Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » 2008

Monthly Archives: February 2008

Stalling

2/25/2008 – 11:42 am

[fr]

Trop à faire. 5 jours avant mon départ pour près de 4 semaines, et les priorités sont toutes conflictuelles. Aaaah! (Mais bon, je me connais, je vais m'en sortir.)

[en]

Gosh, I haven’t published in ages. Scary. I’m stalling. Too much to do, too little time, not sure where to start. Well, life is deciding for me, because I have 5 days left before departing on a nearly 4-week trip, and there is only so much one can do in 5 days. So, some news and some thoughts.

Going Solo: things are good. 25% of tickets sold in less than a week. Video of my speech finally made it online. Don’t miss Early Bird price until March 16th. In one word: register. Reminder: stay up-to-date on Going Solo by subscribing to the Going Solo blog or the Going Solo Twitter feed — much better source of news than CTTS.
5 talks/things in less than two weeks. A talk for parents of teenagers in neighbouring France Thursday evening. A session at WebCamp SNP. A panel to moderate at BlogTalk. Co-hosting a core conversation at SXSW and moderating another panel (both multilingual stuff). I should blog about these more in detail. And more importantly, I have quite a bit of homework to do to prepare the four last ones. And I’m a bit anxious about how moderating panels will go — never done that before.
travel: Cork (Ireland), Dallas-Austin (Texas), San Francisco. That means I need to sort some stuff out before I leave for nearly a month (clean the flat, do some paperwork, pay bills, see people). I’m going to have to pack <shudder> — and I still need to unpack. I’ll be in San Francisco for two weeks, so maybe I want to organise a dinner or something there. I’ll be distributing Going Solo moo cards all along my journey. I’m apprehensive about all this travel. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, curled up on the sofa, with the cat purring next to me. But I’m looking forward to seeing people I like.
work to do for Going Solo: not the least, unfortunately. Sort out the programme. Get back to all the people who sent in speaker proposals. Get sponsor/partner documentation and contracts sorted out so that the partners waiting in the lobby can be let in. Promote, promote. Worry about WiFi a bit more. Happily, video filming, venue set-up and design, and some offline promotion do not depend entirely on me. Prepare a “dossier de presse”. Finish rounding up media partners. Promote, promote.
blogging: posts piling up in my head. About books I’ve read or am reading: The Paradox of Choice, A Perfect Mess (got a post brewing about GTD and messiness), and The Black Swan of course. Need more time to read. More time to write. Can’t keep up.
misc: photos to upload, podcast to edit, other sites to update, e-mails to answer (I’m far from zero right now), plants to water, a life to live…

This roughly sums up where I’m at right now.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events, Life Updates, Travel | Tagged blogging, busy, going solo, life, overload, reading, speaking, stalling, Travel, update | Comments (2)

Time to Sign Up for Going Solo

2/14/2008 – 3:24 pm

[fr]

Ça va commencer à être le dernier moment de vous inscrire pour Going Solo, si vous voulez profiter du prix de lancement. Aussi le dernier moment pour en parler autour de vous! C'est possible d'acheter des billets plus tard, bien sûr (et ça fera plus de sous pour l'événement si vous vous enregistrez plus tard) -- mais bon, ce serait dommage de laisser passer le délai.

Je ne serai pas dans le coin pour vous le rappeler à nouveau (serai offline jusqu'à la fin du week-end), donc c'est maintenant entre vos mains. Si vous connaissez des communautés de freelancers qui peuvent être intéressées par l'info, ne vous gênez pas pour la communiquer plus loin. Il y a quelques bons articles en français couvrant Going Solo -- fouillez dans ma collection de liens ou bien sur Wikio.

[en]

…and plug it. Earlier Bird prices (300CHF) end this week-end, I wouldn’t want you or your readers to miss them (well, I’ll get more $$ for the event if you register after the deadline, but I’m thinking of you too, see).

I’m really happy about how this is going. Much coverage (in four languages so far! want to add yours?) and a very encouraging number of registrations.

I’m going to be offline from tonight to the end of this week-end, so I won’t be around to remind you that time is slipping away. It’s in your hands now! If you know of any freelancer community who might be interested in the news, please pass it on to them. I’ve spent my last three days actively promoting Going Solo all over the place (I should write a blog post about it, because I think it’s an interesting case study on how to do the whole “social media” stuff right — at least, I hope I’m doing it right!) and I’m just “out”.

