Fugu – Leapfroglog

Week 168

So, I got back from a one-week holiday on Terschelling last weekend (which was lovely, by the way) and immediately dove into work again. So much to do at the moment, it’s a challenge not to get swamped. Anyway. And it is one of those weeks where I need to look back on my calendar just to remember what has been going on…

Most notably, two interns have started at Hubbub. They are working on games for the second installment of the Learning Lab, an experimental educational program created by River Institute, which will be running at the University of Amsterdam the coming months. Their first assignment is to design a game that will be played by Learning Lab participants (who are called “pioneers”) today and tomorrow at the Natural Networking Festival. It is nice to have these guys on board. This week I regularly sat down with them to review their plans but aside from this they are incredibly self-steering. They’ll be blogging about their exploits on the Hubbub blog soon.

Also, I had a full day of work on Maguro yesterday. We spent the whole day at the client’s office (a large governmental organization which I can’t name at the moment). The morning was taken up by short presentations from the side of us, the design team. We also had the chance to talk to a selection of people from our target audience and get a tour of their work environment. In the afternoon we sat down to brainstorm concepts, and came up with some interesting ones. I enjoyed getting a chance to see this organization from the inside, which due to to the sensitive nature of their work is a little secretive. We decided to use part of the workshop’s program to try out some mechanics that we might be using in the game, without the audience being aware of it. That lead to some interesting results.

This week is bookended by meetings for project Ika. This project is run from the still very new Design for Playful Impact research group at the HKU. On monday I spent some time with the people leading the other projects to get a general sense of the program. Today I’ll be meeting up with the client for the first time.

And in between I’ve been doing more work on PLAY Pilots. I dropped by Zesbaans to check out an early version of their installation for the Netherlands Film Festival, which is called The Stereoscope and is this kind of toy-like VJ-ing tool loaded with fragments from Dutch films from the past 30 years. Awesome, awesome, stuff. It’s already fun to play with, even though the custom-built console is yet to be finished and the game mechanics haven’t been implemented yet.

And finally, in other news: we announced the next This happened – Utrecht, and I uploaded a selection of photos from the Bocce Drift game Hubbub ran a few weeks ago.

Week 166

This week was all about frantically getting things sorted so that I can completely disconnect for a week on starting friday (tomorrow).

Putting up the scaffolding for project Fugu; a collaboration with River Institute on an experiment in higher education at the UvA. Hubbub will be designing some ARG-ish additions to its program. I am bringing on board two interns to work with me on this. I’ll have them introduce themselves at the Hubbub blog soon.
Final exams at the HKU which is best described as a roller-coaster ride of draining and exhilarating moments. I judged the work of 10 interaction design and game design students, including those I coached myself. Some were very good. There is a show at the faculty on september 10 & 11 called EJECT.
Had some meetings about yet another project which I have decided to codename Ika. This is a mix of me coaching a group of HKU students and doing design research in the cultural heritage domain. A hybrid educational model.
Various management-type activities for PLAY Pilots. Mostly aimed at helping the Zesbaans / NFF pilot make it into the world and getting the Wip ‘n’ Kip additions for the site up.
This afternoon we’ll kick off project Maguro which is about using pervasive games for internal training purposes at a government agency.
Tomorrow at 12:15 I will get on this boat to this island and will be very hard to reach for a week. I plan to do a lot of reading, cycling and walking and not much else. Well, sleeping probably. Lots of that too.

So, don’t expect any notes for week 167. I’ll be back to report on #168.

Week 165

So week 165. One of those old-fashioned fragmented weeks that reminds me of why I decided a while ago that I should stop having more than two meetings on one day. Anyway.

Following the weekend of Stekker Fest craziness I had a bit of an off day on Monday. Tuesday I sat down with Ianus and Alexander to make plans for the next This happened – Utrecht. We’ve had a bit of trouble finding a venue, getting financing and everything but it looks like we’re all set. Monday 4 October at Theater Kikker in Utrecht, NL. Save the date.

From Amsterdam I traveled on to Rotterdam and spent some time at Simon’s sketching out the additions to PLAY Pilots for the Wip ‘n’ Kip game data. I also dropped by BUROPONY. They might make something cool for This happened attendees…

Wednesday I had coffee with Thieu and Godelieve at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam to talk about a new project which I’ve dubbed Fugu. It deals with experimental (game-like) new forms of higher education. I am taking on board two interns to help me out with that. That’ll be an interesting new experience. I also hooked up with Peter, who is now at Adaptive Path Amsterdam. Cool building, they seem to be doing well. Nice.

In the afternoon on Wednesday I was back in Utrecht to talk to Ezra, who is involved with some interesting research into cycling. He’s based in Copenhagen. We discussed ways in which we might use low-tech pervasive urban games to shape cycle use. Who knows, Hubbub might venture there to do some experiments in future.

I finished that day off with a review of a student presentation. Final exams is next week; that’ll eat up a lot of my time.

Ah what’s more? Thursday, more educational work, I attended a kick-off of the new academic year at the HKU‘s school of art and technology. I liked the fact that all teachers were there and sat down to sync their classes and assignments in such a way that they all connected to projects students would be doing. Proper project-based art education. Good to see that happen.

And today I am reviewing one more student presentation and am spending some time with Alper on PLAY Pilots and related bits.

Looking ahead, next week will be about the aforementioned final exams and also the kick-off of project Maguro. I have to say I am running on fumes a bit and can’t wait for next week because on friday I will head to Terschelling for a week and unplug completely.

Almost forgot about Bocce Drift this Sunday. Come along and play.

Week 164

I am sat at the studio while around me FourceLabs are putting the final touches to their installation for Stekker Fest. I’ll be there tomorrow to hand out buttons to players. It’s the first in a series of three playful additions to three festivals that I am overseeing – first called project Ebi and now commonly known as PLAY Pilots. As such I can’t wait to see the response of players. On the other hand, I am sure it’ll be great.

The next project in the PLAY Pilots series is by Zesbaans for the Netherlands Film Festival. I had a few more meetings about that one as well, mostly about getting some productional stuff sorted. It turns out getting big screens for a long period of time is kind of expensive. Your learn something everyday.

Last week we launched a first version of the PLAY Pilots website, which includes an online game. This week we’ve started rolling out the first improvements. I have been planning some changes and additions to the ruleset. We’ve also started work on pulling in the Wip ‘n’ Kip game data.

Apart from this, I have been doing some preparation for new projects; codenamed Uni, Maguro and Fugu. More on those as things develop.