First, a few definitions of transmedia storytelling:

• “Telling a story that extends across multiple media platforms” (Lisa Hsia of Bravo Digital Media writing for Mashable)
• Where “elements of a story are dispersed systematically across multiple media platforms, each making their own unique contribution to the whole.” (Henry Jenkins debunking transmedia myths in Fast Company)

Lisa Hsia’s point is that interactive social TV is changing the way audiences engage with television. Henry Jenkins takes it further and adds that shows such as Glee “model new transmedia strategies to attract and sustain audience engagement.” You watch the show, you engage with the characters on Facebook, you read the Twitter stream, and maybe even add to the story.

Henry Jenkins makes a key point (you really should read his article) “Transmedia storytelling is still about the stories and if the stories do not capture the imagination, no amount of transmedia extension can repair the damage.”

And now to learning….

So why the heck does this excite me? Well, can you just imagine the possibilities for learning/organizational change?

• Say you’re trying to get a group of people to behave differently or think differently about a particular topic. Well, write an engaging storyline for them. Start with a set of characters that personify their lives.
• The audience watches the stories of the characters’ attempts to learn on a particular topic, then in the classroom the audience/participants engage in deconstructing the story and saying how they would have done it differently, what resources they should have used, what they should do next.
• At the close, they then pitch that idea to the “producers”, who then decide on the next story segment. And so it goes on for each class.
• The learning experience starts with each new cohort (defined as a group coming into the organization in a similar time frame.)
• Add in a fan page, a twitter stream, a game element, t-shirts, etc., all of which tell one aspect of the story or allow the audience to engage.

Back to Henry Jenkins: “Transmedia represents a strategy for telling stories where there is a particularly diverse set of characters, where the world is richly realized, and where there is a strong back-story or mythology that can extend beyond the specific episodes being depicted in the film or television series.”

I just have to keep reminding myself, start small, grow it over time. Time to make the ideas I’ve been exploring on creating the eLearning graphic novel into a franchise. Next episode coming soon….

We often do not get voluntary participants. People are forced to come to programs and consequently, it undermines the implementation of other game mechanics. How do we overcome the challenge of voluntary participation?

My response:

• First, there’s an assumption that participants DON’T want to go to training — I think they do. I think their work gets in the way. If they had their druthers, they would volunteer to come, but the system they are a part of (aka, their work environment), prevents/hinders/discourages them from doing so. If it’s choice between learning and utilization, utilization wins (particular to professional services.) Examine the SYSTEM they are a part of.
• Motivation comes from goals. Perhaps if were to get clear on the learner’s goals, we could more clearly map to motivation. If they don’t know their goals, their motivations will be fuzzy, IMHO. If their goal is to figure out their goals, then even that helps.
• The tension in most learning, as was noted in Joe’s post, is that is about the “message” that the organization wants their employees to learn/regurgitate/live. So absolutely, there are training situations where there is a need for compliance and people are forced to go. We look for ways to make those trainings more palatable (like gamification) rather than stating quite clearly, in this GAME of WORK, here are the rules. This is what you must know to survive and thrive. If your goal is to keep your job, guess what, you gotta play by these rules.
• The medium in which this message is given (yes I’m channeling McLuhan, he is Canadian after all) usually kills the motivation (yes, I’m thinking death by powerpoint)
• The challenge is the capture the energy in a forced training situation. Where is the energy? In onboarding (new hires or acquisitions), the energy has to do with anxiety of joining a new organization. The motivation is to understand the lay of the land – expectations, tools, etc. How does one channel the energy into something positive — either connections with each other, with their new organization, or voicing/airing concerns in a safe way. This is not new.

I think with gamification and voluntary participation we are perhaps asking the wrong question. It’s not just about the individual but the system they are a part of. Use gamification, but use it in a way that makes the experience more authentic — bring in randomess and the gaming aesthetic it creates rather than a point system. Allow rules that channel and focus the energy in the room — rules that open up the experience rather than shut it down by someone “telling” you what to do. Create teams that support collaboration rather than competition.

Gamification can be useful with the right framing.