Next thing I need to concentrate on is polishing up a press and partner package (pretty PDF with all the relevant information neatly tied up together). Next week, when I come back.

I’m now wondering why I’m posting this on CTTS rather than the Going Solo blog — I should probably cross-post it later. Opinions on that welcome. (I’m again stuck in a “where do I blog this?” phase).

By Stephanie | Posted in Entrepreneuring, Events | Tagged coverage, event, going solo, promotion, social media | Comments (0)

Pas Superwoman!

2/13/2008 – 2:18 pm

[en]

I'm postponing the blogging seminar (similar to the surprisingly successful one I gave at LIFT08) I was planning to do at the end of this month. I can't both promote Going Solo and this seminar correctly at the same time -- there aren't enough hours in the day and I'm not Superwoman. If you're interested in such a seminar, get in touch -- and when I have enough interested people I'll set a date. In English or French!

[fr]

Contrairement à l’image que certains me renvoient, je ne suis pas Superwoman. Et souvent, j’ai les yeux plus gros que le ventre.

Tout comme j’ai mis le projet “livre” un peu sur la touche pour me consacrer à des activités plus directement lucratives (vous savez que ce n’est que l’appât du gain qui me motive), je me rends compte que je n’arrive pas à faire la promotion de Going Solo (les inscriptions sont ouvertes, profitez du tarif spécial de cette semaine de lancement) et faire également la promotion du cours d’initiation aux blogs que je comptais organiser le 26 de ce mois.

Vous noterez donc l’usage subtil de l’imparfait dans la phrase précédente, qui vous indique que je reporte ce cours. Comme je l’ai déjà écrit ou du moins dit, les personnes qui vont s’intéresser à ce cours ne sont probablement pas des lecteurs de ce blog. Cela demande donc que je fasse de la pub plus “active” que ce dont j’ai l’habitude — et en ce moment, j’avoue que promouvoir Going Solo me prend toute mon énergie (je passe les négociations avec les partenaires, un nouvel afflux de demandes de conférences, voyages prévus et conférences à l’étranger, sans compter que je n’ai encore quasi rien blogué au sujet de Going Solo en français, bref).

Donc, plutôt que de faire les choses mal, que de persévérer à vouloir maintenir une date parce que je l’ai fixée, je préfère carrément la faire sauter (parce que, regardons les choses en face, avec le peu de pub que je vais pouvoir faire, le cours ne sera pas assez plein, et je vais devoir faire sauter de toute façon).

Sur le concept, par contre, je persiste et signe. Mon workshop à LIFT (exactement la même chose, mais en anglais) a suscité un nombre tout à fait satisfaisant d’inscriptions et de participants (pas forcément les mêmes) — d’autant plus pour une conférence branchée “technologie” comme LIFT — et la formule a parfaitement fonctionné. Retours très positifs de la part des participants (même ceux qui n’avaient pas amené leur ordinateur, un comble!) et une invitation à donner ce genre de séminaire à la Réunion (j’y réfléchis sérieusement, ça peut être sympa d’allier le profitable à l’agréable).

Voici comment on va procéder (j’ai mis à jour la page des séminaires pour refléter ça): les personnes intéressées me le font savoir. Je garde une liste de ces personnes. Quand il y en a assez pour organiser un cours (disons, 6), j’organise. Et pour ceux qui auraient des besoins urgents de cours de blog, on peut toujours s’arranger.

Sur ce, la Pas-Superwoman va aller s’occuper de sa pile d’e-mails, et se nourrir. A plus, et n’oubliez pas de promouvoir Going Solo autour de vous. Si, si — ça me rend grandement service!

By Stephanie | Posted in Comment bloguer?, Consulting, Entrepreneuring | Tagged apprendre, blogging, blogs, bloguer, busy, cours, initiation, séminaire, superwoman, travail, work | Comments (1)

About Missing Videos (Open Stage, Friday) and Expectations

2/12/2008 – 3:54 pm

[fr]

Certaines vidéos de LIFT, dont celles des open stage, n'ont pas pu être montées en live. C'est un peu compliqué pour finir tout ça et les mettre en ligne, et on ne saura pas quand ce sera le cas.

