Tag: open stage

Lift12 Open Stage, Gaming: Niklaus Moor, José Luis de Vicente [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Lift12 à Genève ces jours. Voici mes notes de sessions.

Live-blogging from Lift12 conference in Geneva. These are my notes and interpretations of the open stage talks — best effort, but might be imprecise or even wrong!

Niklaus Moor: Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation in gamification.

Call of Duty 3. Massively successful launch.

What changed besides the graphics, since version 1?

From level as chapter to level as progress of the character. More motivating!

Gamified the game. Measure my usage of the game. I get medals.

The core is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The key is in the right balance between the two.

Danger! you can kill intrinsic motivation by having the wrong extrinsic motivation.

steph-note: I wrote about that recently!

Stopped kids from stealing by rewarding them for it. Also, kids in school.

José Luis de Vicente: On the Mythologies of Play

Not about how videogames are going to change the world, but in how they have already changed it. 3 stories.

Fold it. Solve puzzles for science. Figure out enzyme structure.

Gold farmers in China. Exploit the game to accumulate in-game currency or virtual goods which they sell to western gamers.

Aram Bartoll‘s model of Dust made of concrete (2011).

 

 

About Missing Videos (Open Stage, Friday) and Expectations [en]

[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.

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.

Qik Interview by Robert Scoble [en]

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.

LIFT08: My Going Solo Open Stage Speech [en]

[fr] J'ai fait une présentation très courte de ce qui m'a inspiré à organiser Going Solo tout à l'heure, lors de LIFT. Voici le texte sur la base duquel j'ai préparé ma présentation, et des liens (quand je les aurai trouvés) vers vidéos ou articles.

For the first time in my life, I actually rehearsed a speech. Ironically, my three-hour workshop yesterday required all of 5 minutes preparation time on the train in the morning (in my defense, I given similar workshop/classes before), but my 5-minute open stage speech had me preparing and rehearsing for at least three hours. My friend Sarah probably got sick of hearing it over and over again last night as she timed me.

It went well. Thanks again to all who voted to see me speak on stage, and for your kind and encouraging comments after my speech.

You could probably see I was a bit stressed — quite a bit more than when I usually speak: you can’t really make any mistakes when you only have 5 minutes. It’s there, it’s gone.

I left a bit out, I’m afraid. Blame it on stress. The part I left out is about how important this “business” aspect of freelancing is — because it’s actually what’s going to determine how successful you’ll be as a freelancer. You can be the best at what you do, if you don’t know how to set your rates or find clients, you’ll starve.

So, here’s the text I wrote last night and I based my preparation upon. It isn’t a word-by-word transcript of what I said (I didn’t learn it by heart!), but it’s pretty close. Enjoy the insight into how I prepared this speech!

If I find videos and links later on, I’ll add them to the end of this post.

I’m going to tell you a tale of inspiration, of a personal journey which led me to do things I never would have thought possible, like organising an event for freelancers from all over Europe — which I’ll tell you more about at the end of this speech. It’s not just my journey, it’s the journey of all those who have turned a passion into a living.

Are there any freelancers or small business owners in the room? Keep those hands up. Any ex-freelancers? Aspiring freelancers, or people who’ve thought about the idea? This is about you.

Two years ago I was sitting in this same hall. I was a middle school teacher, and I dreamed of being able to make a living out of my passion, the web — but I couldn’t see how. After LIFT in 2006, something clicked, and I saw how it could be possible. A few months later at the end of the school year, I quit my job as a teacher to be a full-time freelancer.

It was easy at first. The phone kept ringing, and people actually wanted to pay me for stuff that didn’t feel like work. My biggest challenge was that I felt bad because I had the impression I was on holiday all the time.

After a few weeks or months though, things became more complicated and less fun. I was charging too little, how should I set my rates? I was drowning in paperwork, I hired an accountant. I was contacted by clients I didn’t expect, like Intel who wanted to fly me all the way to the US, or a rather prominent local politician. I realised I wasn’t good at negociating and closing deals.

Luckily I had friends in the business. I asked for their advice, and realised they had faced or were still facing the same issues. They were willing to share. I found support and learned useful things:

  • how to set a daily rate, for example. Decide how much you want to make in a month. Divide that by the number of days you have available for paid work — 10 maximum, maybe — you have your daily rate.
  • I also learnt to stop being uncomfortable about how much I was charging for talks — people were paying for my expertise, not for my time

I started learning that there is way more to freelancing than just doing the things you’re being paid for. There is a whole business aspect to freelancing which is not what draws people to become soloists — they go solo because they’re good at doing something and can get paid for it — but this business stuff is actually really important, because it’s going to determine how successful you are as a freelancer.

