In this post you’ll find links to the public waves generated, some of the materials used during the event and a feel for who was there. It was a fun, energy filled day where people networked in a very different way, learned a few new techniques for collaboration and innovation and learned about some companies with very exciting visions. There were event a few ideas developed that we think will have some real potential going forward.

Link to the Public Waves

Each table had its own wave.

Google Table: Wave’s Killer App

https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search:in%253AInbox,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zC.6

Better Place: How to drive adoption

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zI

Horizon Power: Multi-Utility Model

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zK

Horizon Power: Sustainable and Profitable Small Community Engagement Models

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zF

UTS UrbanAid: Merging physical and digital media in urban environments

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zM

UTS Business School: What will business education look like in 2050

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zS

The Bionic Ear Institute: Developing a generalized medical bionics platform

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zQ

The Future Table: What new business models will be possible in a world where all these innovations exist?

https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:search:with%253Apublic+fastrack,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252B6foTf00zO

Twitter Feed

Hashtag: #fastfuture

Archive from the day: http://sonnenreich.com/ramble/2010/03/twitter-archive-for-fastfuture/

Wordle topic visualization:

Wordle cloud from #fastfuture twitter feed

Visualisation used at conference: http://www.tweetviz.com

Top Games Developed during Rapid Prototype Training

1) Coming soon…

2) Check back later!

3)

Conference Run Sheet

09:00: Introduction, Welcome

Warm-up Networking

This is a quick way for people at each table to get to know one another. Each person will turn to another at the table and discuss the following questions. After each round people will rotate around the table so they can talk with someone different.

09:05: Speed Innovating round 1: If you can fly like superman… but for only one hour what would you do?

09:10: Speed Innovating round 2: How would your life change if you could use 100x the amount of energy you use today at the same cost and environmental impact?

09:15: Speed Innovating round 3: If you could replace any part of your body with a bionic replacement that’s twice as good (faster, stronger, more flexible)… would you replace currently healthy parts of your body?

09:20: Speed Innovating round 4: What’s the best experience collaborating you’ve ever had, what made it stand out?

09:25: buffer

Innovation Introductions

Each innovator will spend 10 minutes explaining the essence of their innovation and the challenges they’re looking to solve.

09:30: Google presents

09:40: HP presents

09:50: Better Place presents

10:00: UTS B School presents

10:10: Bionic Ear presents

10:20: UTS Urban Aid presents

10:30: Future Table presents

10:35: Morning tea break – grab fast and get in for our cafe

Idea Generation

The idea generation session is a facilitated brainstorming session where the first few minutes are spent coming up with ideas seperately, then the ideas are collected and more ideas are generated as a group for a few minutes. Then a few of the ideas are expanded upon by the group. After 3 rounds of this (people rotate tables each round) a single idea is chosen and refined by the original table group for the prototyping round.

10:45: Innocafe explanation – goal is to first get lots of ideas, then explore best ones. Wave lets us do this differently. 1st take 2 minutes to come up with a few ideas on your own. If you’ve got a laptop, put them directly into the wave. Otherwise write them down and pass them to the wavelet. Use the mindmap if you can. While discussing people with laptops can put ideas into the wave

10:50: Innocafe warmup – refine warmup exercises

11:00: Innocafe round 1

11:20: Innocafe round 2

11:40: Innocafe round 3

12:00: Idea refinement (back to original table)

12:20: buffer

12:30: Lunch

Rapid Prototyping Training

Participants will create a board game based on the theme of their table. They will develop this game using a rapid prototyping technique that results in diverse input at early stages of the design process.

If you’d like a copy of our PPT deck and some of the game kits, please email me.

Key things to focus on:

• What are the skills/abilities of your team? How can you use this to best collaborate?
• Test as you go – constantly experiment, refine
• During playtest – who will explain, who will observe?
• Keep it simple till it works, then expand
• What can you learn from your “customers” and “competitors”?
• How will you advertise your game to attract players during the testing phase?

Voting: each person gets one poker chip. After the 2nd playtest round people go around the room and place their chips on the game they liked the best. Top three get to present their idea.

1:15: Instructions for Rapid Prototyping workshop

1:30: Rapid Prototype Game design round 1

1:45: Rapid Prototype Game playtest 1

2:00: Rapid Prototype Game design round 2

2:15: Rapid Prototype Game playtest 2

2:30: Rapid Prototype Game voting/top 3 preso

2:50: Afternoon tea

Rapid Prototyping Workshop

The same process of rapid prototyping will now be applied to the idea that was refined at the end of the morning session. The goal will be to come up with a 2 minute pitch that convinces the rest of the room of the value and feasibility of the idea. This is about creating the simplest prototype to validate the idea – not actually “implementing” the entire idea.

