So we all stood in a circle and spent a while trying to grab each other’s thumbs.  Specifically, to play this game, you old your left hand out palm up (under your neighbor’s thumb), and your right hand out thumb down (over your other neighbor’s hand).  When the bearded man said, “Go!” we’d all try to grab the thumb of the person on our left, while trying not to get our thumb grabbed by the person on the right.  When you thumb was grabbed, you were out and the circle got smaller. (Thanks bearded man! – who I found out later is Dave from Friends of the Earth UK.)

What’s the point of all this?

I sucked at the game, and was quickly knocked out – leaving me time to contemplate the spectacle.  The game worked well as an ice breaker.  We were in the last session of the last day of the conference, but everyone was up on their feet, interacting and paying attention.  The lesson is that games can have purpose.

Examples

We spent most of our time talking about examples.  What I picked up on was that different kinds of games (or game like elements), are good for different kinds of things.  They can get press attention, drive website traffic, educate, change behaviors and keep people motivated.

That said, here are a bunch of example’s people mentioned, or that I’ve come across…

WWF action card / passport – Earning points for doing online actions. (Care2 also has a more sophisticated version of this kind of thing

Conspiracy for good – Last year it was a alternative reality game (ARG) with a real world “doing good” twist (they actually helped provide books to kids in Africa).  This year, they plan to focus more on the doing good (due to player feedback).  But they’ll still maintain a mythology and keep it a compelling experience.

Real world games – Games you play in the “real world”, not staring at your computer screen or looking through an iPhone (though mobile phones are often used in the games).  A good argument for games by SlingShot Effect, a company that makes real world games.  Examples of real world games (from igfest)…

Hurl Berl – Simple web game where you throw Berlusconi out of the G8, was the viral driver for an onine petition.  Cost 15,000 to build/distribute, did not take long to build (maybe 3 weeks), 25p per head recruitment. Conversion rate was very low, at end of game it was “play again” or “sign the petition”, numbers made it effective for recruitment. Also Got media coverage.  Seems like a lot of people just want to play casual games.  (Thanks Weldon!)

Add a counter to almost anything – And you’ve got instant competition. Volunteers were using mobile devices to get petition signatures at U2 concerts.  Once they added a counter to the app, volunteers were much more motivated, signatures shot up. (Thanks Weldon!)

Book recommendation – Game storming

Fate of the world (computer simulation game) – Take charge of a global organization that takes on the challenge.  (Thanks Jed from Oxfam!)

Weight watchers – People who participate in it don’t think of it as a game, but it has a lot of game like elements (goals, points, achievements).

Treasure hunts / scavenger hunts – Photo scavenger hunts were mentioned as something that’s easy to do. One person knew about an example where a group wanted to get their volunteers familiar with a particular area of the city.  So they created a photo hunt (you give people photos and they have to find where they were taken and take a picture from the same spot), which got people used to the geography.  Another example was having a team (or thing) that moves around a city, twittering it’s location.  People who catch up to the thing get a prize (has been done by a shoe store and an airline company that I know of).  Cohen, from Fairfood, told us about a treasure hunt style project they’re working on, but asked us to keep it secret for now.  Best to contact him if you’re curious.

Geo caching – One group wanted to promote quality time between parent’s and thier kids.  So they organized geo caching events.  The idea also came up for Save the Libraries to geocache books from libraries that ar being shut down.  (You shouldn’t need to hunt for them!)

Super badger – Facebook application built by Rechord – Gives you new a campaign  every two weeks, earn points, move up the ranks, involving friends also gets you points. After enough points you move up in rank. One challenge was keeping players motivated after they reached super badger status (which happened with a lot of the players).  Had a leaderboard with top 20 players.  Problem – FB API keeps changing so then your application stops working.  Plays on social competitiveness.  Incentivize with prizes doesn’t generally work for this kind of thing. Recognition does.  Seeded it with active campaigners, key was points for inviting people.

World power league – Rachel from Rechord helped build this web application designed to, “help young people to engage with issues of power, citizenship and politics”, by voting on which public figures are most powerful or evil.

Further reading and some links:

My post on a SXSW presentation by Andy Baio called, “Gaming the crowd” (includes what makes a good game, and some more examples).

Games for Change – a group dedicated to social change through gaming.

An academic attempt to define what games are.

Raw notes…

Links to the examples mentioned and Twitter names can be found here.