[en]

Update: the video of my open stage speech about Going Solo is online now, thanks Laurent!

I posted this note on the LIFT community blog at Laurent’s request (he sounds a bit swamped right now) to give some info about the missing videos. I’m cross-posting it here, mainly for the few personal thoughts at the end of the post.

A few of us Open Stage speakers have been wondering why our videos weren’t online. Let me state first that it is not a conspiracy of some kind or an indication that community-chosen presentations might be less regarded than “invited speakers”. If you look at the videos on nouvo.ch, you’ll see that Kevin Marks is the last recorded speakers — all those after him are missing too.

I’ve asked Laurent about this (believe me, he’s heard about it enough) and what has happened is that some talks were not edited live — so it seems it’s a bit of a struggle to get it done / retrieve them / put them online. We unfortunately don’t know when they’ll be available. I trust, however, that the recordings are safe and will not be lost.

This kind of situation is really annoying. As a speaker, who was relying upon this video, I feel extremely frustrated — and also a bit mad at myself, because knowing how important this recording was for me, I should have planned for a fail-safe and got somebody to do some dirty shooting “just in case”.

As a conference organiser, I dread that I’ll find myself in this situation at some point — it’s almost inevitable. When you announce something, even if it’s something that you’re giving graciously, people come to expect it and rely on it. And when things go wrong and it doesn’t happen the way they hoped, they react badly (me included) — when they probably wouldn’t have said anything in the first place if they hadn’t been expecting it.

I know Laurent feels bad about this, and they’re doing what they can to find a solution — amongst the myriad of other post-LIFT things they need to deal with.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged Events, expectations, glitch, lift08, open stage, problems, psychology, Videos | Comments (0)

I’ll be Speaking at Singularity

2/12/2008 – 10:58 am

[fr]

J'ai accepté de participer à la conférence Singularity, la première conférence online de grande envergure. Ce sera les 24-26 octobre 2008.

[en]

Aral Balkan introduced himself to me at LIFT08. He’s organizing Singularity, the first large-scale online conference in the world. He asked me if I would be willing to speak there, which I gladly accepted. Looks like I’ll be in good company!

The conference will take place in October, 24-26th. Book the dates, already!

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged aral balkan, conference, event, online conference, singularity08, speaking | Comments (1)

Going Solo Registration Open!

2/12/2008 – 9:57 am

[fr]

Il est maintenant possible de s'enregistrer pour la conférence Going Solo, le 16 mai à Lausanne! N'attendez pas, et profitez du prix spécial durant la première semaine de mise en vente. (On veut encourager les gens à s'inscrire tôt, donc tous les moyens sont bons, vous voyez ;-)).

[en]

Here we are… the moment everybody (I hope!) was waiting for: Registration for Going Solo is now open, with a special discount for everybody during this first week: 100 CHF off the Early Bird price!

You can head straight to the registration form if you don’t want to lose a second (which I’m sure you don’t).

Questions? You’ll probably find the answers on the Going Solo site. If you don’t, leave a comment somewhere and I’ll do my best to answer!

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged announcement, conference, event, freelancers, going solo, Lausanne, open, registration, sale, tickets | Comments (2)

From LIFT06 to LIFT08

2/11/2008 – 4:28 pm

[fr]

Un petit coup d'oeil sur les différences majeures entre mon expérience de LIFT06 et de LIFT08, à deux ans d'écart.

[en]

As I said in my open stage speech, two years (and a few days) ago I was sitting in the CICG conference hall, but things were very different from today. LIFT06 was, if I remember correctly, my second conference. I’d been to BlogTalk2 in 2004 and met a few people there (live-blogging already!). So, in 2006, there were very few people at the conference which I had actually met. I knew Lee Bryant. I knew Martin Röll. I knew Laurent Haug. I knew Björn Ognibeni (I think he was at LIFT06, but couldn’t swear it). I knew a few local bloggers, and some people from online. (My memory is a bit fuzzy.) But most of the people who make up my network (both online and offline, personal and professional) were not part of my world yet.