Through the Looking Glass is an apt description of what it feels like to enter into a new organization. With every organization you  step through the looking glass, into a world that is defined by its own set of rules. Sometimes the rules make sense, most often they don’t – that is until you have a better understanding of the system, and how it relates to the world around it.

I find myself asking “whose mind is mirrored inside this looking glass?” What minds, or aggregation of minds have created this world? And always, always, the questions — what is the game, what are the rules, who are the players? It’s in my nature to not just try and understand systems, but to try and change them. To find the places where you can shift the game to a new level — the leverage points or “magic key to the secret door.”

My problem is that I get so excited and awed by this new world, that I forget to ask the basic questions about the game. I forget to remain in that place between believing and non-believing, between being a dancer and watching the dancing from a higher ground, between playing the game and playing the rules. This time I’ll try to remember.

Two things happened that piqued my interest: a friend shared a TEDx talk by Seth Priebatsch: the game layer on top of the world; and I talked to another friend about the difficulty of selling anything called a “game” into corporations. As many others have concluded, you have to change the name of the game. Call it anything but a game. Which begs the question — what do we call games?

What are games?

What are games? What are some of their characteristics? Learners are actively engaged in a simulation/fantasy or solving a problem, where they will fail multiple times in order to succeed. The game is filled with feedback mechanisms. It’s about getting the points, not so much having the points (for most people anyways). It’s about status in the game, and often about playing amongst a community of gamers, whether that be in a multi-player game or in a single player game where you compete with your friends.

Sounds kind of like….

Discovery learning

What is discovery learning? Here’s a quick introduction.

• Basedon theories of  Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky.
  • Dewey – primary premise was learning by doing, learning is experiential and social; experiential was often defined as “using your hands” — building a house, taking apart a radio, with a group of peers.
  • Piaget – showed that a child is not an empty vessel, but is an active participant in learning about the world; assimilation and accommodation are means of adjusting the understanding of the world. Created the idea that children learn differently from adults and go through “stages of development” — not all of his theories have stood the test of research.
  • Vygotsky – best known for Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and the bringing out the social and cultural influences on cognitive development. ZPD is the zone between what an individual can learn on their own versus what they can learn with guidance or social interaction. In a sense, it is the optimal learning zone. Related ideas include scaffolding and situated learning.
• Architectures for discovery learning
  • case-based learning
  • incidental learning – results incidentally from an interaction, such as a crossword puzzle.
  • learning by exploring/conversing – asking questions to solve a mystery, discover an object
  • learning by reflection – a teacher never gives a direct answer, but instead answers questions with questions, forcing the students to reflect.
  • simulation-based learning
• How discovery learning is different
  • active rather than passive
  • process-orientated rather than content-oriented
  • failure is important
  • opportunity for feedback in learning process

Sound familiar?

Games as discovery learning

So let’s call games what they are — guided discovery learning. Games are guided by the rules of the game, where you get feedback on how you perform, instantaneously.

Change the name of the game to “guided discovery learning.”

Hmmmm…. I think I can sell that.

But what about…

The fear with guided discovery learning (aka games) is that you will not cover the course content and it will take to long or will be too expensive to create. I’ve been struggling with these questions — how do I design a game so people learn the ‘right content’? Well, it’s about the process, not the content, so that’s the wrong question. I’m not selling a learning PRODUCT, I’m selling a learning SERVICE. Games are a type of learning service. That means coming up with a business model that works in the service economy. OK, some more thinking to do here.

We don’t need to learn how to play games — games are already a part of our world. (Seriously go listen to Seth’s TEDx talk.) The problem is that they are just not fun yet. The bigger problem is that we just haven’t figured out a business model for adult learning games that works yet. How do we create and sell guided discovery learning that’s relevant and cost-effective?

Castronova, J. (2002). “Discovery Learning for the 21st Century: What is it and How Does it Compare to Traditional Learning in Effectiveness in the 21st Century?” Action Research Exchange 1 (1)

Bicknell-Holmes and Hoffman (2000) Engage, Elicit, Experience, Explore: Applying Discovery learning to Library Instruction – LOEX. Presentation.

