Strawgame closer to be an Evokational reality ? :-)

Evokation

19.5.10

Barcelona

Valentina Maini

19 May 2010

The Place

The change will start within the strawbale and natural building community at the moment united by a european and a global mailing list and with bi-annual meetings at european and global level as well as a quite intense personal relationship among leaders. After this we will go for urban european communities with lack of confidence in institutions and educational system.... a second step already present in this proposal..

The Challenge

My aim is to change the way knowledge is shared and decisions are made in order to make a more effective and transparent network. The benefits would go to people in countries with low institutional structure and support and to people and institutions who are at the moment the leaders and pioneers in innovation. The need i perceive is to organize huge amount of human resources that are doing the same instead of sharing and shape an effective way to integrate local limits and resources (ex. codes and companies) with global networks. And most of all the need for a tool that can bring selection and screen to internet without loosing open sharing, because we need to share knowledge not information and to share knowledge normally you need to know/trust the people you are talking to.

The Idea

Actually the idea is quiet similar to Evoke project (when i discovered at TED i was so happy i cried!) . Is to create a game for mobile phones and web. So the basic idea is the same but is very different the way you get from one mission to another as well as relations among players and between players and mentors. I will succeed in getting more real outcome of products and services because the game will be produced with the people that is expecting some results from it.

The Money

With my first 1000 US$ i would go to visit leaders in similar projects to share my point of view with them and learn more from their experience: Jane and EVOKE team and CRITICAL CiTY team. I would make a short video of this meeting and trailer of the upcoming new game.

Below a Briefing i have made to present project looking for institutional help sometime ago with no results for the moment

Straw Game

7 de septiembre de 2009
Número de propuesta: 00-01-09

Summary

Interesting challenge

This project was at first visualized at the ESBG (European Straw Bale Gathering) in Belgium in August 2009. During this event more than 200 people from 30 different country gathered together to share their experiences on straw bale construction and reinforce the network relations with personal meetings. During the event some clear demands came out of the community:

- need to exchange knowledge and have education on strawbale building

- need and will to do it in a "Easy and Fun" mode

- need and convenience to select/understand/know the people with whom we interchange/share

The European gathering events are a situation where all this needs meets and find some kind of answer, but this are meetings that can be organized only on a biannual period. There is a need and "desire" to have a more continuos platform where this needs can be addressed at the same time on a regular- continuos basis.

Within the strawbale community no institution can alone support the costs of such a platform.

Vision

Let's create a STRAWGAME!

Social Games are relational structure used among kids and adults to share, educate, enjoy, select.!

Let's take advantage of network and GPS new applications of internet to connect people in a fun, easy, effective and useful way. Let's integrate physical gatherings with internet gatherings. Let's use and improve the collaborative model of production instead of the institutional model and by doing this reducing considerably the operative costs of networking and sharing and organizing projects and tasks. see: Clay Shirky "Institutions vs Collaboration" at TED www.ted.com

So what we propose wants to allow networkers of the european strawbale community to share in an easy and fun way their knowledge and experiences on strawbale construction and actually collaborate to solve tasks and create projects.

Easy way of sharing. No great infrastructure needed to use and implement the tool that allow to share. We propose a web base space with a mobile phone interface that will work mainly within an internet or 3G connection.

Fun way of sharing. Having fun while you're improving your knowledge, skills and potential is essential for the success of the experience, fun can overcome the obstacles of hard daytime working and is a common base for dialog between different individuals, organization and countries. So we propose to create a game as a sharing and learning tool.

Not only sharing information, but sharing Knowledge and experiences. Information is available and quiet easy to reach, we cannot say the same about knowledge and experience. In order to share knowledge is necessary to attend a process of learning by doing, studying and sharing. This game search a way to give a fun educational path that will lead to more advance knowledge and eliminate the need for networkers to repeatedly ask basic questions and at the same time create a collaborative* environment where individuals can with little effort supply great contributions to the network

So we propose a game that will reward participation with access to more specialized group of professionals of strawbale building. Users/players from low level of knowledge "can have a look" to what more experienced people is doing but will access to full sharing and connection only with people/players of the same level of "game/knowledge".

Synergy and new connections. The game will be played in internet and in the reality allowing people to meet in both spaces and to integrate their local environment with the global connection that the net allows. The game will support different levels of connection: each level will provide the player with specific tools and sharing spaces allowing a personalized experience of networking.

Problem Solving and Getting things done. The structure of the game will allow people to collaborate in solving real problems or getting tasks done for major projects of common interest with a small amount of personal energy.

Structure of the strawgame

The game will have a web platform and application for mobile smartphone . Players will be able to upload multimedia content and view multimedia content in the web and on mobile phone device, but will not be able to download shared information.

Players can have an individual profile, is not necessary to have a profile to start playing, but it would be necessary to go from the first level of game to the furthers level.

Players can edit directly the content (making proposal of missions or tasks that need to be solved) of the game but will not be able to have a direct intervention on game rules.

The game can be played mainly when connected online via web or 3G connection, some parts of the game can be played even if not on-line.

Administrators of the game will give players technical support and will be responsible to adapt and propose improvement in the features of the software in order to adjusts to the needs and limits of the community.

Part of the game information will be stored in a specific server, part of the game will consist in a "index"page or feed for and from other sharing services such as youtube, flickr, blogs.

The originality and uniqueness of the proposal is the integration of different existing platforms and software within a new platform dedicated to a specific goal. The development of this software and platform integration can be used for different goals and can find other fields of application.

Strawgame Feature

Main Feature/Structure: CRITICAL STRAW

Following the exemple of the existing platform , the game will prompt the players to accomplish "missions" sets from administrators or proposed by the players. Missions have different targets and different levels of complexity. Missions can be made on line or in the real world but need to be published on line in order to be done. When Players demonstrate that they have done a mission they get scored. Scored is initially established by the administrator and depend on the level of difficulty of the mission itself. Players can give to other an extra score by voting missions results that they like.

Main limits and benefits of different Levels:

First Level beginner:

you enter the full version of the game when you reach a minimum amount of missions done

Second Level user:

now the player can start connecting with other players and start sharing and viewing the information others players have introduce in the game

Third Level professional:

now the player has at reach direct contact with leaders of ongoing projects/institutions and you can integrate or share technical information with them

Fourth Level leader:

as a Leader within the game you will be a reference for all networkers and you will be able to reach and participate in decision making processes of the EU network community.

Feature/Feed: STRAW VOTE

Within the game a "multiple choice vote" will be presented on issues regarding the strawbale community. Players can propose question that "need" to be answered. This feature will allow to collect "marketing" data and feedback about products or project that are ongoing within the strawbale community. The software will produce graphic of polls with gender, age, country and level of the player data.

Feature/feed: STRAW NOTE AND EVENT

The player can publish information and/or reviews of strawbale buildings, events The data will be geographically related trough GPS location of the player and will provide the platform of a list of reviews on different topics about strawbale construction.

Feature/feed: STRAW DATA AND CODES

The player can publish information and/or reviews of strawbale buildings data and codes The data will be geographically related trough GPS location of the player and will provide the platform of a list of reviews on different topics about strawbale construction.

Development Calendar

Human Resources

Budget Structure