Johnson

Video of interesting games festival, Bristol.  30-40 games each year.  Looked like fun.

Elephant – with big balloon bunches.  Demonstrates how/why we use tech.  Interface is a baloon sculpture you’re trying to sneak around.  Use tech in background.  Tracked location.

Resolution of the real world is bigger than the 10cm x 5cm smart phone screen. Kept tech in background.

The real world will collaborate with you, add richness.

Duncan Speakman

Invented subtlemob

Comes from a theater background.

Put on headphones that let you hear something other people in the mob hear things no one else is hearing.  When you see other people doing the same, you feel a bond with them.

Didn’t want flash mobs because audience is youtube, wanted something where it’s about interacting where you are.  You have to be there.

Different members of the audience are asked to do simple things. The rest of the audience is given a narrative that includes your actions.

On YouTube, it just looks like a street with people on it.  But for the people who are there, it was a different experience.

Looking forward to location aware content delivery.  We don’t change the world, we see it through different eyes.

Barnes

Game producer, design

Massively passive multiplayer

Using Oyster cards – showing what people do when they see their data, how it affects their behavior.  Like where you’ve been over a year.

Slow games, barely games.  Very easy to participate over a very long time.

Layering a game over the city (using it as a game engine).

Started adding social aspects.  Team play.

Nina Steiger

SoHo theater London

Wants to do populist work. Things people participate in.

Theater has suffered from the 4th wall.  Lot of our projects are about making 4th wall bendable, permiable, or non-existant.

Shrada (sp?) – play about London’s gypsies who are being displaced to make room for the Olympics.  Created a game called “drom”.  GPS enabled caravan.  Goal was finding a place for it to stay, as close to theater as possible.  Had people in it, blogging, etc.

Every night after the show the caravan would come and be parked in front of the theater.  When audience comes out, it’s like the play is no on the outside.  It’s like they’re on the other side of the 4th wall unexpectedly.

Also did short plays in and around the caravan for passer bys.

Good experience, good marketing.

Q and A

Tweature – social robot, gps, tweats, lets you claim him by tweeting a code at him.  When twitter is down it feels like he’s rejected you.

Steiger – Picked up on the thing from Kring’s talk yesterday.  Choosing where different aspects of the story play out (online, in theater, on street).

Speakman – Preferes reliable technology.  Doesn’t like using the flaws as an excuse.  Never really get good.

Is it about amazing people, or is it about something more textual and immersive?

Bristol method – we come up with a pun, then reverse engineer it to a game.

Speakerman – Problem with spectical is scale.  You can’t compete with the scale of cities.  They’re overwhelming.  I try to get people to observe the details.  Play in the world is like life.  A lot of problems in the world come from lack of observation.

Barnes – Games are different than a toy.

Johnson – Narrative, at first spent a lot of time on the back story.  People never cared.  The narrative is the experience, what they do and what happens while playing.

Steiger – A game with a strong question in it’s heart has huge power to engage people.

Barnes – One of my restrictions is that I want people to pay for it. I want it to provide enough value that they’ll pay for it.

Speakman – Niche is OK.  It only takes small amounts of people acting different ways to gather momentum.  I’m interested in things that linger after the event.  Keep affecting you.

Barnes – After playing Assasins Cread I walk around the city looking for ledges.

Can games create social change?

Johnson – Depth of engagement is sometimes shocking.  Deep play.  But how do you then take that and do something useful with it.

Wants to work with some NGOs this year.

Barnes – Behavioral ecconomics.  We’re not as rational as we think we are.  Climate change is hardest thing to solve.  All the time I’m thinking this is Peggle.  Great thing is it gives you constant rewards.  Games as happyness engines.

Audience funded model, rather than corporate branding funded.  Maybe a pledge model.

Instead of prizes, try escalation – “We’re going to what now?”

Myth of inovation – you don’t always have to create something new. (Actually you don’t.)

ARGs – often a lot of back story, often takes far to long to play, don’t have time for him.  How about “Disruptive reality”?

Nina likes the collective performance aspect of ARGs.

Johnson – Testing, we do test runs with our games, get feedback, improve.

Also tested subtle mob a bunch of times on a smaller scale before doing bigger.

When you’re writing things to happen in the real world, you need to leave space for the real world to interveen.

Once you play a game in a place you feel ownership of it.