LIFT06 is where I met Robert Scoble, Bruno Giussani, David Galipeau, Euan Semple, Hugh McLeod, and a bunch of others. It’s where I got to know Anne Dominique Mayor (we both sat down smack in front of Robert Scoble by pure chance, because we were going for power sockets — that’s how I met him), and she has since then become part of my close circle of friends. LIFT06 felt a bit like San Francisco felt a year later: my online world had suddenly materialized offline.

Retrospectively, I’d say that in 2006, I was introduced to people, but that today, in 2008, it is people who introduce themselves to me. It’s not as clear-cut, of course, but it’s the general trend.

At LIFT08, I’ve lost count of the people present whom I’ve already met. There are almost too many for me to say hello to each one. I’m holding a workshop, and giving an open stage speech, so I’m much more public — more people know me than I know them.

It’s a bit scary. I don’t know who I want to spend my time with anymore, for one (old friends? new, unknown people?) — and my brain just can’t keep up. I forget who I’ve met. I try giving Going Solo moo cards to old friends more than once. I feel like I’ve become a networking automaton, and I don’t like it. I’m not good at faking it, I’d rather tell people that I’m over-socialized and that I have trouble processing all this.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events, Pieces of Me | Tagged blogtalk2004, conférences, going solo, lift06, lift08, meeting, network, networking, people | Comments (1)

My LIFT08 Recap

2/11/2008 – 3:43 pm

[fr]

Un récapitulatif de ce qu'a été LIFT08 pour moi cette année. En gros, expérience très positive, mais un peu comme une déferlante. Trop de tout, mais c'était bien.

[en]

LIFT08 was great, but overwhelming. I think I’ve used this word a couple of times already to describe it. I’ve been thinking a lot these last months about my “conference experience”. I’m not quite a conference butterfly never touching the ground between them (expression stolen from Tom Purves), but between FOWA, Web2.0Expo, BlogOpen, ParisWeb, LIFT, and the upcoming BlogTalk and SXSW, I’m spending a significant amount of my time preparing for, attending, or getting over conferences.

I plan to write a bit about LIFT08 first, and then come to more general stuff about these “tech” conferences and the worlds revolving around them — but you never know which way a blog post might decide to take you, do you? (I can already see I’m going to write it differently… fasten your seatbelts. Actually, I’m going to write separate posts. Or this one is going to turn into a 10-page essay. And nobody wants to read 10-page essays, do they?)

So, what do I take away from LIFT08 — knowing that this year, I’m looking at things through an event organiser’s eyes?

Many hats: I’m a live-blogger, I’m a “speaker” (workshop, open stage, and an informal discussion), I’m a friend, I’m a freelancer on the lookout for new gigs, I’m promoting Going Solo, and looking for anything or anybody who can help me put on a great event. Too many hats.
Live-blogging: I’m not happy about my job as a live-blogger this year. I think I was too stressed by my many other hats to really concentrate well on what I was doing. Also, as I had a press pass for it, I felt under pressure to do it seriously. Lots of partial notes, not “live” enough, didn’t tag my photos (help me!, and lots of talks I skipped. I want to post some slideshots still, and notes I took during the workshop with real live teenagers (e-mailing first to make sure I won’t publish stuff that might get them in trouble). I’ll write a summary post with links to my notes.
One track: really really great that there was only one track (as in, no separate rooms, no choices to make in the programme). Just sit down somewhere and the choices are made for you. Thanks for having the courage to make those choices for us, Nicolas and Laurent.
Water: bottles are really better than fountains. I’m not going to walk around with a glass, and I always forget to bring a bottle with me. I didn’t drink enough. Not sure Going Solo will be “as I’d want” in that respect, though we should have big bottles of water on the tables in the conference room.
WiFi: up and down, of course. Why does conference wifi always have to be so wobbly? There’s room for some serious analysis and reseach about that, in my opinion. Getting wifi for Going Solo is one thing I really worry about. There will “only” be 150 people there, but still… Given my track record for criticizing, I’m going to be lynched if Going Solo wifi fails.
Videos: great videos, but. No permalinks to each video (I e-mailed Nouvo about that). Also, some organisational (?) glitch which prevented the open stage talks from being edited and uploaded at the same time as the other videos — as an open stage speaker who was relying on that swift publication, I find it very frustrating. The tapes are safe, Laurent tells me — but had I known, I’d have asked somebody to quick-and-dirty shoot and upload to YouTube.
Content: I think the two-many-hats problem prevented me from fully getting all I could out of the various talks. I’ve also noticed a shift in content (the audience reflects this) from “more web” to “less web”. It’s a good thing, because it broadens my mind, but it also means there is less pointy stuff I’m directly fascinated with. (Don’t change anything guys, though, I like being stretched.) Maybe this had an influence on how easy (not) my note-taking was.
Speakers: at one point I started wondering if it was a new trend for speakers to read their talks. Please don’t do that! It makes it very hard to follow what your saying. Lots of really great and entertaining speakers, and general level was very high (despite the reading).
Food and drinks: nice! nice! yum! No breakfast though, I missed that. And also, no orange juice during the breaks?! I didn’t find it if it was there. Not everybody drinks tea or coffee — and I had a really hard time finding the tea.
People: lots of them, lots. My “conference experience” is changing, as I said above, and I need to blog about that.
Intense: LIFT is intense. Great people everywhere. Great talks you should meditate upon during a month.
LIFT experience: I was too busy running around to enjoy all the “offline stuff” LIFT08 offered, and I really really regret it. I didn’t even get around to having my own handwritten font made, and didn’t send anything to the editor of the not so empty book (I blame the wifi — it was just too much effort to send an e-mail). I really think that the not so empty book should go and tap into technorati and flickr tags to steal content which has been published online. I had my photo taken though… not sure where it is now, however.