Social Development Theory: Vygotsky. TIPS website – http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Walking into Hacker Dojo at the start of the Women in Mobile event there was a loud buzz in the air. Voices bouncing off the concrete floor and reverberating through the open space — a large gathering of women and several men mixed in. And…. (sniff, sniff)…the smell of pizza in the air! (thanks PayPal) Ah, the scent of a meetup. Smiles as I greet Seema and Grace at the registration desk.

After introductions to APWT by Shirley (surely you know Shirley Lin!), and Lilian Tham — they hand it over to the moderator, Ishita Majumdar (Executive In Residence, Plug-N-Play) to talk about how these women entrepreneurs in mobile got started, what they/their companies are doing, and their advice for creating your own products and startups. I walked in with no expectations, and walked out excited by possibilities — the Silicon Valley magic.

Here’s the 3 women presenting and what I found cool about what they do.

• Georgi Dagnall, CEO, GeoGad
• Bess Ho, ninja mobile developer with 10 apps in the app stores and speaker at Web 2.0
• Katie McMahon, Marketing Maven,  SoundHound

Geodad – Your personal mobile tour

My first thought — isn’t this just a mashup of maps + tours? It reminded me of running routes that I could do and share with others. Ok, it’s an app, and it also has a web interface for creating personal tours. You mean I could create a personal tour of my home town Port Kells? (Ok, not really a town…more of a corner) Upload commentary, pics, and other stuff that I find cool about it? Ok, I could get into that.I could create my own personal tours around my interests and share it with others? Like a chocolate tour of SF? Ice cream tours? Coffee houses in tour of the South? City of Durham could put its Black History tour on this thing. Very cool.

But hey, I could use it for more than just tourist tours — I could use it for onboarding new people, and giving them a tour around a campus, office or facility (it’s based on longitude and latitude).  Hotels could use it to orient their guests/corporate users (could have used this as an event coordinator when I was trying to figure out what was possible in a space.) I could also use it to create an oral history project, combining it with locations. Or have students create their own oral history project! Or the local homeowners associations could use it to create garden tours, walking tours and more and more.

All right I get it, now I just have to try it. It’s completely free too! (Both iPhone & Android versions I think.)

SoundHound – sample sound, find music

SoundHound is probably the best-funded group that was here tonight. And SoundHound has some serious IP behind it. SoundHound  samples your voice, or a tune that you hum, the music via the radio or speaker –  and finds the song, artist, etc, AND link to places where you can purchase it! How cool is that? (The real question is can it understand MY tone-deaf humming?)

Most sound-matching technology goes from sound > text-text > matching. SoundHound does sound > sound-sound > matching. Much harder, many more possibilities.

So I can imagine doing role plays based on this sound matching. Stay with me — instead of a branching structure, imagine an algorithm that responds to tonality, to specific words, and creates a response based on that. Possibilities of more general role plays. Many things to play with here.

Very cool app. Download – there’s a freeium version or premium version at low cost. Both iPhone & Android.

Bess Ho – app creator, promotion-hacker extraordinaire

Bess Ho is amazing. That’s all I can say. Comes up with app ideas, does quick market research to see what’s out there, then if a competitor exists, designs to its failings, and then starts coding. Her advice: (a) Keep it Simple (2) Do One Thing Really Well (3) Make it Fun.

And she practices guerilla marketing – like showing up at the Palo Alto Festival with her music app, and just talking her way into performing, then near the Apple store in Palo Alto and just stop people on the street to promote her app. This girl is hacker to the core. Great energy, makes anything seem possible. Bess Ho rocks. You can follow here on twitter @bess.

Perfect for a learning experience! Here’s a domain where you have to know a lot of terms, be able to distinguish between the terms, and then be able to establish a point-of-view of your wine preferences — as opposed to Robert Parker’s wine preferences, or the Wine Spectator’s wine preferences. Yes, and then there’s understanding all these wine point guides.