Big take aways:

Go where your audience is.

Put an idea in the center – not a specific property or channel.

Connections with fans is built on authenticity. Can be fragile. If you let anything except creative vision drive the show, it’s going to cost you.

Raw notes…

Started with a video:  “If the audience can become involved in the making of the ad, they’re happy.”  Quote from 1955, Marshal McClewen.

Heroes – great example of trans media programming.  Won the interactive Emmy.
Fans can be found through multiple channels.  Get fans feeling like they’re part of the show.  Show extra angles of the story via multiple channels. New media unit in Heros is in the middle between writers, NBC new media team and other creative teams.  Measurable responses, listen to fans. Upped production of downloadable graphic novels from one per month, to one per week.

Were telling in between stories – things that flesh out the story told on TV.  Then stated doing parallel stories – like when one actress left for a few months to do a movie – they told the story of what her character was doing during that time.  Also, used the graphic novel to introduce a new character, tell his back story

Graphic novels are tightly tied to what’s happening on the TV.  The artist draws characters as the actors portray them, mimicking posture, etc.

Slow burn – cuts out to the web site, web team would work with the writers on what happened.  Mini story arcs shown via web video.

Survival game – create their own hero.

Flash games with clues.

Lot of fans on Twitter. People would tweet in character of their fav hero.  Started a twitter account as the circus.

Started hiding things in the shows and online, giving out prizes.

Heros wiki – Done fans.  Is now used as a resource by writers to keep continuity – fans keeping the show on track.

Dec 17, 1978 – birth of transmedia, Star Wars holiday special, there was a 5 min cartoon that introduced a new character named Bobafet.  That summer, released Bobafet as a limited edition action figure.  Bobafet was put in the next movie.

Heros – Long time traditional TV writer, did Crossing Jordan.  TV was a one way street.  We pushed content out and hoped people watched it two or four months later.  Only had Nielson ratings to go by.  Eventually saw Neilsons slipping as people migrated to other platforms.  Decided that his next show would be more about being where the audience is.

Created Heroes because literally wants to save the world.  Had small kids at the time.  Got to thinking about how complicated the world is.  Wanted a message about how interconnected the world is.  How anyone can be a Hero. Wants to leave a footprint.

Did a sort of mind map about where the show could go.  Fast Company eventually published a diagram that looked almost exactly the same, showing what Heroes has done.

New was going for a younger, more tech savvy audience.  At Comic Con launch, drove people to a mini-site.  Fans quickly took the idea and built their own fan sites.

Realized people were watching the show via Bit Torrent, not on air.

“I’m quite honored that Heroes is the most illegally downloaded show.  We’ll take fans were they are.  Since our world is so multiplatform – this idea that people are pirating the show is not so alarming.”

Some reps at NBC don’t seem to get this.

Made a lot up as went along.  The only idea had in advance was that would do a graphic novel with the show.

Staffed up fast, grew quickly.  Budget for non-TV “everything else” came from NBC, which wanted to experiment.

Connections with fans is built on authenticity. Can be fragile. If you let anything except creative vision drive the show, it’s going to cost you.

Who’s watching the audience?  It’s really hard to do.  It moves so fast.  Often swimming a little bit blind.  Often feedback is anacdotal.  Sitting at lunch with someone who saw reactions on twitter.

In production, are about 2 months ahead of what the audience is seeing.  But among the team, we’re kind of almost fans ourselves.  Our reactions almost mirror theirs.

Online is different – immediate feedback loop.

Successful brands today – ones where the audience feels they own the brand.

Participated in the writers strike.  Show went a little wonky while they were away from it.

Show costs 4 mil per episode to make.

Learned from audience – Get out of the mindset of one way street, push only.  Audience wants participation, shared ownership.

No longer take the show and put it in the center.  Now take a concept, an idea and put it in the center.  Then you can think about where the people who would watch that show are.  How they’ll watch the show, interact with the concept.  Adjust your storytelling to take advantage of that.

For example, you can’t just squeeze a 4 mil dollar episode onto an iPhone screen. It’s a waste.  But there are very rich ways to interact with people on their phones.

Had room for innovation, risk taking because of the funding situation. (NBC wanting to experiment.)

Story is still most important thing.

Q and A

Q:  Is legal still an issue?  Re: copyrighted material, etc.  fan created material (Warner Bro trying to shut down Harry Potter fan art).