So, still landing. See you tomorrow night in Morges to talk more if you’re in the area.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged conference, event, experience, feedback, lift08, notes | Comments (1)

LIFT08: Kevin Marks (Google Open Social: The Social Cloud)

2/8/2008 – 3:10 pm

Insert standard disclaimer about live notes.

The cloud is an abstraction, because we don’t want to think about what’s in between, or inside the cloud.

Send a message anywhere, and it’ll come out at the other end.

For Andrew Marks, Kevin’s son, the net is just part of the world. The older generation sees the net as a big cloud of poison gas. Has an impact on how we deal with the social software environment.

We assume e-mail is there and part of the web, but for the young generation it’s there to talk to adults, not really exciting. Standard boring stuff.

Their blog or their social network is “them”, but not their e-mail.

URLs are people too. Some of these pages on the internet are people. My blog is me. Links between these websites which are people are in fact expressing relationships. XFN.

Social Graph API: finds the websites that can be treated as people, and returns “me” and “friend” links between them. XFN + FOAF + Google crawler.

Problem: too many social networks!! Problem for the developers too! Need to make people sign up again, and tell who their friends are, etc…

“I want my own private island!”

The Social Graph API can help you find the friends you have on another site in the new system. Tell Twitter what your homepage is, and then Twitter will go and look up people-URLs who are linked to your homepage and in the Twitter system already, and assist you in making those connections. Finding me and my public friends on the web.

In social network land: “my friends are all here already, I’m quite happy on MySpace, don’t want to emigrate!” BUT my relationships aren’t all public, and change depending on what I’m here to do.

We put clouds around things so we don’t have to think about them. Registration, creating links between users…

OpenSocial is putting clouds around things that you don’t want to have to worry about. Take your application where the people are.

A third thing we need to worry about it: the nature of relationships. As danah boyd says, people don’t break friend links on a social networking site, except if there has been a messy break-up. Nothing less severe than that really justifies un-friending people. But when people get fed-up, they lose their password or destroy their profile, and create a new one from scratch with fewer friends. steph-note: like people used to do with blogrolls 5 years ago.

Technology mustn’t be perfect.

XFN isn’t subtle enough to render the relationships in Pride and Prejudice.

Douglas Adams: “Of course you can’t trust what people tell you on the web, not more than you can trust what people tell you megaphones… etc” 1999

The abstraction (trust, friendship, context) is in your head. It’s not explicit. The software never has a chance to understand this.

OpenSocial puts a cloud around social networking sites, the details of people, friends, etc. In the future, users could assume that your software will know about your friends, relationships, profile information. Could be implicit. In the cloud. An abstraction that any piece of software could use.

In the same way, the abstraction layer in your head provides information that you use in a way in any social software. steph-note: not sure I got that last bit right.