So let’s just reiterate these key points:

• Audience – novice wine drinkers who want to learn more about wine, who are intimidated by the language of wine, and who may position themselves as anti-wine or anti-elitist.
• Outcomes - establish a point-of-view on what wine one likes to drink – wine preferences; be able to “defend” or speak-to that POV.
• Learning Tasks – some initial thoughts
  • Distinguish red from white (hey! an easy win, no?)
  • Understand fortified wines are, blends vs. single varietals, old world vs. new
  • Distinguish main varietals – Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Grigo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Merlot, common blends (Bordeaux)
  • Know some of the lesser varietals/blends
  • Pair wine with foods – the basics, more complex
  • Going into a wine store and buying wine for:
    • a drinking party
    • a special occasion
    • for your cellar – collecting wines

Distinguishing is both a visual task (red/white, etc.), cognitive task – knowing the terms, and being able to taste the difference. It’s also about being able to understand the mental models in the wine world (such as old world vs. new world). It may also be possible to define some cognitive strategies: systematic approaches to problem solving in this domain or rules of thumb (especially when it comes to wine pairings). Developing a cognitive strategy for oneself and a POV is about creating an approach to answering the question – “What wine do I want to drink?” To this end, a tool such as a wine journal, is a good start.

Methods

• This could be done as an extremely long PowerPoint presentation (save me now…put me out of my misery!) – or maybe just some part of it….
• It could be an in-person learning experience — in fact, some of it *has* to be!!! Virtual wine is just no fun. Self-directed, in-person learning experience — include a guide to wine bars, wine tasting, or do-it-yourself tryouts
• It could be a game – stay with me. If you have a group of people who are resistant to wine, one could create a game (part-task practice) on suggesting wine to a particular type of wine drinker. The more “right” suggestions you make, the more the will drink (although not P.C., it would be fun to see how much you could get people to drink…. creating drunks…. hmmm…sub-goal)

So these are just some initial thoughts on creating a learning experience about wine. I have to thank my friend Paul for all his years of encouragement on experimenting with wine. More next week.

p.s. If you have thoughts or experiences on who you learned about wine, please share!

There are many older pieces still to add, and many new ones running around in my head. But hey, check it out and I welcome your feedback.

• Steve Meretzky — VP of Game Design at Playdom
  funny, very experienced and knowledgeable game designer, now designing Social Games
• Dave Castelnuovo — of Pocket God (Game), cofounder at Bolt Interactive
  one of the first entrepeneurs to successfully lead the charge into iPhone Games, very funny

Notes from the meeting:

Dave Castelnuovo:

• Created an app game called Pocket God where you help pygmaies get off the island, but can also do ultimate evil to them.
• Talked about and how he got started in games — long hours working on other projects, as an employee, then as independent contractor. Really wanted to get on the iPhone bandwagon.
• Used the idea of sprint projects, setting himself goals to create a usuable game/app within 10hrs and just get it out the door. Create a prototype. Get things done in a set amount of time. A way to focus yourself when life keeps distracting you.
• Created app game with co-worker. Many updates, done weekly, quick turnaround, to add features to the game.
• Early on noticed that his game was mentioned on TouchArcade – a community/reivew site. Starting interacting with the community reviewing his project. Built trust. Recommends toucharcade.com as a place to get feedback.
• The key is to build grassroots, build slow and steady, then go for eyeballs and ramp up.
• His first game had 150 downloads per day, 2nd game 2 or 3, Pocket God – ramped up to millions. The key is to interact with your community.
• Chose your category on the app store carefully. Simulation is a category where its easier to stay at the top. What categories you choose is key.
• Apple used to take 3 days to approve and app. Now approval time is up to 3 weeks. if you posted updates frequently, it would push your app to the top. No more.

Castelnuovo was a wonderful, self-deprecating storyteller. He left me feeling that I too, could design games, given enough chutzpah and willingness to give up sleep.

Steve Meretzky:

• Presentation on the ABCs of social games.
• Great intro of Steve Meretzky, sounds like a great guy.. and fun.
• Who knew Stanford had a game industry archive? Steve donated to it when he moved from MA to a much smaller house

Presentation Notes:

• Social games are different from traditional games in that:
  • can be cooperative or competitive
  • have content that changes over time
  • have potential for negative behavior
  • they are easy to get into –> start simple and reveal depth over time.
• Design and business of social games is intermixed — cannot have one without the other.
  • Virality and monetization.
  • Goals of virality
    • Once you start the game/install game, the designer must get you to come back to game.
    • What you want to do and what terms of service (TOS) of the platform allows (Facebook, MySpace, iPhone App Store platforms)
    • The overlap of TOS and what you want is the what you end up doing. Developers however, are constantly pushing the boundaries of the TOS, and the rules of what is allowed is constantly changing..
  • Viral tools
    • Invites
      • Negatives – they require action on part of the user, TOS have limited number of invites that can go out
      • Positives – they are persistent in the user’s inbox.
    • Wallposts
      • are bragworthy
      • high profile
      • can disappear in a user’s stream rather quickly
    • Notification channels
      • Negatives – require action on part of user (click to activate the Notification window).
      • Positives — once they are there, they are paying attention
• New changes afoot in Facebook
  • Notifications changing (easier to see access), number of invites allowed changing, new scores/points/post? from game will be allowed.
• New viral strategies
  • join my mob
  • beat my score
  • let’s exchange gifts
  • Wish list
  • Be my employee (playfish started this with restaurant)

• The key to Monetization starts with engagement
• Games have a longer form (arch), they allow you to build a presence over time.
  • Bejeweled, which has 4 mil players, is unable to monetize because it’s game arch is limited, does not allow building of engagement over time. They don’t know how to make $$ with their fan base.
• Key monetization comes from
  • Re-engagement strategies
    • …. harvesting fields..
    • collect $ (mobster),
    • daily login rewards.
    • Taking care of employees (who are your social network friends)
    • taking care of pets.
    • Someone beat high score.
  • Monetization strategies – selling:
    • virtual goods (major $$ strategy)
    • premium virtual goods for rare items and that also have in game use
    • accessories for avatar customization,
    • buying stuff for your pet
    • content — charge for premium content
    • mini-games within a game (i.e. within sorority game)
• Themes within social games.
  • What’s not working is what works in non-social gaming before (FPS, Fantasy, Sci-Fi)
  • Real world settings work (Mobster, Sorority, Farmville, Restaurant, etc.)
  • This is now the mass market games… based on RL
• The future….
  • more social synchronous game time
  • personal profiles play into game more
  • your social graphs – who you interact with, how, etc.
  • cyber-expression of selves in the social world

Meretzky had a good perspective on what works in social games. He was also very clear that the rules keep changing. Excellent presentation.

Game Purpose/Audience:

• Imagine a sales force or set of experts who have extensive knowledge on how to solve problems for customers but feel that they don’t have time to contribute to a knowledge base describing the solutions.
• Assume this set of experts primarily uses email and is also very competitive.
• The purpose is get contributions to the knowledge base

Game description: The game is very simple, and is reminiscent of the expert questions in LinkedIn.

• The dynamic would be to use email based polling/fill-in the blank
• Send a question on Tuesday
• Responses are submitted via text answer to email (form-based submission)
• All answers are posted to a board/web page
• A reminder is sent on Thursday to ask people to vote on the answers Friday
• Get people to vote on the answers on Friday – crowd source the vetting process
• The best answer is chosen by EOB Friday based on voting results – posted on board
• Every Monday leader board results are sent out with the who won on Friday the top contributors/leaders to-date

The key will be to get support by thought leaders and influencers within the organization.  You may even want key leaders participating in the knowledge fest.

Game variations – levels of expertise

• Depending on the dynamics of your organization, you may also want to send out multiple questions at a time – similar to the crossword of the NY Times, getting more difficult as the week progresses. This would allow for junior people to participate at the beginning of the week, and those with deeper expertise to participate at the latter part of the week.
• This would require a more complex scoring system – weighted more heavily towards more complex questions

Acknowledge leaders

• Recognize the leaders on a monthly basis – at the end of each month, give a prize to the best answers for that month (highest score)
• Also give answers to the most prolific if you want (highest attempts)
• The reward can be non-monetary or just simple recognition. Dinner with the CEO? Gift certificate for dinner? Amazon reward? It depends.

The key is start simple. Perhaps after a year, there can be multiple questions or questions for each department. See where it goes, see who answers, see where the energy is. The hardest part will be coming up with good questions. If this is a product based company, and you have a helpdesk, there may be a natural connection.

Just a simple idea to use a simple mechanism to share knowledge within the organization.