A:  We try to keep fan fiction and mother show separate.  Plus our shows are done well before the fans see it.  [Seemed to have interpreted the question as worries about being sued for them lifting fans ideas. Suspect fans would be flattered as long as credited.]

Heros broke down internal walls.  Go into giant meetings that were the first time people from different divisions met each others.

A lot of the people in the room seemed seemed to be there for the chemo part of the talk.  Quite a few cancer survivors, and quite a few people who lost loved ones to cancer.  I have to say that I was there for the Twitter part.  I’ve never really been touched by cancer.  Yeah, one of my grandfathers died of it, and that sucked.  But it’s not something I’d normally think about, and I have absolutely zero understanding of what folks like Drew and and Brian (the speakers) go through.

I was there because I’ve been following @thatdrew on Twitter for some months, and appriciate his Twitter antics from the point of view of a fellow activist and Twitterer.  Basically, I wanted to get some tips.

What I got instead was a whole lot better.  What I got was a whole new perspective on Twitter.

Big take aways:

Twitter’s low bar to participation makes it ideal for people who are having a hard time participating.

140 characters is enough to say something meaningful, something that impacts people.

Twitter is both personal and public at the same time.  It let’s you control how you present yourself, but demands authenticity.

To beat cancer you need two things. You need to fight it like hell, and you need to get lucky.  (Some people put up a truly heroic fight, but they just loose. ) Their connections through Twitter helped keep these guys fighting.

Here are some raw notes. I didn’t record who said what.  They both seemed to be pretty much in agreement anyway.

Why did I Twitter?

I didn’t want to look at anybody, didn’t want anybody to see me with no hair and sick.

Wanted to connect to regular people.

Just wanted to say I had cancer.  Wanted to get it out there. Vent.  Wrote a blog post, tweeted it.  After a while, people started telling his story for him.

Was kind of shocked when it turned out people were listening.  At one point I was Twittering about stuff I made up.  Then when I posted that I was in Central Park, some random (friendly) stranger replied, saying they were also in the park and we should meet up.  This really shocked me.  After that I stopped lying.  I still was selective about what I said on my public stream.  Like sometimes I would be crying, whole posting a happy tweet.

Lot’s of DMing.  Can be teary in private.  Then pop back out in pubic and say something cheery.

Little messages of support are really valuable.

“Blame Drew’s cancer” meme, public.

Some friends couldn’t handle my cancer.  Just too freaked out by it.  Twitter is good for them as well.  They couldn’t handle seeing me in person or even talking by phone, but they could manage sending a tweet.

@thatdrew – “140 characters is all you need to tell somebody you care about them, that you love them.”
“I wanted to keep people at arms length, but at the same time I wanted a big hug.”

Twitter, createds a bigger circle.  Could keep tabs on each other without having to jump in the conversation.

Calls to action, can get people, even celebs and buisnesses to do hings.  Like how he badgered the taco truck people into coming to his event.  That it’s in public helps.

“Where the hell would I run into Drew Cary?  All it took was a blog post and Twitter.”

“Stop. Shower time”  People thought it was funny, but for him, it was so hard to take a shower.  It was a big physical effort. Once he tweeted that he was going to do it, he had to do it  It was a motivator.

Use Twitter to attach to something bigger.  Cancer fighting orgs have their own infrastructure, donation pages, etc.

Recognized that they were also lucky.  Sometime people don’t make it, not because they don’t fight hard.  They do.  It’s just that sometimes they don’t get lucky.

Kick cancers ass

Be the match – bone marrow donors.

Planet Cancer – great resource

Live Strong (Lance Armstrong Foundation) – Drew works with them a lot, seem to be his main peeps.

Trees soak up carbon dioxide and store it, when we clear forest land that stored up CO₂ gets released into the atmosphere – causing more global warming. It also sucks for the orangutans and other critters who loose their home.  And it sucks for the local folks who relied on that forest.

Palm tree plantations are a key driver of forest destruction because palm oil is used in a massive amount of products.  Stuff we buy all the time, like Kit Kats. Now, companies know this. But they don’t have a big incentive to change where they source their palm oil. The consequences are probably just too distant for them to worry about as much as this quarters bottom line.

We need to give them some incentive. And they’re not going to listen to just Greenpeace. They need to hear from customers, especially people who like their products.