You can (and should) watch Kevin’s LIFT08 talk on video.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events, Social Software | Tagged abstraction, google, kevin marks, lift08, notes, open social, social cloud, talk | Comments (0)

LIFT08: David Sadigh (User Retention)

2/8/2008 – 2:45 pm

Live notes of David Sadigh’s talk, possibly incomplete or misunderstood. Standard disclaimer, you know the drill.

Who was connected to the Internet in 95?

Internet users get the same content, however they behave. But people are different! They should get different content.

homepage bounces
marketing and e-marketing campaigns are not well-optimized

98% of visitors leave an e-commerce site without buying.

2008: billions invested to drive more people to these websites. Lots of traffic but not enough sales. We would never accept results like that offline, why do we accept them online?

We don’t focus on user retention and customer experience.

Opportunity: sell more by delivering more relevant content.

Techniques: intentional, geographic, event, behavioral targeting. Push.

Intentional targeting example: you type “family holidays in Italy” in Google, and you get a sponsored link. When you click on it, you would land on the website but get a photo of a family instead of a boat on the sea in the header: that’s intentional targeting.

steph-note: bunch of stuff on what is more clickable amongst certain Nespresso images.

It’s not about clickthrough, though, but about sales. Or page views by a specific user.

steph-note: a very quantitative approach, which is personally not very appealing to me, but which I understand is crucial for business settings today.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged david sadigh, lift08, numbers, retention, roi | Comments (0)

Qik Interview by Robert Scoble

2/8/2008 – 2:40 pm

Yesterday morning, Robert caught me for an express interview on Qik with his cellphone. Here it is. I speak about the beginning of my LIFT08 experience, and about Going Solo, of course.

Here is my blog post about the open speech talk I gave just earlier.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events, Videos | Tagged going solo, interview, lift08, open stage, Podcast, qik, robert scoble, scoble, stephanie booth, video, workshops | Comments (0)

LIFT08: Paul Barnett

2/8/2008 – 12:29 pm

Creative director. Between the creative vision and the huge raft of people who do all the work.

Is going to try and strip the gibberish away.

“Lots of people online doing things.”

Bother, too large to talk about! One of the things you can do online with lots of people: you can socialize. Social networking is massively popular and theoretically worth billions and billions!

Lets of people are making things and showing them off. “User generated”

“My cat was sick all over my grandma, and I videoed it. Wanna see it?”

steph-note: this guy is really fun and I like his accent!

Strange word: “entertainment games that make old-fashioned… something (money?)”

Objective: they do this really well, I want to give them money!!

Profit! Something his mum understands. Virtual making real money. Not sure why!

Decided to talk about two things:

history of cinema
?? steph-note: missed that

Just like mainstream movies, games have:

too many people working on them, cost way too much, miss their deadlines, and when people experience them, they go “I can do better!”

History of cinema: color… weren’t sure it would catch on. TV came, and they were convinced TV was dead. DVD. And yet, movies flourish.

They don’t have 5 changes in 50 years, but 50 changes in 5 years. They don’t have the generational thinking. People who are successful in this business build rockets to the moon and never come back. Technology keeps changing and they don’t know how to use it. They don’t have a clue about what’s going to be “the platform of the future”. They don’t know how to monetize it either. Problem: all the games that appear to make money online were built years ago. Problem in a moving market.

The online space is fun and draws new speakers.

Designers who design for designers cost a lot of money, speak gibberish, and you just have to believe them. Paul is the middleman, between various players in the industry who have different languages.

Casinos: like movies and games (cost a lot, not ready on time, and when you walk in “I can do this?”) Subscription model. Community management.

American system: if something works for somebody, build it bigger, better, faster… But that doesn’t work in the long run.

New design and thinking is happening online. Take your game design people, and put them online — fight insular thinking. Need to embrace the online industry.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged creative designer, gaming, gaming industry, lift08, liveblogging, notes, Paul Barnett, process, talk | Comments (1)

LIFT08: Guy Vardi (Casual Games)

2/8/2008 – 12:21 pm

steph-note: live blogged notes, may be incomplete, etc.

Casual games?

“silly, stupid games”
“games for the housewife”

steph-note: video went way too fast for me.

