links for 2009-06-17

James reports on a recent Gov­Camp held in Ams­ter­dam, where hack­ers com­pet­ed to come up with the best mashup of gov­ern­ment data sources, and design­ers and civ­il ser­vants pre­sent­ed on top­ics relat­ed to data, the Dutch gov­ern­ment and civic duty.

“We are mak­ing a new game, a film about The Sand­pit and social gam­ing in gen­er­al, and we’ve got this love­ly new web­site to doc­u­ment every­thing inter­est­ing that hap­pens between now and the big launch at the Hide&Seek Week­ender on August 1.” A project worth keep­ing an eye on.

Since I’ve been think­ing about using Twit­ter as the plat­form for a per­va­sive game for some time, this is real­ly inter­est­ing to me. A nice sim­ple con­cept, seem­ing­ly well-executed.

“The games on offer the night I vis­it­ed includ­ed Press Gang, a Q&A ses­sion where “celebri­ties” get grilled by the gut­ter press, and Sem­a­pho­ria, which involves devis­ing a flag lan­guage to trans­mit cod­ed mes­sages. Both were enter­tain­ing, but nei­ther these nor the Mex­i­can thumb-wrestling com­pe­ti­tion going on in the bar could be labelled pro­found cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences.” Which makes me won­der whether the author of this piece thinks all the­atre is profound…