So please help make this video BIGGER THAN BIG. Let’s make it massive. Help us make that connection between what’s happening in the rainforest to what happens when you bight into a Kit Kat.

Tweet it with http://j.mp/KitKat

Embed the video above on your pages.

Link to our Kit Kat landing page from your blogs, etc.

Take the action, and then share it on Facebook (there’s a button on the thank you page).

And give us some feedback on how we can do all this better.  That’s something I’d really love to hear from SXSW folks.  Feel free to post comments below, or email me at my Greenpeace address (andrew dot davies at blah dot org).  Disclaimer:  I didn’t work on this particular project. I’ll make sure your thoughts/ideas/comments get passed on to the folks who did.

Starts off by showing some games…

Quest for the crown

Desert Bus (1995, Sega TV, unreleased) – Drive the Penn and Teller tour bus in real time. Get to the end (after 8 hours) and you get 1 point. (video)

Marathon video tame – Run a virtual marathon in real time button tapping, guy did it, took him three hours. Showed vid. Guy looks like he’s going to die.

You only live once – Standard platformer. When character dies, it’s for good. When you restart the game you’re still dead.

Upgrade complete – Game about upgrading a game. Game play itself is pretty booring. Can even buy the ending.  (walkthrough here)

Achievement unlocked – Get achievements for everything.

Punchline: All these use games to discuss what games are. Last two focus on the meta game. Even though you know you’re being manipulated, it’s still fun.

Mechanical Turk

Feels weird when he uses it. Feels like exploitation. So he set a Mech Turk task for people to photograph themselves with a sign saying why they do it.

Turns out that the demographics are roughly the same as the English speaking internet. Most say they do it for the money (very small amounts) or for fun (but the tasks are very tedious).  This is kind of weird given the small rewards involved.  Then he realized it’s kind of like a MMOG. You pick your tasks (quests), compete with each other, win cash (points), communicate with each other.

Social web = MMO

More examples of games at work

At Target, the cashier’s terminals provide feedback scores on the last 10 checkouts. Mainly is a motivational thing, incentivises them to improve. Get printout each week, compete with each other, place bets. Fun.

The Squeaky wheel – Bug tracker with achievements.

Obama campaign – Neighbor to neighbor – Level up, get promotions. Patrick was in room!

Ford Fusion, Honda Insight – In dash reflection of fuel efficiency – (growing leaves in the Ford).

Nike/iPod exercise site

Investigate your MP’s expenses – Had 450,000 documents. Posted it online. Let people dig through it. Had a leaderboard, persistant identity, reputation. View of entire team’s progress.

Kick starter – current project – Is all or nothing. You hit the goal or get nothing. 90% of projects that hit 20% mark succeed. Never had a project that hit 80% fail.

What you need for a good game

• Options (decisions the player makes, picking which quests to do)
• Feedback (points, metrics, levels)
• Recognition (awards, achievements, collectibles)
• Goals (with levels of difficulty)
• Community

Ribbon hero – turns Microsoft Office into a game. Using more advanced features of the application increases your score. Includes hints, and suggested “quests”. Gives feedback when do something write. Has advanced mode. Connects with Facebook to challenge friends. Exploratory learning.

Good games are easy to learn, hard to master.

Grinding is no fun. It’s when it stops being fun.

Warnings

Once you have game elements, they are very hard to remove. Community gets pissed.

Do not do a leader board (absolute ranking) – every single time it results in a conflict. Alienate people who can’t get near the top. Negative competitive vibe. Can be ok if scope it to friends, or small location.

Metafilter – number of favorites for comments. Moderators felt it contributed to snarkyness. Wanted to try changing it from number of favorites to just “favorited” for a month. Huge outcry. Ended up changing it back.

Cheating – It’s hard to resist. Foursquare example (fake check ins, fake accounts). Incentives can invite abuse.

Stack overflow – Was lots of cheating. Solution – Bind incentives very tightly to the desired behavior. Who’s gaming who?

Evil gaming

What responsibility do we have? Do we have a responsibility to tell people we are hacking their brains?

Do games make people happy? Or do we just make them unhappy whne not playing.

Farmville – Uses incentives well. Reciprocity. Loss aversion. Whole friends can see how bad you’re doing. Set completion. Mostly is grinding with a lot of social interaction. Not really evil, but has very compulsive.

CruX360A – 3rd ranked woman in the world. Plays games just for the achievements. Collection impulse. Especially when you’re almost there, hard to stop.