When I decided to organize events, it was pretty obvious that the first one would be for freelancers. That’s Going Solo — it’s going to take place on May 16th, in Lausanne, just 30 minutes away from here by train.

Going Solo is an occasion to gather freelancers from all over the web industry, from all over Europe and even elsewhere, and take a day off “working” to think about these business issues in depth. Seasoned freelancers like Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, Martin Roell — and also Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting, which I’m announcing right now as my fourth confirmed speaker — will share their experience and dig into topics like setting your rates, negotiating and closing deals, finding clients, or better, helping clients find you, and even choosing how to work so that you actually have a work-life balance — something I’m personally struggling with these days.

If you want to know more about Going Solo, come and talk to me or visit the website — going-solo.net, with a hyphen. If you have speakers to suggest, or partnerships to talk about, make yourself known. Otherwise, see you on the 16th of May!

Going Solo Venues, Open Stage, and Link Love [en]

[fr] Sur le site de Going Solo, vous trouverez le récit de mon après-midi passée à visiter des salles de conférences à Lausanne. Ma proposition d'Open Stage pour LIFT'08 semble avoir du succès mais a encore besoin de vos votes.

Je me pose ensuite des tas de question sur les raisons pour lesquelles Going Solo ne semble pas attirer plus l'attention des blogueurs. Est-ce trop tôt? Pas assez d'informations? Ai-je épuisé mon capital social? Est-ce que tout le monde pense que les autres s'en chargent?

Pour que des personnes en-dehors de mon réseau direct puissent entendre parler de Going Solo et s'y intéresser, j'ai besoin de votre aide. Voici la (modeste) collection de liens couvrant Going Solo. Julien a parlé plusieurs fois de Going Solo en français (merci!), mais je crois que c'est à peu près tout côté couverture francophone. Oui, la conférence est en anglais. Mais vos lecteurs francophones ne sont pas tous nécessairement anglophobes, ni les personnes qu'ils connaissent à leur tour.

Que ce soit clair: je ne veux forcer la main à personne. Si vous trouvez Going Solo inutile ou même bête, ne perdez pas votre temps à en parler (ou mieux, en fait, racontez pourquoi vous pensez ainsi, ça m'intéresse). Mais si vous désirez soutenir cette conférence et que ce n'est visible nulle part sur votre blog... Prenez un petit moment pour ça.

Et si vous avez un éclairage à offrir concernant ma difficulté permanent à "rallier" les gens autour des choses que je fais (pas les choses que je blogue, hein, celles que je fais), je suis toute ouïe. Merci d'avance.

Just a note to say I’ve published a blog post on hunting for venues for Going Solo (yes, on the Going Solo blog — what? you haven’t subscribed yet? what are you waiting for?). If you have any thoughts on the points I raise there, go ahead.

In the good news departments, it seems my open stage proposal about organizing a conference for freelancers is attracting interest. It still needs votes though, so if you want to help make sure I hit the big stage and you are going to attend LIFT, be sure to vote. (Every vote counts. Thanks.)

Prepare for slight digression.

For some reason, I seem to always have trouble motivating people to “spread the word” about stuff I’m doing. There seems to be a disconnect between the picture people send back to me (“Oh, you have so much traction, you’re so influent, etc.”) and what actually happens when I try to get the word out about something.

I usually don’t have this problem when it’s somebody else’s stuff. If I sign up for your nice new shiny 2.0 service and like it, I’m going to convince dozens of people to sign up. Twitter. Dopplr. Seesmic. It’s even happening with offline stuff like the neti pot.

I guess one of the issues is that I’m not really comfortable promoting my own stuff. Some people seem to have no problem doing that — I always feel like I should shut up, and if what I’m doing is really worthwhile, other people will pick it up and blog about it. On the other hand, I am pretty comfortable page-slapping people with my own writings.

So, what is it? Do people underestimate the support I need from the community? Am I one of those annoying people who ask for too much and don’t give enough? Do I squander my social capital? Is the stuff I do so lame that nobody has any interest in talking about it? Am I simply just “missing” a little something somewhere that I still haven’t figured out? Am I just not active enough in self-promoting?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about my technorati ranking or about the fact that some of my blog posts have already been around the world three times (my stuff on MySQL encoding problems and multiple WordPress installations have remained popular for years — the latter with spammers, maybe, I’m afraid). It’s more about stuff I do as opposed to stuff I write.