If a hardcore game is a full meal, a casual game is a snack.

Snacks are not dinner, say the WoW fans.

People play 2-3 hours a month, 3-15 times a month. (steph-note: not sure I got that right.)

Second largest money waster in the US after the subprime crisis

Stats: rising phenomenon. People spend more time playing online games than watching clips on YouTube or interacting in social networking sites like Facebook.

Bite-side episodes. People want short stuff (video clips, TV episodes, music).

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged casual games, casual gaming, gaming, guy vardi, lift08, notes | Comments (0)

LIFT08: Robin Hunicke (Game Design)

2/8/2008 – 11:53 am

steph-note: live blogged notes, may be incomplete, etc.

Computers aren’t really fun. Frustrating. Games and AI, on the other hand, are.

Building and sharing is better than just building by your self.

A little bit of vocabulary to think about how games work, now.

Fun is a problematic word. Means different things to different people.

System: MDA

Mechanics = rules as system, any game has rules
Dynamics = what happens when the player interacts with the rules, without a player a game is just a set of rules
Aesthetics = resulting experience, what comes from all these things together

Why kill books to make digital books? Why kill games to make digital games?

Games we played:

dolls
fort/army
charades
tag
spin the bottle
4 square
soccer

What is true about all these is that they involve groups of people. People are fun. Competition, mock violence, lies, hidden information, misinformation, love, family…

Power is hard to simulate. Magic circle.

What about digital games? Here’s what you might do in a game.

Start somewhere, do an activity, and when you’re good enough at it, you get a star. Progress! You get to upgrade: more weapons, cooler pants, more friends. Over and over again. (Scary!)

Not unlike going to work every day until you get a promotion, or going on dates until you get engaged.

Some popular aesthetics:

I am a surgeon in a soap opera emergency room (Trauma Center)
I am a girl discovering her past, which is strangely haunted (Trace Memory)
I am an attorney solving odd crimes and protecting the innocent (Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney)
I am a warrior in a war-torn land (…)

There is a reason these aesthetics get explored in games.

What are we learning?

Making things we get out of games seem more and more real: hard work! The aesthetics can override the mechanics: ex, the Wii.

Take the power of something that’s pretty complex, simplify it into a smaller form, you get something magical. The market is saying they want more of that.

Facebook is a game. One of the most compelling social applications out there.

chatty
social
automatic
selective
fast
repetitive
rewarding

Adding friends, chatting, adding, chatting, adding, chatting…

It’s a huge franchise from a games perspective.

Stars?

more friends
graffiti
gifts
hugs
laughter
wins
pictures

Work and rewards

It lets me decide how to use it. Lets me decide what the game is about. I don’t have to have the hugs application. Facebook is about me the human being, about the people who use it.

Aesthetic on Facebook: I am a person living a fun life… I am loved.

Do you give hugs?

Flickr, Dopplr. Not giving people actual points, but giving them space to create and play.

I vote
I invest
…

Small steps: mobile, creative, communicative, always almost now.

House of the future. Aesthetics that are available to me. Game design is literacy. All apps can do this. Smile more.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged game design, gaming, lift08, notes, Robin Hunicke | Comments (0)

LIFT08: Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur (Holm Friebe & Philipp Albers)

2/8/2008 – 10:35 am

Very incomplete notes. What these guys are doing seems really exciting.

Quality and nature of work changing. Lots of people from our generation are discontent with the opportunities they find in organizations, career opportunities.

The Hedonistic Company. How do you integrate the new generation into companies?

7 NOs:

no office
no employees
no fixed costs
no pitches
no exclusivity
no working hours
no bullshit

steph-note: guys, we need to talk about Going Solo! Gah, computer crash… rebooting

By Stephanie | Posted in Videos | Tagged coworking, freelancing, holm friebe, lift08, philipp albers, web culture, work, zentrale intelligenz agentur | Comments (1)

LIFT08: Kevin Warwick, the “Cyborg”

2/8/2008 – 9:59 am

steph-note: live blogged notes, may be incomplete, etc. Kevin is exploring where the machine starts and the human stops.

Two things:

chips in humans
rat brains in robots

Working with Parkinson’s disease — deep brain scans to try to detect the illness before the tremors begin.

