Kevin: It’s been a while since I last blogged, but seeing how I can actually help out on a good cause, here’s something mysterious for you…
THE HUNT FOR OUR LOST POEMS
Stories, myths and legends await you at Singapore Arts Festival 2012, and right now, 23 Arts Fest Show Symbols are lost in the vastness of the Internet waiting for you to discover.
The symbols are hidden on various webpages, blogs and facebook pages, and where they are hidden just might give you more hints of what to expect of the programmes for Arts Fest this year.
HOW TO ENTER
Look out for symbols like the one on my page
Take down the website address on the symbol and enter all your finds in the submission page at the Singapore Arts Fest facebook page
The first five people to discover any 10 symbols will win.
But the best prize awaits the most hardworking person who manages to uncover all 23 symbols first, who will win a hamper with a whole lot of goodies!
There will be clues released on the Symbol Hunt page to help you find some of the more well-hidden symbols, so Like it to stay updated!
I met a lot of interesting folks there, from academics to developers, and the general sentiment I’m getting is: “At long last!”.
While game mechanics isn’t new or groundbreaking (think Jesse Schell or Seth Priebatsch), what I did offer was an easy way to understand this as a concept, as well as a simple framework for participants to start running their own addictive little systems.
As a sidenote, many were intrigued by the idea that museums could be about much more than they first realized!
As you can tell, this conference was geared at students interested in breaking into the startup industry. I must say that from what I saw, I was very impressed. The ideas and design that went into the interactive applications pitched by student groups at this conference was pretty top notch. I’ve got a bunch of TertiaryTech photos and video interviews to share as seen below…
Here’s the game mechanics talk I presented meant to inspire and intrigue student developers into building “addictive” qualities into their apps (to sustain an active user base). From the feedback I’ve received, lots of folks were intrigued after hearing what I had to share, and I’m particularly glad how they have come to realize how Facebook derives free labor through the exploitation of such game mechanics (yes, pure psychological hooks!). Big thanks to Daniel Tsou of Tech65.org fame, for helping with the HD camera work shot using my NEX-5. I’m just going to re-use the wonderful abstracts from the TertiaryTech web site.
TertiaryTech 2010: How to add fun to traditional labor (Game Mechanics)
Traditional mass media has typically portrayed video games in a negative light for generating social undesirable or unproductive behavior. However, by harnessing the addictive elements of video games and embedding these game mechanics into traditional labor, can we make work fun?
These forces, or what we refer to as game dynamics or mechanics, are what influence us into subconsciously performing actions or completing certain tasks. As usage and engagement becomes the focus of many technology services today, there is a demand and need to infuse game mechanics in these products.
Kevin has been experimenting with the concept of productive games in the classroom environment, by using Amy Jo Kim’s game mechanics as a means of steering user motivations. He has also been invited to present his research papers and also to speak at numerous corporate and academic conferences. Be sure not to miss him by registering for the Tertiary Tech Conference today!
TertiaryTech 2010: Pigeonhole – Beautiful Conference Q&A system
Title of Project: Pigeonhole Live Team Lead: Hew Joon Yeng, Lyon Lim Yu Tian Academic Institution: National University of Singapore
Pigeonhole Live is a simple conference tool for speakers to engage their audience in a live setting using their smartphones, laptops and even iPad! Pigeonhole Live allows the audience to ask and vote for their burning questions on their web device in real-time. Good news for the audience: No more waiting for the McNanny at the microphone during the precious 10-minute QnA sessions! By looking at the highest voted questions, the speakers can now address the audience crowd more accurately.
Now everyone gets to take part in the post-keynote QnA at the conferences, without running to the microphones. Yes, even if you are a little shy.
TertiaryTech 2010: Su Yuen demos learning through AR for Kids
Team Lead: Chin Su Yuen Team Members: Chen Lingwei, Tan Reiwen Alex, Ee Wai Lay, Liu Peng Institution: NUS School of Computing Category: Games, Augmented Reality
Virtual Sandbox is an educational game for 4-6 year olds that aim to create a creative and interactive environment to learn English vocabulary. The goal of the game is to build your city and populate it with people. Children use physical cards that are similar to flash cards to place and construct buildings in their city and populate these buildings with characters of the right job/occupation.