Take Going Solo. I know I haven’t really started pushing it out there, because we don’t have branding yet and the price isn’t quite set. But still. When I announced it here on CTTS (and before that, when I said I was starting a company), a lot of people stopped by to leave an encouraging comment or send me a nice tweet. I really appreciated it.

Now, not trying to make anybody feel bad here, but here’s the coverage of Going Solo that I’ve been able to round up (or the technorati cosmos. I’m getting into the habit of bookmarking any “coverage” links, because they’re easy to find on the moment, but 6 months later you can forget about it.

Is it because I haven’t explicitly said “Going Solo needs your link love”? (If that’s it, I’m saying it now.) Is it because it’s “too early) — ie, people are waiting for the venue to be set, the full programme to be announced, sidebar badges to be available and the tickets to be on sale? I personally don’t think it’s necessary to wait that long. I’m convinced Going Solo is going to be a really useful event for many freelancers out there. I want to get the word out and create interest for it, also outside my immediate network. And for that, I need you. You’re the only people who can help me reach “outside my network”. Or maybe I’m being difficult, naive, or expecting too much?

I’d like to understand what’s happening. I’d like more people to talk about Going Solo and try to promote it to their networks, of course, but my main issue here is understanding. So any insight will be… more than welcome. If you think Going Solo is worthwhile, but you haven’t blogged about it, it would help me if you left a comment to tell me why you haven’t (yet, hopefully!) blogged about it. Again — I’m not asking for justifications, just insight from “the other side of the fence”.

This week-end, as I was hurrying to get my LIFT workshop out of the door, I was astonished (in a disappointed sort of way) to see how few people had come up with proposals for LIFT. I know people wait until the last minute to do it, but I also realised that I hadn’t really blogged about LIFT this year. I guess I was thinking that it was so popular anyway, a blog post of mine wouldn’t really make much difference. “The others” were already blogging about it.

Then I took a step back and thought of Going Solo — how my frustration that people weren’t talking about it more. So I wrote a blog post to tell people it was the last minute to send a contribution to LIFT. Did anybody make one because I blogged about it, I wonder?

So, done with the angst-ridden rambling. I welcome your comments. And Going Solo needs your link love.

Very Last Moment to Propose a Contribution for LIFT'08 [en]

[fr] C'est la dernière minute pour faire une proposition de workshop, discours, discussion, ou encore participation à la venture night de la conférence LIFT. (Utilisez les liens dans le corps de l'article.) Eh oui, c'est aujourd'hui le dernier jour!

Il est d'ores et déjà possible de s'inscrire aux workshops (j'y propose d'ailleurs une initiation aux blogs -- inscrivez-vous si vous ne bloguez pas encore, ou parlez-en à vos amis non-blogueurs). J'ai aussi proposé une présentation-éclair de 5 minutes au sujet de Going Solo (ça me rappelle qu'il faut que je blogue à ce sujet en français un peu plus en détail), et je pense animer une discussion autour de toutes ces questions linguistiques qui me préoccupent.

Quel programme!

I almost missed the announcement. Submissions for workshops, open stage speeches, discussions or the venture night at the LIFT conference close today! (I don’t know exactly when, but remember that LIFT is European, so it might very well be end-of-day CET.)

If you click on the links above you can already see what has been proposed. I’ve proposed a workshop (Get Started With Blogging) — you can already sign up for workshops by visiting the page of the workshop you’re interested in and adding your name to the page — and an open stage speech in which I want to tell the story behind Going Solo (I also reproduced it on the Going Solo blog — have you subscribed to it yet?).

I’m going to send in a discussion proposal too (thought you could avoid me? tough!) — most certainly around all the language and multilingualism stuff that’s been going around in my head lately. I was hesitating with something about teenagers and the internet but as I see there is already a workshop on the topic (Teenagers/Generation Y and Technology), which I want to attend, I think it’s better to come up with a totally different topic.

Any thoughts?

Update, 1pm: sent in proposal for language discussion: All These Languages! Localization and Multilingualism Online — if you’re interested in being one of the “discussion starters”, get in touch (otherwise, please vote for my proposal!)