the complexity of delivering apps to a wide variety of mobile platforms, the difficulties of finding the good apps amongst the others and how to make your own app stand out.
Various options were discussed regarding monetization – freemium, ads, community value, extra content e.g. Guardian app
The ipad was mentioned – Jon Moore of the Guardian was concerned that app scaling would destroy their app’s appearance.
Artful, Neontribe, Handmark, The Retroscope and IDOX demo’d their Apps whilst Device Anywhere told of their mobile application testing and development.
Hope to see many of the attendees at our follow up mixer* event on Feb 9th @ SUN offices where we’ll have a speaker, stand up slots ( ping emma@mashupevent.com if you’d like to book one of these) and lots more networking! http://www.mashupevent.com/apps-mixer
Other observations..
Some people liked the ikebab App
People who like Apps like green jumpers
Fiinally, super tweeter Nicole from Ogilvy requested a large glass of wine:
Video:
Huge thanks to Felix Gonzales of YouandIskills.com
Apps – What\’s your Strategy? Jan 28 2010 @ogilvy
Twitter stream: #mashupevent
Links:
Alan Patrick – colour co-ordinated in fetching scarf..
http://broadstuff.com/archives/2069-Whats-your-Mobile-Application-Strategy.html
http://dw2blog.com/2010/01/29/a-strategy-for-mobile-app-development/
John Cooper
Augmented Reality mixer*
Posted by emmajell in Events, News, Uncategorized on January 18, 2010
We kicked off the New Year with an Augmented Reality mixer* at Sun’s offices last Thursday.
It was only our second mixer and surprisingly full for so early in the year.
Perhaps people just wanted to get out after being snow-bound for so long? Or
perhaps it was simply the attraction of beer & pizza?
Certainly the swiftness with which our audience tackled the beer & pizza suggests
mashup* members are not big on New Year’s resolutions 
Remember mixer* is a kind of themed networking event which starts with a
talk to inspire people and get everyone in the mood. Unfortunately Myles
Peyton (from Total Immersion) cancelled at the last minute but the more than
able Nick Brown CEO of crossplatform.tv stepped in a gave a great talk on the future
for AR along with Andrew Elia (CTO of crossplatform.tv ) who presented many
examples of their AR work.
After Nick & Andrew we had the stand-up slots.
Phil Archer – w3s
Chris Wild – retrospective
Richard Leyland – worksnug
Mark Kramer- rjdj.me
Michael Hay – Lewis PR
This was followed by the usual healthy debate fuelled by beer,
pizza and passion… except for Nick and Andrew (above) who missed out on the
pizza due to the queue of people wanting to speak with them – ah well, you can’t win them all 
LINKS:
Here a quick demo:
http://www.vimeo.com/8812271
Nick’s talk – Part One
http://www.vimeo.com/8809291
Nick’s talk – Part Two
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