MMOs – Blizzard tells people to take breaks, go outside. Are doing more timed events. Don’t want people to burn out, loose jobs, drop out of school. Better to keep them for life.

I personally draw the line when you start using feelings of guilt to motivate behavior. Swoopo.com, sooo evil. Pay to bid, each bid brings the cost up by one penny and extends the auction. One person gets a cheap product, everyone else looses what they put in. You feel like you’ve already put in so need to get something. Even auction bids. Bid buttler – bids for you. Takes advantage of our irrationality, gaps in how we think.

Final thoughts

Making boring fun – Need a skill that is repeatable and measurable, with those two things you can make anything a game.

Reputation – want something supportive, that fosters collaboration. Achievements don’t take away from other people. Are popping up everywhere. Quests are also good.

Making a direct connection to cash changes people’s behavior dramatically. Like paying your mother for Christmas dinner. Lawyers surveyed were asked if they’d do work on discount for good causes, answer was no; asked if they’d do the same work pro-bono (for free), answer was yes.

Further reading

Jesse Schell talk – everything is trackable, everything has points and achievements.

Web reputation systems – O’Reily (check their blog post about karma)

Amy Jo Kim – Putting the fun in functional.

The art of game design

Panic status board – Good example of reflecting back progress to staff, which then serves as a motivator.

Usability for evil

Presenter: Scot, CEO of Meetup

Movement is a feeling.  People identify themselves as part of it… “environmentalist”, “union member”, “evangelical”.

Fan page – It’s the problem.  Erin is not a fan.  She wants to be part of it.

It is easier than ever to get psudo members, harder than ever to get real members.

Example:
ipledge2protect.org (now offline) – “join the movement against genocide”

But wait… What am I pledging to do?  This isn’t a petition.  What does it mean?  “I pledge to click submit” 

Think beyond followers

Followers are over rated – great if you’re starting a cult!  or a dictatorship.  Or a band.   Or a brand.

It’s always, “Get involved” – Watch us, see us, join us, friend us.  What about me?

Fans and followers are wasted for movement making.  Get them to self organize. Connect them.  Give them permission to be amazing.  Distribute tasks.  Distribute responsibility.

Go for accidents, serendipity.  We’re all organizers now.  Leaders will emerge.  Fan the flames and watch what happens after they connect and share stories.  (“Stories of me, turn into stories of we.”)

Let’s do something!

We’ve got 6 million meetups, 60 million rsvps.  Very common word is “Let’s”   284 thousand on public site (not counting private meetups).

Meetup is backbone of the tea party movement.  Lots of tea party meetup groups.  There really is no leader.  Sparticus style “I am the tea party leader” videos.

When running for the US Senate, Obama promised to go to any Meetup that got over a cetain number of rsvps, when running for Senate.

Beppe Grillo Meetups in Itally saying will create an alternative municipality structure.

We had a problem that people were creating meetups that were kind of spamy.  Added a check box to their sign up form that said, “I pledge to create local community” (you had to check the box to sign up).  Thought this would cost us sign ups.   Surprise. More people joined up.  People wanted to pledge, they wanted to create.

Big take away - Be everywhere.  But you can’t.  So crowdsource your everywhereness.

Some tips

Continue the relationship – What happens after the march or the meetup?  Is there a netowrk of local groups, each filled with their own plans and network and internal account ability and energy?

Inspire rather than manage.

Get followers and fans around the mission.

Get them interacting online globally.

Get them to meetup locally everywhere

Use the internet to get off the internet, decentralize.  Networked networks.

Organizing with new kinds of organizations.

People should feel comfortable having small, low key events.  Not everything has to be burning man or the million man march.

McGregor – Did Mars lander account, astroid watch, Mars pheonix, etc

Nick Skytland @Skytland – Future missions, advocate of participatory exploration

Amanda Stiles @alias_amanda Xprize foundation, online community manager and google liason.

Dave Masten @dmasten – Space entrepreneur

C. Higginbotham – @Cariann Co-owner and host of spacevidcast

Nick….

Social media – sharing the human experience, something we’ve had a hard time doing before. Direct access to the astronaut experience.

Astronaut tweeting – @Astro_mike was a pioneer.

3 astronauts currently in space using twitter. First time ever have internet in space…

@Astro_tj

@Astro_Soichi Lots of twit pics, will snap on request if can (obviously it’s not his day job, and it depends what they’re passing over).

