Banksy: “Love is in the air”
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If you read the news and follow the hype you’ll be familiar with the calls to throw out your old ways or risk becoming irrelevant. While there is some truth amongst the hype, we’ve seen similar changes before and you are better prepared than you realise – so if you’ve been following these rapid developments and wondering how to make sense of it all, read on.

Communication has always been the working machinery of humanity, and it’s never been static. In fact profound shifts in how we communicate have occurred continually throughout history and they all follow the same pattern… social media is no exception.

The most recent and applicable information revolution to what we are seeing today is the advent of the movable type press of Gutenberg in 1439.

Back in the time of horse and cart, Gutenberg’s technology took around 70 years spread, and another 150 years for its accumulative value to be realised.

Through this roughly two hundred year period ideas were suddenly able to spread across society faster and more consistently than ever. Until Gutenberg, very few were educated and literate, but with access to cheap books, language became standardised and literacy rates soared.

Before Gutenberg local and world news was relayed in the Sunday Church service. After Gutenberg that centralised power became more democratised with the rise of doctrines, newspapers and individual opinion.

This new access to information was seen as a direct threat to the established hierarchy so many of those in charge, mainly Churches and governments, took exactly the same actions we are seeing in corporations and governments today… they resisted.

Gutenberg’s printing press set off a communication revolution, similar to what we are experiencing today

Back then, Spain and Portugal dominated the world and owed their prosperity to the traditional business models of war and taxes. Fearful of change Spain and Portugal spent the following two hundred years limiting or controlling the spread of the printing press. Through initiatives’ like the Inquisition, social discourse was quashed isolating them from a rapidly innovating world and eroding their world standing.

Poorer countries such as Holland and England with little to loose, embraced the technology leading to established standards in business, scientific thought and governance. Standards in accounting and technical breakthroughs in shipbuilding led to tremendous prosperity for these previously poor countries, all of which was facilitated by the fast and cheap exchange of ideas.

Correspondingly today, many of our most celebrated social media champions are companies who only jumped in because their backs were against the wall. Their subsequent turnarounds are well studied and the commonality is the courageous commitment that comes with necessity – i.e. Lego, Burberry, Deloitte.

Back in the 1400-1500’s this information surge touched all levels of society, and again, we are seeing the same thing today.

Published in 1522, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses is estimated to have achieved an incredible circulation of 300,000 copies. That huge volume of copies says a lot about capacity, the innate demand for information and the potency of his work.

The 95 Theses played a key role in the questioning an outdated and arguably corrupt religious/political hierarchy, the outflows of which went on to trigger the Reformation in Europe and the rise of a nations right to self-determination. Oddly enough, the Pope wasn’t pleased so Luther was excommunicated and labelled an outlaw, all for pointing out the truths & inconsistencies that are now considered to be self-evident; one wonders how much time Luther was forced to spend in the Ecuadorian embassy.

This is the function of real social dialogue in its most literal sense, changing societies, and the world, forever.

Another hundred years later, and Isaac Newton’s work was disseminated throughout Europe for research and discussion.

By the 19^th century, the printing press was the default medium of social dialogue and the platform across which all sorts of change and development was facilitated.

This was the true birth of modern media and represented a significant step in the democratisation of information away from institutions, back to individuals… and it’s happening again today.

If there was any difference from now to then it would be the speed of uptake; Social media in its current form is at best 20 years old and already there are over 1.5 billion regular users; social media has achieved more in twenty years than the printing press did in one hundred.

Again our hierarchies are being questioned as more direct paths to information by-pass inherent flaws in previous models to create new ways of working and learning that are much more direct and efficient. That’s not to say hierarchies are dead, they didn’t die in the Reformation, but they are undergoing significant disruption and for us this is what “Digital Disruption” points to.

Be it social, political, organisational or religious, all practises are subject to scrutiny, and for the idealists amongst us this is very exciting.

Resist, or don’t resist… it really doesn’t matter; this shift is happening regardless of who participates. However for my money this unfolding represents the largest and most profound opportunity we’ll ever have to contribute in alignment to our inspiration…

By @wardsco

The next generation are growing in a connected world whether we like it or not

A protest in rural Tunisia is recorded on a smart phone, uploaded to YouTube, spread through Facebook and twenty-eight days later the government falls. Irrespective of demographic, culture or age, digital communications are now part of life so if you run a business in the digital world, you better pay attention.

The social shift that started through the Internet with the likes of Facebook, has now invaded the enterprise and the spoils of this new technology belong to the early adopters. The connectivity that this brings is unprecedented, and it’s through this connectivity that our world stands to change more rapidly in the next one hundred years than we have in the past one thousand.

People have always formed social connections.  Whether that’s been for survival, breeding or for pure human and social contact, connecting is part of our DNA.