For example, to populate a school, children must place a “Teacher” character in the school before they can see an animation of the teacher teaching students in the building.
By using physical cards as a form of interaction, we merge the benefits of tangible objects which children are accustomed to with the interactivity of the virtual environment – morphing the flash cards into a less mundane and more fun method for learning English vocabulary.
TertiaryTech 2010: MARGE – Mobile Augmented Reality Game Engine
Team Lead: Jian Gu, Henry Been-Lirn Duh Institution: MiMe Lab, Interactive Digital Media Institute, National University of Singapore Category: Augmented Reality
MARGE is a game engine for mobile augmented reality (AR) environment based on iPhone, Android and Symbian OS. It includes integrated support for optimal graphics performance, networking, resource management, sound and music. Mobile developer can learn how to develop high quality 3D interactive mobile AR game using our proposed developmental tool. Several highlight features of MARGE: MARGE supports OpenGL ES 2.0, 3D graphics library which runs on the embedded chipset on different phones; Networking support is an essential feature for a Mobile AR game. MARGE supports multiplayer interacting each other in mobile AR environment using TCP/IP or blue-tooth.
In Summary These student developer groups were impressive to say the least. It truly shows the potential Singapore has in this burgeoning interactive software industry and I’m all for supporting our local startups. I’ve only managed to interview a few groups here, so do check out the many more who presented at TertiaryTech 2010.
This Saturday at TertiaryTech I’ll be helping interested students understand the basic psychological hooks that make games addictive, and consequently how we could apply these rules to make traditional labor fun.
TertiaryTech tickets are $15 for students, but I have three tickets to give away for the first three passionate students who drop me their contact details in the comments. The organizers tell me that another way to score free tickets is to contribute to their IdeaBoard. They just want a good reason to give tickets away!
If you’re interested, I speak from 11.00am-11.30am at Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, SMU School of Accountancy. Here’s the abstract below…
How To Add Fun To Traditional Labour
In our daily lives, we do our shopping at the usual stores, buy a meal at our favourite fast food chain or visit our usual watering holes. We are rewarded by being loyal customers and we know when and how to get things at a cheaper price. Turning our attention online to social networking services like Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll see the number of friends you have implicitly considered as a scoreboard, while the profile completion progress meter would look like feedback in the leveling process, all of which are game mechanics that tease our psychological urges. Casual games hosted on these platforms like Farmville and Mafia Wars are making us go back and play them every 30 minutes or so.
These forces, or what we refer to as game dynamics or mechanics, are what influence us into subconsciously performing actions or completing certain tasks. As usage and engagement becomes the focus of many technology services today, there is a demand and need to infuse game mechanics in these products.
Find out from Kevin Lim, our local friendly social cyborg and tech blogger at Theory is the Reason, on how to harness the addictive elements of video games and embed these game mechanics into a traditional system or product to make it fun and to encourage prolonged and frequent use.
Kevin has been experimenting with the concept of productive games in the classroom environment, by using Amy Jo Kim’s game mechanics as a means of steering user motivations. He has also been invited to present his research papers and also to speak at numerous corporate and academic conferences. Be sure not to miss him by registering for the Tertiary Tech Conference today!
In case you don’t know, I recently got serious about cycling. Ever since Siva and the ZenDogstook me to Pengerang, Malaysia for my initiation ride, I’ve been hooked. Mind you they’re not some easy-peasy cyclists… they really put their feet to the metal, so I had trouble keeping up the first time round.
Thanks to Andy Dinesh who offered his bike recommendations. I finally settled on a 2nd-hand Birdy, specifically the Pearl White Monocoque Birdy Alivio 8-Speed, as listed in the StradaSingapore forums. It’s a German-engineered full suspension foldable bike, which is as exciting as it sounds! Here it is folded, and unfolded.