@Astro_jeff Ordered his wife flowers from space, 1st ecommerce from space

Go where the conversations are, listen. Tweetups at the launches. Giving “supporters” (my word) access.

Open gov – opengovetracker.gov Paticipatory exploration. $5 mil budgeted for what we (the public) select

Culture is biggest challenge.

opennasa.gov

spacehack.org

spacesweetssociety.org

Amanda…

Google lunar X prize – 30 mil dollars, international, participatory, build a robot, send it to the moon, move at least a 3rd of a mile, send back about a gig worth of HD video. 20 registered teams in 11 countries, including some you wouldn’t expect (like Romania). Team members in 70 countries. Lot of diversity in design. Is an advantage of incentive prizes – only give a goal, teams can take risks on design

2004 – first winner – built a vehical that went to sub orbital space twice in two hours. Showed that private enterprise could do it.

Only in last 6 months discovered that there is a lot of water on the moon. 1972 was last USA moon mission. 1976 was last Russian moon mission.

googlelunarxprize.org

@GLXP

GoogleLunarXPrize facebook

thelaunchpad.xprize.org blog

Also have an open source team if you want to jump in.

Dave M…

Dec 14, 1972 – Last time anyone set foot on the moon.

spacetweepsociety.org kind of a meeting place for everybody involved

masten-space.com/blog

Almost every employee is tweeting. Talk mainly about work, but also about what doing on weekends. On youtube and have a blog. Post every test, including failures.

Team frednet.org open source X prize team. Masten is involved.

It doesn’t take a lot of engineers, it takes a lot of support – lawyers, accounting, web dev, marketing, administration, PR, cat herding, etc.

We do answer back. And you can bring your skills to frednet.

Kariean…

Space vid cast

Was already doing a pod cast, husband said wanted to do one on space. She didn’t think there was enough material. It’s been 3 years now, do it weekly, always plenty to talk about. Are only place to get NASA HD vid on the web

spacevidcast.com

Got started because no one else was doing it. NASA only started last year. It’s important, there’s a lot of people out there that don’t know what’s going on.

Media always covered the shuttle, but in a way that made it common place. Lost the amazing. End up with 2 minutes on CNN. “Space is boring” NASA kind of beats it down. We’re trying to get people educated again. Get school kids to skype in and ask questions while on air. I don’t even care what the question is, as long as there are questions.

You can watch a launch and treat it like a tailgate party. We get people from NASA in our chat room, and other space geeks, and school kids.

QUESTION: Public domain

McGregor (everyone’s going by their last names on the signs)

Twitter questions showed us what information we were leaving out in our public communication.

Q and A

Apathy – how can we overcome it?

Higginbotham – If you see a beautiful picture and it’s only 2 inches by 2 inches, that wont grab them, but if you put it up there in giant size and it’s a beautiful picture – you’ll stare at it. It will light a spark.

Why is it taking so long to go back?

Masten – Public choice theory – things get worse over time, more and more layers of beauracracy. For Appalo, 5% of fed budget, now less than 0.5% of fed budget.

Does the fact that all of your imagery is public domain help or hurt?

McGregor – Every single image from mars rover goes on the web unmanned spaceflight.com Community formed, spread images, wrote software to view them (to make movies, to make 3D Mars views). NASA doesn’t have the budget to create all this cool stuff. They’ll put it together faster than we can.

That’s just one example.

Data.gov – more and more agencies are putting their data out there. Some data is sensitive – like human test subject data, we need to scrub those for the subject’s privacy.

Amanda Stiles @glxp

Veronica McGregor @veronicamcg

Nick @skytland

Challenge prizes – future of innovation?

Staff want to tell their stories, they’re passionate, they love their jobs. “It’s not an elitist space program, it’s your space program.”

McGregor – When worked for CNN could not get anything done on space unless it was really big or a big failure. Ratings were good, but the bosses didn’t believe it. Social networking is now mandatory for my office.

NASA’s budget is completely up to you.

Twitter suggestion for @MarsPhoenix to have something for blind people. There was a microphone on, but weren’t planing to turn it on. (Power drain, wasnt part of the mission, didn’t have software for it.) After that tweet decided to go for it. (Didn’t work in end, but they did try.)

What is a viral video?