These connections make us more effective communicators, alerting us to shared opportunities, dangers and laying a platform for greater achievement through collaboration. The exchange of ideas across these connections has been the foundation on which all of the worlds greatest achievements and inventions have been realized.

Building with stone, working with metal, casting engines and traveling to space, these are all results of the collaborative exchange of ideas and experiences.

Today, our world is more connected than at any other point in history. Although we are still learning about the full potential of this technology and its applications, illustrations of its power are becoming more and more common: e.g.

• * By searching Google, a very smart 15year old recently created a test for cancer that was more accurate and 100 times cheaper than the incumbent technology.
• * A group of scientists struggled without success for over a decade to map a key protein in fighting AIDs. By putting their work online in a gamified framework, it was solved within 2 weeks thanks to the contributions of 40,000 participants.

There are hundreds of similar examples. It is this power that is entering and shifting the business landscape.

The other emerging opportunity exists in the digital exhaust created and collected as people live more of their lives through technology, commonly known as “Big Data.” Making sense of disparate data sources and presenting findings in interactive, visual formats is the next gold rush.

An example of this is WeAreHunted.com; their website scans social, news and streaming sites to determine which songs and artists are the most popular at any point in time. The information is aggregated into a global list of the top 99 and the songs are then streamed to their audience. This is a business created from nothing… except a collection of disparate sources.

Content alone is no longer king. Aggregation is.

Every second, human behaviors are being captured, what we like, what we don’t like, what we react to, etc all of which are providing insights into opportunities yet unclaimed.

Clearly the catch is knowing what questions to ask and even Facebook with their massive data set and teams of behavioral economists are still learning and trying to figure it out. It may seem as though its going to take years to realize the value of what’s already been collected… but then again with the rapid rate of change, maybe not.

Ways of visualizing this data will definitely play a key role in the business world from now on.

Trying to understand the mechanisms that tie us together will only be relevant if it can be presented in ways that are easily understood and consumed. Creating data visualizations is a mind-bending experience, though interestingly some of the most relevant human-connectivity visualizations are being lifted from the area of genome research.

So with all of this change, opportunity and overwhelming complexity what does it all boil down to?

For us, it remains customer focus.

For the organisations that are customer centric, big data is about uncovering observable customer behaviors that are free from the cognitive bias inherent in surveys or interviews. The next step is to design solutions that place the customer in the middle and build a flow toward a given experience or outcome.

Understanding how and where people connect, along with their behavioral triggers, enables the opportunity to bring value to the exchange much earlier than was previously possible. A receptive awareness of this also opens up the lines for critical customer feedback to reassess and hone approaches in order to reach an outcome that meets everyone’s interest.

While this may sound like a lot to take in and it may feel as though it’s too late to start it’s wise to remember that if history is a guide, these seismic changes usually take a couple of generations to stabilize.

In the mean time the amount of raw opportunity in front of businesses now, has not been as apparent or as great since the Industrial revolution. Watching from the sideline,rather than boldly participating, only jeopardizes a businesses future relevance.

As we outlined at the start and as complex as it seems, its all about connectivity… so why don’t you join us?

Follow Scott on Twitter as @wardsco

While the motivation behind it may be understandable (services need to be profitable), a battle scarred public, already weary of historic Facebook terms of service changes, saw the idea of no longer owning their photos as a significant betrayal of trust. The response from users was immediate with floods of people deleting their images, and accounts, and fleeing to the perceived safety of a resurrected Flickr and overlooked new kid, EyeEm.

The stampede for the door prompted an immediate about-face from Instagram who reinstated the 2010 terms of service to stem the exodus. Yet the fragility of Instagram’s assumed unassailability was exposed through the abundance of viable alternatives.   The foundation of trust that underpinned the Facebook community was shaken to its core.

Shift focus now to Google.  Recently there have been a few articles about the stratospheric rise of Google+. I personally suspect talk of stratospheric uptake is rubbish but the Instagram experience may hold the key to how Facebook will eventually be dethroned.

I use Google+ occasionally. Initially it was out of curiosity, but now I use it when I need a break from the noise of Facebook. However inevitably, my aversion to Facebook wanes and back I go.

Whats been really interesting from dipping in and out of Google+ is the friends who remain active. From my observations, the main group of friends that really drive platform activity are the contrarians ie people who take a subtle pride in going against the grain (I’m one of them… grudgingly).

Historically Google+ has been the Sheldon Cooper of the social media world i.e. brilliant theoretically, but socially awkward. At its launch Google+ felt more like technical feat than a behavioral platform.

But since this time Google+ has been diligently working behind the scenes to improve the experience by building an ecosystem that corrals users from its more popular products eg Gmail. They have done very well to direct, blend and merge their existing services into Google+ but aside from the contrarians the rise in user numbers has hardly been an adoption of choice.

Yet Google+ is getting better and better and, like a tiger stalking its way through the undergrowth, the better its positioning, the more damage it has the chance to cause.