In the video above, you’ll see Kenneth Pinto and I taking on the length of East Coast Park Connector, from Fort Rd to Changi Village, and back. Total distance was 45km, and we did it at 2hrs 28min (mostly due to traffic and human congestion towards noon). I’ve fast forwarded it so you can see the entire ride in 10mins! It’s quite cute to watch!
Early Saturday morning, Siva and the Zendogs cyclists take on Pengerang, Malaysia, on a 40km cycling trip along the coastal kampong route. An hour boat ride from Changi Point to the Pengerang jetty, followed by two hours of cycling towards the seafood town of Sungai Rengit 20km away for lunch. After which we U-turned and headed back the same way.
Besides the rustic beach scenery, our trip ended up being quite hilarious, such as how one of our cyclists suffered three punctures on the same trip! He had to hail a taxi just to get back to the jetty. As for me, I used to cycle a lot when I was young, but it’s been years. The return leg took its toll on my thighs as the heat of the day built-up. Take goodness the rest of the cyclists were there to spray deep-heat (actually some Thai cooling muscle concoction) and pace me all the way back to make the boat.
This trip was an eye opener because I was in the company of experience cyclists. Among them were enthusiasts from the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the National Parks (NParks) and NUS biodiversity folks like Siva, all sharing the common passion to explore the prospect of cycling as a mode of commute in Singapore. Unlike the European countries, is Singapore too dense for cycling to be a norm? How much leeway has to be given to bicycles when taking public transport, including sharing elevators in HDB flats? Are foldable bikes the game-changer? While you deliberate, watch scenes from our 40km bicycle ride in Pengerang.
Rushing over from work, I made my way down to Blu Jazz where BlinkBL-NK was at it’s fifth installment. Having been to earlier speaker sessions in the past two months, I liked the diversity in speakers and the easy-going atmosphere.
Friday evening after work, I grabbed a quick dinner then headed to the museum district to check out the Night Festival: New World 2010. Just me and my Sony NEX-5, absorbing the electrifying experiencing of the numerous unique performances downtown.
While there were several fringe art activities, I spent most of my time checking out the swinging taxi-girls (yes, they were yummy!), the World’s Slowest SMS Billboard at the Singapore Art Museum, as well as the epic Parabole 2.0 at the National Museum of Singapore.
What struck me was how forwardly participatory some of these acts were, from dancing with the taxi-girls and taxi-boys as a way to learn about our past and have fun, the ability to SMS a personal love-note @ SAM, to how the epic Paths of Time theatrical production took two separate stages with actors/actresses having to cross through the audience. This turns the audience into a subtle backdrop or even into fellow performers.
There was simply too much to see in one night, and I’m glad I didn’t travel much because some of the shows, such as the Abusement Park @ SAM, had pretty long lines. I prefer not to get overwhelmed by picking favorites, but for some, the organizers could have perhaps provided a way for the public to create their own itinerary online (as my colleague Regina suggested).
Ever since returning to Singapore, this seemingly innocuous question I’m often asked is probably best answered by the late (and eternally great) Rodney Dangerfield.
While the job ended up being quite different from what I had originally signed up for, I’ve been trying to convince myself to learn beyond my talent and passion. What did take me by surprise after over a month into the job though, are the few colleagues who are clearly giving me the cold shoulder for some strange reason. I must have been lucky to have worked under cozier and less sterile circumstances.
Fortunately, most of the folks I’m working with are friendly and talented in their own right. Logically speaking, I should proportion my concerns accordingly. The funny thing about being human though, is that you could have a hundred friends cheering you on, but just a handful who dislike you in order to turn your mood down.
Whichever the case, I’ll try, and try harder. It’s an opportunity for me to earn their respect.
Dr. Kevin Lim recently graduated with his PhD in Communication at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dabbling for both pragmatic and play, he seeks an ideal interplay between online and offline life, through social networking, blogging and lifecasting. He openly wishes to become a "social cyborg", where the meshing of human and networking technology would allow one's presence to be augmented by the minds of many. Read more...