Different answers…

Is kind of a sliding scale. Most popular video on youtube has been seen over 100 mil times.

Where a significant amount of the viewership wants to help with the distribution.

Anything with boobs or kittens. (shows video)

Taps into something essentially human, something people can feel compulsive about sharing.

Two big buckets: Viral by accident. Happen to capture something extraordinary or cute or something. Flash in the pan. But can also create them intentionally.

TED guy – Goal of TED – Spread ideas. Started in 1984 (was video taping them, but not very well). Having a taped accademic lecture online… seemed rediculous. First successful one was malcome gladwell (40,000 views). That was their initial bench mark. Factors that helped:

High video production values – shooting from multiple angles, high definition, tight close ups (for youtube size), start talks with a bang (where it actually begins).

OK Go guy – Know your audience – sometimes they don’t expect you to have high production values, then it would do more harm than good. Backyard dance video – is homemade, feels homemade, was actually a rehersal, crappyness was part of it’s charm. (10 mil views) We’re not very good dancers anyway so it would be borring to watch us on stage. But content does need to be good. You can’t make shitty content spread. Ex. We think of crazy ideas and try to do them. Creates a sense of wonder.

Some back and forth among the panelists about content

Some of the most popular content producers have middle/low production values. Immediacy, accessibility – “I’m like you”.

Inspiration, surprise, sense of wonder, cleverness, positivity. Rarely see content that’s negative or depressing. [NYT research about forwarded stories]

Exception – Funny failures, and testicle kicking.

Tips for making it go viral

• Build audience – subscriber base, gives it a boost at launch.
• Encourage embedding
• Good metadata (title, description)
• Distribute on multiple fronts
• Cultivate super seeders
• Limited exclusivity (want to be careful with this, don’t contradict embed principle)

Community has a very permiable wall. Getting people to help with creativity (shoot offs, parodies) is extremely important to virality

Fail blog doesn’t create content, it curates it. Find great stuff, make it easier for people to find it.

There’s no one way to do it. TED tries to get videos out in as many ways as possible. There is no longer one route to the audiences.

OK Go – Dumped their record label because they wouldn’t allow embedding. It’s a no brainier, in first days, almost all the views are off site (1st three days 95% of the Rube Goldberg video’s views were not on you tube)

You tube woman – It’s common with viral videos for 50% of views in 1st 48 hours to be off YouTube (embedded). Then people hear about it and search for it on YouTube. Metadata (good titles, etc) are key for helping people find them.

TED guy – Can use different titles depending where posting (blogs, youtube, etc) to reach different audiences. Distribute with blogs, Virgin America channel, etc. Embedding is huge.

TED guy – People post comments that are very emotional, and personal. You can’t write that kind of stuff as a PR person.

OK Go guy – State Farm paid for the whole video. Record company didn’t have the money so we found outside sponsorship. In return, added a thank you slide at the end. They were very hands off (unlike a record label, which has content expertise, thinks they are the artist). At first State Farm wanted exclusivity. That was a non-starter for us. Exclusivity doesn’t work online. The point of something spreading is that it’s supposed to f*cking spread. People just aren’t that cattle-ish. We partnered with 5 different blogs. Each got exclusive photos and bloopers videos a few days in advance.

Our message to State Farm was:  Our fans aren’t stupid, the world isn’t stupid. We’ll make you part of the story by thanking you at end and in the metadata. We also had state farm on the truck that started off the video.

(Actually a lot of people in audience hadn’t seen the This Too Shall Pass video.)

This video took 6 months to make, 18 engineers to build, 60 engineers for shoot days, working 24 hours per day at end. They were in it for the love. People watch it between four and five times, hard to get it all in one go.

Hundreds of takes. 65 takes got past the tire. Three finished, combined footage from these for the video (didn’t get every thing on film in one shoot). No CGI, it’s all authentic.

People said a lot of positive about Sate Farm in the comments. Is like 17th century sponsorship.

Take away:  Do something incredible, something that seems almost impossible.

Surprise people

Showed this video because it has reveal after reveal after reveal…

Much less successful than Surprised Kitty (but oddly big in Korea)…

Surprised SXSW contest

After watching these videos we got our own surprise. The panel announced that the “Surprised SXSW” contest.

First we made our own video…

The contest – make your own SXSW surprise video, Tweet about it with #surprisesxsw Gift bags for the 20 best vids.