The same could be said of My Space. My Space certainly felt the sting of irrelevance as the rise of Facebook drained its member-base; Flickr must have felt the same way as the world went mobile with Instagram. Yet here we are a few years down the track and even My Space is stalking their way back.

The point is that until recently Facebook hasn’t really had any viable competitors, and as a result has been able to make changes to its terms of service with virtual impunity. I’m sure that those in Facebook have known about the danger of complacency for a long time now. However from an end-user perspective we now have viable alternatives to Facebook, and all that’s missing to spark the exodus, is a reason…

September 2012 Facebook top 10

It is always exciting to hear about success stories as it usually is an opportunity to learn about things that work. The top 10 Facebook posts – those which got the most likes in September – have now been around, what is there to learn from them?

Really, only 2 of those shine above the crowd: number 5 and 6 reach engagements levels of 8% and 15% respectively and that is what you would expect from great content.

The rest of it, well, they hover between 0.5% and 3% of engagement: that is the number of likes (that got them in the top 10) divided by the number of fans for the page. Granted, it is a great achievement to build a community of followers in the millions, but I would argue that what demonstrates the quality of a post is the level of engagement it generates. Like my mum: when she gets 2 likes out of her 15 Facebook friends (13%), she does a better job…

Back to content: number 5 is about a TV presenter who has to go through surgery and number 6 about a movie actor who unfortunately passed away. And what else did we have in the other winners? Remembrance about the twin towers, American coffee, American cartoon, another famous guy in his hospital bed, luxury products and lastly something quite funny about American football…

Bottom line, what can we learn?

1. Celebrities boost content performance
2. Strong human emotions generate strong engagement
3. Oh, and also: America is still the center of the world

Nothing we didn’t already know, really… waiting for next month.

Jrfan Kamal – Big brands and gamification winning the marathon

Jrfan was raised a few good points. The points that struck home were the need to:

-       Reward players a lot in the early game (especially in the first 10 mins)

-       Build games so late comers were not penalized and could contribute

-       Find ways to reward non gamers so they were more likely to participate

He also talked about the 3 needs of a brand

• See results happening fast – brands aren’t patient!
• Value (measurable)
• Fun & results

Other points mentioned:

-       Points & leader-boards added 20-70% more traffic/activity vs campaigns without them

• A Gamified approach achieved triple the results of Kiwi Bank

-       Games must deliver value to users fast as users wont wait around for you to iterate your product until it becomes engaging

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/irfan-kamal-big-brands-and-gamification-winning-the-marathon

Kevin Akeroyd – Enterprise Gamification

Enterprise gamification… A subject close to my own heart… Gamification is really all about engagement and continuous improvement and as such is a part of the emerging management model; Kevin’s talk reflected this.

Kevin’s main points were:

-       Engagement is critical to future survival of the enterprise

-       Admit your no longer in control

-       Embrace the power of community

-       A gamififed innovation process saw participation go from 30 new product in suggestions to 10,000 product suggestions in 90days

-       Gamification is a subset of an engagement strategy

-       Define then reward key behaviors

-       Reputation is everything (in terms of reward, status etc)

-       12% of workers access social software 3% are power users

No presentation provided for this talk

Day 2

Jp Rangaswami @jobsworth – Sales Force: Engaging Employees and driving innovation

JP had a few interesting points. A lot of the below is obvious, and that’s why its important:

-       It all begins with clear goals: always start here

-       Match abilities to outcomes

-       Without trust there’s no engagement: by this he meant that just by providing a game doesn’t mean people will play

-       Having deeply aligned goals has never been more important

-       Key mentality of the adopting organization: “The joy is in being able to make new mistakes”

-       When they’ve been through their review process over and over and there’s nothing left to take away, we know we’re baked

-       Learning vs mistakes: An emphasis on learning is key to the new management paradigm

-       When resolving problems work from the position that: “Given enough eyes all problems are shallow”

-       Contextualize issues from “This weeks best/most constructive complaint was… (this gamifies the complaint process)”

No presentation provided

Jon Guerrea – When goals become games: Gamification as a tool for achieving more

Jon was impressive… he basically used gaming principles to achieve objectives in his life. Using post-it notes he was able to build a game that helped him achieve his workouts, diet and work objectives.

I was struck and inspired by his ability to make it all so simple. His was actually one of the most useful examples of gaming mechanics because his was one of the few presentations that was delivered from personal experience i.e. as someone designing as well as in the game. It really opened my mind to the concept of growing the game from the inside out…

Nice quote: “I knew I was going to take the wrong train so I left early” (cant remember what he referred to)

Jon’s key points were:

-       Gamify habits first (small things e.g. hours worked on the weekend)

-       Build your game slow and steady

-       Given points for small time increments of activity (10min increments seemed to be the magic number: people cant find 30 mins but can find 10)

• Reward additional points for consecutive sections or days in a row i.e. ongoing patterns of behavior, not just the individual behavior

-       Key components to set up:

• Goal
• Reward
• Points
• Ability

-       Key components to track and measure:

• Time
• Streak
• Outcomes

-       Build accountability into your game by booking people to perform activity with you e.g. gym buddy

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/jonathan-guerrera

Charlie Kim @charliekim – Enterprise gamification of fitness

Charlie is the CEO of Next Jump and prioritized fitness amongst his company. Charlie’s talk was pretty cool as he talked about how they used gamification to grow workout rates amongst their employees from 5% to over 80%.