Research partly to help people, partly for enhancement. Eg. man who lost his arm to cancer, and has a robotic hand, but must use his exiting hand to control the robot arm. A bit silly! Would be better if he could control it directly — that would require an interface between the arm and the brain/neural system.

Increase sensory range.

Kevin has a chip with 100 electrodes implanted (fired!) in the nervous system of his left arm. 4mm in diameter.

steph-note: wondering if that hurt?

For three months had his nervous system partly out of his body. (Had to be careful to not short-circuit it when taking a shower). Part of this was to experiment stuff to help people with disabilities.

steph-note: not sure I quite understood what the thing sticking out of his arm was — something to link him to the computer — and also if the chip was removed after three months or not.

When Kevin was connected to the internet, if you had known the IP address of his nervous system… But what they did is not tell anybody what they were doing until they had done it. Careful not to get your nervous system spammed or hacked!

Highlights from the experiment. Output from the sensors fed to his nervous system (fancy thing on his wrist).

When an object came closer, his brain received and increased frequency of ultrasounds (?). So basically with a blindfold on, Kevin was able to move around and detect objects pretty accurately. Not what they were, but where they were.

“It felt like something was coming close to me.” Extended the sensory range. Like “what does it feel like to see something”?

steph-note: showing a short video clip. It makes Kevin sound like Terminator! Will add link if somebody gives it to me.

Experiment with his wife: when his wife moved her hand, he felt it. He could actually feel her movements.

steph-note: Daleks in the video!!! I find it hilarious — the angle this video takes.

Jewellery his wife wears, and the colour changes with his excitement: blue, calm, flashing red: excited. “What is he doing? and with who!?”

Through the internet, made a robot hand mimic what his hand did, with feedback. Objective: hold an object. Good news for people who have been amputated. But also, stretching Kevin’s body across the Atlantic.

His wife had wires pushed into her nervous system from the outside. Very painful! But no anesthetic, because the doctor said he needed to see if he made good contact. It hurt!!

Linked their nervous systems. When she moved her hand, his brain received pulses. Worked very well. Vice-versa: “like lightening running through her hand” when Kevin moved his.

Kevin’s research is now moving from nervous system to the brain directly. Brain to brain communication! Telepathy. Ideas, codes, concepts, images. Upgrade these humans. Communicate in a respectable way!

Questions:

The implant was taken out because the wires coming out were starting to break, it was an experiment — a lot of practicalities.

Kevin’s experiment changed the way people look at things medically. “Cyborg” is not anymore a purely SF term.

Lots of things could have gone wrong with the experiment, but as a scientist, it was tremendously exciting! Discovered stuff about the nervous system that nobody knew, because nobody had done this before. Scary but really exciting. Rollercoaster.

It took Kevin’s brain six weeks to recognize the electric pulses it was receiving as a “distance radar”. Boring time, but it took that time to train his brain, and it adapted — he actually “felt” how far things were.

What next? Research on Parkinson’s, by analysing deep brain scans to predict tremors. Also with epileptic patients to try to see when the fit is coming. Parkinson’s: can predict tremors 15-20 seconds before they happen! With epilepsy, 25-30 minutes! steph-note: wow. This can change the patient’s lives!

Cultured brains. After a week, a rat’s brain starts having some “neural firing” (activity), and after a month it’s starting to act like a brain. All the brain knows is that it drives the robot. Not good drivers! Now, trying to teach these biological brains how to drive the robot better. Lots of philosophical questions. steph-note: so, from what I understand, they don’t remove brains from rats, but grow them. Cultured neural networks. Artificial intelligence. steph-note: Cylons!

Watch the video:

Watch a shorter video excerpt about extending his sensory range.

By Stephanie | Posted in Events | Tagged arm, cyborg, implant, kevin warwick, lift08, nervous system, neural system, neurology, robot, science, surgery | Comments (2)

On Being Wiped Out

2/7/2008 – 6:35 pm

[fr]

Epuisée mais contente. Si je ne vous reconnais pas, si je vous demande trois fois votre nom, si j'essaie de vous donner des cartes de visite trois fois... soyez indulgents. Je suis hyper contente de la réception de mon discours sur l'histoire de Going Solo.

[en]

Monthly Archives: February 2008

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar:

Similar: