GameSave Hackathon
by willowbl00 on June 16, 2011
Join us for a weekend of problem-solving, games and disaster relief in Seattle, Washington!
GameSave’s first semi-annual competition is having its premier build weekend from June 24th-26th, and you are invited to join us! You don’t need to be participating in the larger competition to engage in this weekend, you can just come play.
Social time at Vito’s Friday the 24th at 927 9th Avenue in Seattle from 20:00 to 23:00, with the main build day on Saturday the 25th. Saturday will include talks from experts, facilitated collaboration time to find and interact with teams, and structured Q+A at Office Nomads (1617 Boylston Ave, Second Floor). Continued work time can take place on Sunday at Jigsaw Renaissance (Inscape Building, 815 Airport Way), where internet and workspace will be available for all participants.
Here’s how hackathons work:
Subject matter experts on game platforms, mechanics, and disaster response will give quick presentations at the beginning of the event, which will provide critical information for use by teams in forming their game concepts. Presenters will also be available for specific questions and relevant brain-picking.
Over the course of a hackathon, participants and presenters alike bring what are called “problem definitions.” If you already have a game idea, that’s your problem definition – it’s what you’ll be working on. If you need some guidance or direction, this is the time to listen to what people need and decide on what you and your team can address with your skillset.
Participants then gather around the things that interest them and organically work out order of operations, tasks at hand, and who takes ownership of which section of the problem. The group you work with at this event may be your team or other individuals. It may sound confusing, but experience shows that the best route tends to emerge from the chaos and everything ends up working out perfectly.
All this will be broadcast via ustream on GWOB channel GameSave. You don’t have to be present to participate, but it sure does help. It’s also the time to bring your team together, or find others to work with if you’ve been on your own.
Already have a team? Time to make a team profile!
Still need a team? Check the wiki for other loners who are looking for teams!
Want to work alone? That’s cool, too! Just let us know by creating a team profile on the wiki for yourself! Let others find you by creating a profile for yourself.
All signed up? Great! See you soon!
2 comments
I have been an enthusiastic participant of two recent civic / humanitarian hackathons, and look forward to participating in future events. I wrote a blog post to share some of my excitement about Data Camp Seattle and haven’t quite gotten around to compiling my notes from Random Hacks of Kindness Seattle. I am very grateful for your and others’ selfless efforts in organizing these tremendously engaging events.
That said, I don’t find the theme of GameSave to be as compelling as the themes of the earlier events. Part of this is no doubt due to my growing skepticism about gamification in general (eloquently expressed by Kathy Sierra in comments on Gamification post on O’Reilly Radar). In this particular instance, it seems to me that applications for disaster relief would (or should) be sufficiently intrinsically motivating. I find it hard to imagine that adding “points”, “badges” or other gamifying elements to an application designed to help victims of earthquakes, floods or other natural disasters would make those applications more effective. But perhaps this simply reflects a failure of my imagination.
I’ll be sitting this one out, but will look forward to the prospect of participating in future events for which I can more readily engage my imagination and implementation(s).
by Joe McCarthy on June 16, 2011 at 7:28 pm. #
Joe, I really appreciate your comment and skepticism. To me, this is a multi-fold endeavor: by asking game devs to interact with disaster response, better user interfaces are built; these important needs reach a wider audience; and new minds are brought to issues of parsing data and determining response.
Adding points to something people are already inclined to do actually lowers their participation. However, giving structure and guidance of HOW to interact (a path which could be indicated through points systems) raises and sustains participation.
by willowbl00 on June 16, 2011 at 7:34 pm. #