Key takeaways:

-       Set simple goals

-       Use leader boards keep people accountable

-       Team structures within the game incentivized people too (i.e. my success is dependant on your success)

-       Expect games to fatigue. In this situation:

• Re-organize teams/change strategies

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/charlie-kim-final-13440437

Nadya Direkova: 16 design Patterns for user engagement

If there was an award for the best talk at the Gamification summit Nadya would have been a top ranking finalist… her talk was brilliant. Her talk essentially threw a lot of concepts at us in a very short time (i.e. 16 concepts in 18 minutes… actually there was a lot more than 16) but it was engaging and very enjoyable.

I highly recommend looking at Nadyas presentation while reading the notes… some of her visuals are more illustrative than my notes below.

Key takeaways:

-       3 aspects of user journey to keep in mind

• Beginner experience: how are people brought into the game?
• Social experience: including and bringing friends
• Repeat engagement: how do you keep people coming back?

-       Concepts for onboarding (clarifying the beginner experience):

• Come try it: social queues
• Prizes
• Visual story telling (instead of long explanation)
• Visual cues (e.g. click here, highlight screens)
• Tutorials coaching: videos etc
• Reward schedule
  • Cant over reward in first 10 mins
  • People who approach mastery must be challenged therefore the schedule of rewards must slow down

-       Social experience (Bring your friends)

• Gated trial – form a team
• Social feedback
  • Pokes etc
  • Thank you button
  • Give an award between users
• Reputation
  • Batching community members
• Share achievements
  • Tweeting/ broadcasting accomplishments
• Mischief
  • Farmville did a thing on April Fools Day where they could wrap a friends farm as though it was a gift

-       Repeat engagement: Player comeback

• Keeping score so people can leave the game then come back
• Throttle actions
  • 3 strikes you’re out
  • Punish bad habits
  • Provide disincentives for bad habits
• Advanced user paths/roles
  • Quest queue – list of quests to allow extra rewards
• Scarcity: In terms of skills, rewards, items in the game… scarce = valuable
• Skills ladder: to provide visible improvements in skill, results in the sense of progression

Nadaya was asked at the end of the session, which is the best game mechanic? Which she responded:

“There’s no “best” game mechanic… the best mechanic is the one that solves the job”

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/nadya-direkova-game-on-16-design-patterns-for-user-engagement

Kes Sampathar Cynergy

As a proponent of behavioral science, I was interested to see what Kes had to say. His talk focused on the base behaviors and motivators to be kept in mind when designing games:

-       Like vs Want: the two are very different motivational circuits (wanting is more motivational)

-       Other common motivations:

• Sex
• Food
• Mastery
• Learning/curiosity
• Competition (status etc)
• Co-operative: social

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/kes-sampanthar

Tim Chang – VC Take

Tim is a Venture capitalist and was at the conference to provide his take on gaming:

- Must haves:

• Objective for victory
• Real time scoring system against that objective
• Clear cut rules on how your actions impact that goal
• Services that are just as critical (Maybe more) than the solution
• There’s no pros and cons for each game mechanic… so choosing 1 is foolish and puts people off
• Gaming is about behavioral mechanics
• Fremium business model progresses toward: “buy it” or “earn it”

Jon Radoff – How entertainment brands are redefining user engagement

Jon is very knowledgeable and I liked his emphasis on the role of story telling/narrative in building powerful games; Jon commented that Scoring is the main tool used to communicate a story.

Key takeaways:

-       STORIES ARE CRITICAL

• Stories: People need to understand stories and who the individuals are in that story
• Putting a gaming layer onto a website without understanding and telling a story is pointless

-       Getting people into “flow” is the aim of the game (see the The challenege wheel image on this page)

-       If badges represent real mastery then players want to share them

-       Co-operation is based on promoting shared behaviors

-       Competition for attention, for resources, recognition and physical domination

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/john-radoff-gamifying-media-how-entertainment-brands-are-redefining-user-engagement

James Gardener – Spigit

I’ve long been a fan of Spigit as an innovation tool so was interested to hear what James had to say. From all reports he was instrumental in the games design from the early days on and he had a lot to say about what they had tried and how it had evolved.

Key takeaways:

-       Spigit uses currency and stock market approach to boost and progress ideas

-       They tried a program that allowed people to exchange virtual currency into real but very few people took them up on exchanges as they wanted to maintain their place in the game.

-       They got worried there was too much virtual currency at play and tried a tax currency but people hated it and they stopped

-       People contributed to the innovation program of the company to keep their finger on the pulse of what was happened… e.g. it became like an internal news service

-       People tried to game the system by periodically releasing and holding back information and controlling the information flows… this meant at times ideas got more in quantity and quality (Lloyds bank had 1200 per month)

-       Players wont just participate in an established game… they need to have a reason for participation

-       The term Gamification has negative connotations… other replacements are: “behavioral frameworks” or “psychological motivators”

-       Gaming happens much more outside of the enterprise than in (where there are fewer implications for status)

-       Behaviors are set by the first 100 people in the game

-       Adding an element of risk increases engagement

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/james-gardner

Seth Cooper – University of Washington

For someone who’s done some intensely cool stuff, Seth Cooper has a remarkable humility.

When presenting, I’ve long told the Fold.it story as an illustration of social media’s potential, so hearing Seth speak in person (and later having a 1-on-1 chat) was a personal highlight.

For those that don’t know, Fold.it uses game mechanics to solve scientific problems, ie folding proteins. They drew global attention when their crowd-sourced gaming model was able to solve a decade old problem in 3 weeks.

Some of the most interesting points of Seths talk were:

-       Most of the Foldit community are not scientists: 75% of their top players have no professional experience in biochemistry!!!

-       Fold.it teaches users the basics of protein folding and gives them tools to level up as their knowledge grows

-       When asked what motivated people to play, people responded:

• Purpose
• Achievement
• Social
• Immersion

-       They have since used these techniques to build synthetic enzymes that spur a specific reactions

• The enzymes designed by players were 20 times better than those designed by scientists

-       Next area for focus in this area is scale. Approximately 200,000 play fold.it, whereas Angry Birds has 500 million players

-       They’re splitting leaderboards into different categories which creates more ways to win

-       Seths now working to on a game that designs nano devices made out of DNA

-       Similar sites include Filo (genetic sequencing) & Eterna (figuring out RNA)

I was fortunate enough to speak directly with Seth the following day. I asked him about the process he followed to identify and create the required mechanics and he pointed me to a study he wrote on the topic called “The challenge of designing scientific discovery games” – Google it, it’s a good read too.

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/seth-cooper-solving-hard-problems-with-gamification-and-crowdsourcing

Dave Cobb – Thinkwell – Writing stories for physical spaces

Davids talk was about introducing gamification into physical spaces. I found his talk was important because been able to integrate the real and virtual worlds effectively is increasingly critical for commercial success.

Davids team were commissioned to build a fountain in a dead-space at Atlanta city pier, so they used game mechanics to entice passers-by to engage. Interestingly it became so popular, it raised the value of near by tenant spaces.

David also discussed:

-       The trend and value of including gaming into specific locations eg

• “Sleep no more” a gamified stage play where the audience is part of the action
• Next Gen initiative, Disney is using a card based game

-       Disney FAST Past:

• Disney is personalizing their experience by launching an RFID system that feeds user data to signs and characters around the park ie Cinderella could call your kids by name as they walk past

-       People love location based games for 5 reasons:

• The spectacle
• Community participation
• The third place (unique): ie people love to not be in the lounge room
• Time
• Quality ($)

-       Location gamification provides a 1on1 connection with physical space

-       The Individuals story is the most important story of all: figuring out how to include this is the central theme in promoting location based gamification

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/dave-cobb-writing-rollercoasters-stories-spectacle-games-in-physical-places

M2 Research – Trends in consumer and Enterprise markets

This recent report was presented along with their key findings. It’s a good report that speaks for itself.

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/wandameloni/gamification-in-2012-trends-in-consumer-and-enterprise-markets-13453048

Richard Bartle – University of Essex

Richard Bartle is the guy that invented the player types that are frequently refered to in gaming discussions (achievers, explorers, socializers, killers). Richards talk was light hearted and fun and he frequently highlighted the fact that while his research has set him the reputation of a Gamification expert, its not actually his speciality.

Richard sees the role of player types to give gamification a way to marry rewards with activity ie achievers can have points, while explorers don’t want points (they want to explore and need more information).

He also gave a few fun examples of how the table he used could be adapted to illustrate other phenomena – check out the presentation for specifics.

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/richard-bartle-a-game-designers-view-of-gamification

Andrea Kuszewski – how to design your life for continuous cognitive enhancement

Andrea was great… she spoke about game playing and how it is a core component of how we learn & develop. Games, Andrea said, build our “fluid intelligence” (this is essentially the ability to learn new things and apply knowledge to problem solve new situations).

Andreas other key points were:

-       Suzan Yagi: her studies demonstrated that people who increased their intelligence the most, played more and had the most fun

-       Hardcore training + motivation = max cognitive growth

-       Be in a constant state of mild discomfort

-       Set the bar higher than you think possible

To get smarter Andrea recommended 5 things:

1. Seek novelty:

-       Novelty seeking releases dopamine… this includes new skills and learning

2. Challenge yourself

-       Moving up levels

-       As soon as its easy, BUMP IT UP!!!!

3. Think creatively

-       Switch between conventional and unconventional thinking

-       Make remote connections… “zoom in” and “zoom out” of problems/situations

-       Learn same info in multiple formats (more ways to conceptualise a problem build connections)

4. Do things the hard way!

-       Avoid cognitive shortcuts (eg spell checker etc)

5. Networking

-       You learn by teaching others

-       Utilise social networks for information sharing

Andrea also was responsible for one of my favorite quotes of the conference: “Learn to fetishize the pain of struggling through learning something new”

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/andrea-kuszewski-get-smarter-how-to-design-your-life-for-continuous-cognitive-enhancement

The presenters were brilliant, the content inspiring and the people at the conference were completely sensational. As usual, I took heaps of notes and have pulled together a quick summary of some of the sessions and included links to the original presentations.

Krishnan Saranathan – Reinventing loyalty

Krishnan works with Uniteds loyalty program. His presentation was pretty good and he spoke to the gaming aspects of their frequent flyer program.

Frequent flyer programs are the early pioneers of gamification rewarding specific behaviors that work toward commercial objectives. The most common gamification components’ of the programs were:

1. The tiered levels of achievement: this refers to the varying levels of frequent flyer (gold, silver, platinum etc)
2. Progress bars: Used to help track how many points you have and where your score is up to in relation to your next goal
3. Rewards and recognition: which are given when cashing in your earned points. These include purchased items and status based items such as premier queues at the airport.

Krishnan told how United members would alter their behavior to maintain or improve their position in the game. They would:

-       Buy miles to maintain their place during times when they flew less

-       People book flights with more legs to gain more points (legs are one of the items they measure)

-       Gamified campaigns attract double the traffic and people stayed engaged 4x longer

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/krishnan-saranathanfinal-061912

Nicole Lassaro – Science of fun: Future of Gamificiation is emotion

I really found Nicoles presentation useful. She sketched a quick map of the gamification landscape to give it context and discuss the various types of fun. This was one of those presentations that make you think about things slightly differently.

Nicole sees gamification in terms of play and said:

• Play is an engaging way of building skills
• Play also enhances social skills
• The real world has natural feedback looks whereas virtual world doesn’t – Gamification provides these feedback loops (I love this point… any trend that supports the innate world around us is destined for greatness… In 5-10 years gamification will be standard)

-       Nicole’s 4 keys to fun (good games will utilize at least 3 of the 4 following types):

• Easy fun- Vehicles for imagination eg Novelty:
  • Novelty of controls: eg the ability to move by tilting an ipad, or the Wii’s ability to gauge physical movement
  • Exploration: eg games that involve unfolding worlds
  • Aspirational fantasy: eg those photo apps that make you look like zombies etc
• Hard fun:
  • Challenge
  • Feedback and progress
  • Clear goals
  • Strategy
  • Progress
• People fun(this provokes more emotion than the other 3 combined):
  • Social care taking gestures (eg like button etc)
  • Open communication
  • Co-operate or share
• Serious fun(people play to change self or the world)
  • Collection/completion (Badges eg – Barnstars on Wikipedia)
  • Repetition and rhythm
  • Impact in the real world (tilt)

One quote of Nicole’s that really resonated was: “When looking to maintain engagement, you better have a new strategy on level 4”

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/nicole-lazzaro-the-future-of-gamification-is-emotion

(In addition to the presentation check out their website for the infographic on the 4 types of fun… top stuff!)

Better entrepreneurship with gamification– Founders institute

This presentation was contentious mainly because the Founders Institute actively uses fear as their motivator for herding behaviors. I quite liked this presentation for 2 reasons:

1. It reminded me that fear has a place
2. Personal change is painful and, like it or not, fear has the ability to transcend pain

• Commitment: People must cough up an application fee to join the program. If they can’t raise this amount, then theres doubt over their ability to complete it
• Fear: The threat of public humiliation at been thrown out of the program acts as a significant motivator
• Rewards: People who put action to plans are recognized for their effort.
• Social: really the whole process is social as people go through it together

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/better-entrepeneurship-with-gamification

Dan Porter – Draw Something creator

Dan had a few interesting points:

-       People spend $ to eliminate social friction (ie People spend $ to progress the game and avoid telling your friend that their picture is crap)

-       Adding collaboration into a game fuels engagement

-       Manage games actively so they reflect the current real world (eg include references to Valentines Day etc)

-       MVP: Minimal viable product: launch with the minimal viable product

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/dan-porter

Teens in Tech – Daniel Brusilovsky @Danielbru

Daniel Brusilovsky is very impressive… for someone so young to have done so much he makes you painfully aware of what is possible. Some of the takeaways from Daniels talk were:

-       70% 13-17yo’s have a mobile device

-       Allowing people to play the game across all platforms and all times is power as it allows you to increase the number of “Achievement moments”. I didn’t know what an achievement moment was, but essentially its those moments when people feel a rush of endorphins at having accomplished something or escaped a nasty situtation… this was the first time I realized that Gamification is about delivering these moments.

-       Things to remember:

• Games should be customizable and interactive
• Take advantage of existing resources
• Gamers spend a lot of time on social networks
• Use game mechanics

-       Daniels site: www.gamecentre.com

Presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/gzicherm/daniel-brusilovsky

In the interests of getting my notes up in a readable format, I’m going to end part 1 here. Part 2 will be along later this week and starts with the brilliant Seth Cooper of Fold.it.

For those of you who haven’t heard, “command and control” is dead… or at least dying rapidly. Successive waves of technology are smashing down the traditional business hierarchies while digital natives chip-away the mortar from within… like it or not, change is afoot & its time to adapt or die.

Oh… so let me explain… last week I had the good fortune to travel to San Francisco for the MixMashup conference and it was amazing! (I also attended the GSummit that was equality earth shifting but MixMashup went earlier so lets talk about that first).

The Mix Mashup conference explored emerging leadership and organizational practices leveraged by today’s best performers. The speaker list was full of highly accomplished individuals, CEOs etc, from an array of organisations all of whom are turning the traditional management paradigm on its head.

While that last sentence might sound exaggerated, its not.

So the Mix Mashup team brought together an array of industry players to talk about the emerging management paradigm, what it means and what the benefits are in tackling it head on.

All of the presenters were high achievers sharing their latest learnings direct from the trenches. While some of the companies had evolved these habits, most were the result of a significant cultural transformation brought on by a need to address destructive shortcomings; as Bjarte Bogsenes said “as companies grow they become what they wanted to be… and stuff they don’t want to be”.

Now there were 20 to 30 brilliant speakers on the day but to detail them all in this blog would be hopelessly ambitious so here is a brief summary of some of the main points:

- Co-creation involves

• Getting rid hierarchy
• Promoting all ideas as equal
• Moving away from leading people toward a sense of helping people

- Cultural

• Make it fun: Its more fun to be a pirate than in the Navy
• Build creative confidence in your team by using a series of short experiments with a high chance for success
• Embrace the mess
• Develop a culture of benevolent criticism so feedback can be delivered
• People are naturally creative, helpful and seek growth and its managements role to provide the environment where this can happen.
• Engage people through a personal dream project that they can choose and champion
• Use 360 feedback surveys and publish all results
• Meritocracy (rewards recognition etc) beats bureaucracy
• When in doubt, default to open.

- Outline stepping stones rather than KPIs (KPIs are at best ridged lines in the sand that may or may not be relevant, also people ease off once KPIs have been met)
- Plan up to the 80% point then jump… in execution, action matters most

The one recurring theme across almost all of the speakers was the power of an acknowledged purpose to bring people together, gives direction and realizes value. The speakers referred to their organisation’s purpose as something ‘defined and active’ that was set as organization then anchored within each individual.

John MacKay illustrated its importance by saying, “ You’ve got to constantly reiterate your purpose… 50% of your team didn’t work here 5 years ago”.

In looking back, what really strikes me is that purpose seems to have profoundly changed the context of a vision & mission… that’s not to say that they’re now obsolete, rather it seems that purpose gives them a fluidity that makes them dynamic & relevant; as WL Gores CEO Terri Kelly illustrated, “you’ve got to go deeper into values, vision and mission with new starters to illustrate how they can champion success”.

Interestingly values have become so central to the emerging paradigm, they are the primary foundation of decentralized decision-making and leader selection. Ok, so this is not new either, but what’s shifted is that the technology now reveals when the walk, matches the talk.

Warren Buffet famously said “its only when the tide goes out that you discover whose been swimming naked”. Similarly, leaders in a collaborative enterprise are caught naked if they rely on position instead of influence.

This sets up an interesting precedence as career progression is then, by extension, more dependant on the average employee than the established management. Actually if anything is new under these rules it’s the importance of engaging the garden-variety employee. Innovation, collaboration and knowledge sharing are all dependant on their participation, but drawing-out participation amongst diverse personality types can be challenging.

Jim Lavoie CEO of Rite Solutions calls it “knowledge proctology”, and he builds exchange in the enterprise by giving people a sense of belonging and highlighting their points of commonality. On their first day each new employee is asked to fill in a “Birth Certificate” that details their personal interests, Rite Solutions then welcomes them with a birthday party to meet the team. Jim believes the formula for success is:

• Trust them + ask them = They will think about the future
• Listen + (then) reorganize = contribute to the future
• Sense of importance + sense of belonging = they will care
• Reward + make it fun = loyalty to the company

The other thing these high performers do well is manage failure. In a hierarchical organization ones position is conditional on “continued success”, the implication of which is that failure = demotion, effectively incentivizing inaction. So it’s hardly surprising to find that these high performers not only embrace failure but actively build failure into their culture.

HCL Tech’s CEO, Vineet Nayar, says their organization has stopped running “pilots”, and instead runs “experiments”. The logic been that “a pilot” has a predetermined scope, while an experiment encourages people to chip in with “What if we tried this?”… The other benefit of running experiments is that failure becomes part of a process.

Vineet also had a few other interesting quotes, my favorites were:
- “The c-suites suffer from depreciating intellectual capital”
- “HCL is in the business of growth, not happiness, but we have found out that happiness results in growth”

The secret to growth for HCL was to “invert the pyramid” and place central importance at the point where employees and the customers interact; Vineet calls this the “value zone”. At HCL, a manager’s role is to enthuse, encourage and enable employees to deliver value in the value zone.

A few of the speakers sounded warnings about the danger of engaging employees. The common theme was that you should expect conflict and imperfections to be brought up publically, but even this part of the process reinforces senior management are serious and forces people to clean house.

Management is changing every day and the prize will go once again to those who adapt fastest.

I recently did a talk up in Armidale as part of the NBN rollout on how and why social media can be powerfully used drive innovation.

The talk was the result of a research program I undertook to understand the nature of social media when working at Deloitte. I had been using Deloitte’s Yammer community and could see the magic it provided but couldn’t put my finger on why it was so effective. After researching it for numerous hours and running a number of experiments on my ever suffering teams, it started to make sense and patterns started to emerge.

After all the research and experimentation it all boiled down to 5 key areas. This talk is a summary of these findings.

Don’t get me wrong; whether it’s over social media or through a person-to-person discussion, people are brilliant at self-regulating and largely deal with each other responsibly. However, from time to time, all organisations will deal with situations that are less than ideal and they need to prepare themselves responsibly.

In Kung-fu they tell you to start with your foundation before moving on to the more complex techniques and it’s the same with social media. SM charters/policies are not sexy but they are a necessary step in the responsible adoption of SM.

You see… As it turns out, the real secret to handling crisis through Social Media is to get your ducks in a row before it happens.

So over the last period there have been 2 great pieces of research that have come to my attention that when combined offer people a great insight into how to manage social media in a crisis.

The first is the work done by Altimeters report on Social Business Readiness (link below) while the other is BJ Fogg who has done some great work in understanding models of behaviour (link also below).

Altimeters report is a great insight on the basics that are required when establishing an SM presence, however none of it should be new. PR professionals across the world are able to elaborate at length about the efforts and time that go into preparing for crisis. Like many pieces of seminal work, the Altimeter report consolidates things that are already known, but oddly ignored by most organisations.

If you are looking to establish a communication channel such as social media, make sure you do your homework and put into place the framework Altimeter suggests.

The importance of the other report is less obvious upfront but more critical when taken within the context of responding to crisis; BJ Fogg’s report on models of behaviour.

BJ’s work is about behaviours. His model relates to the factors required to get people to take action either in an online context (such as likeing a product page), or in life in general. The model is the combination of 3 elements, the motivation to complete an action, the ability to be able to complete it and an initial trigger that sparks you into action.

BJ’s theory is that technology has dramatically lowered the required ability to take action but even with these technological improvements and the right motivation, they are not enough to inspire action. The final piece in spurring action, according to BJ, is a trigger that inspires movement to the motivation – it seems logical.

BJ’s work is brilliant for planning an approach for developing an online engagement model and can assist people to think about the basics of what and how they are looking for people to engage.

So what has this got to do with crisis? Well… everything as it happens.

So while this model is intended to outline a path toward a preferred behaviour, it also acts a framework to backward engineer and understand why a crisis has hit in the first place.

A complete and accurate understanding of the trigger that led to the crisis is a good starting point and critical in tailoring your response. Whether it’s the Arab Spring, or airlines breaking guitars, understanding the complete story of the trigger is the foundation of your crisis response.

The next step is to understand the motivation behind the action. While the trigger will provide the initial story, the motivation will give you the underlying themes and allow you to gauge the depth and breadth of whats going on.  Understanding this will assist determine the size of your response.

Finally, ability… As mentioned the ability to act is greatly enhanced by modern technologies. Understanding the technical framework and functions that have been leveraged to generate the crisis will provide the mediums and the “how” of your response.

Of course you still need to pull it all together, but if you have the Altimeter frameworks and BJ’s understanding then the solution will often become self-evident.

http://www.bjfogg.com/fbm_files/page4_1.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/social-readiness-how-advanced-companies-prepare