Key things to focus on:

• What is the critical part of this solution that must be demonstrated for a customer to believe?
• How can you test that critical part using the simplest test possible?
• What are the logistics of building and running that test?
• What type of team do you need to execute the test?

Pitch:

• Explain the problem that is being solved.
• Explain why solving this problem is valuable and who it’s valuable to
• Assume you’ve “solved” the critical part identified and talk about “how you solved it”
• Explain how someone could verify that the solution will give them value based on your prototype

3:10: Instructions for Prototype workshop

3:15: Prototype workshop design round 1

3:30: Prototype workshop pitch round 1

3:45: Prototype workshop design round 2

4:00: Prototype workshop pitch round 2

4:15: Table rotate workshop final design round 3

Wrap-up

4:30: Pitchfest + voting – done with chips like the earlier round

5:00: Closing, networking

Partial list of Attendees

We’ve covered the earth with it, but we had no idea how it worked… until now…
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/cement-0909.html?tr=y&auid=5356791

“Powerful” ideas:
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/news/spotlights/engine-innovation.html?tr=y&auid=5628667

Seriously, games are in my blood:
http://sliceofmit.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/mit-developed-video-games/
http://sliceofmit.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/mit-developed-video-games-redux/

For mummies who want to raise young innovators:
http://sliceofmit.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/pop-up-book/?tr=y&auid=5628968

And some other cool ideas:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4332914.html?tr=y&auid=5628693

The mistake all these discussions make is equating digital products to physical products. They are not equivalent. Physical objects cost money to duplicate – materials, equipment, labor. They also cost money to get to market. Digital objects cost nothing to duplicate and when sold online, cost nearly nothing to distribute. If you steal a physical object, you’ve robbed the duplicator and distributor of costs they’ve already incurred. If you steal a digital object, these costs never existed.

What about the cost of creation? The value of the design? The reality is, the labor cost of designing a product is a sunk cost, whether digital or physical and almost never factored into the sale price. The price of a good is mostly set by the cost of production, distribution, marketing and consumer demand (what the market will bear). What this means is 3 of the 4 factor (all but demand) are severely minimised in the case of a digital product. Or more simply, digital products are basically priced at what the market will bear whereas there are hard lower limits to pricing on physical objects before the seller incurs a loss on the item itself.

They key to solving digital piracy is understanding where the REAL value lies in your “product”. Why does Apple make a ton of money on ITunes when all the songs they sell are freely available on the net (and they’ve removed DRM from the versions you buy as well!)

The answer is that people aren’t paying $.99 for the song. They’re paying for convenience: ease of finding music they like through the store, ease of getting it onto devices they want to play it on, knowledge that they won’t “lose” their music if their HD crashes or CD gets scratched, etc. The song itself is worthless because you can get it for free a hundred different ways. But Apple makes money off of the song by focusing on the value surrounding it.

How do we do this for games? Steam is a good solution – I buy almost all my games on steam because it makes life very easy for me. No media to deal with, easy install on every computer i own, if I want to share with a friend I give them my steam account (only one of us can play at a time, but that’s fine — it’s just like lending a book).

MMOs offer a different, but equally good value model. I don’t pay for the game – I can hack and slash in similar ways in games I already own. I pay for access to a populous and well-connected multiuser environment. I don’t see the subscription price as fee for content or fee for the game. I see it more like membership to a fitness club. I have weights at home, but the environment of the gym is far more conducive to a good workout.

So what is the value associated with a Real Time Strategy game like AI War? I’d argue that the core game is valueless. There are plenty of games with similar mechanics available for free on the Internet. The true value that AI War brings to the table, and it’s point of differentiation is in the AI. An additional opportunity for creating value is in the way in which co-operative multiplayer matchmaking could be handled.

AI War is currently sold as a $20 game with no DRM – just a license key that lifts restrictions on the free trial. Its main selling points are that the AI is uniquely challenging and that the game has been designed from the ground-up as a co-operative game. There are 10 levels of AI difficulty, with the first “challenging” AI at level 7. Nobody has yet beaten level 10.

Given this, here’s how I’d apply the principles discussed above to sell AI War:

AIs up to level 5 are free. You can play the full game with friends in an unlimited context with these AIs. Level 6+7 AIs are also included, but play as the current free trial does.

AIs from 6-10 cost $4.99 each (6 and 7 are bundled together for $4.99). There could be a couple of AIs for each level, each with a distinct playstyle/personality and these could come with new units as well.

Each purchased AI also would give the player access to a leaderboard that tracks player stats/wins against the AI. It also comes with a matchmaking service that lets players find others online for co-op play. The matchmaking service should track player stats, including whether the player drops out and doesn’t resume, or inversely, whether they’re willing to drop into games that are already started.

There’s a cash reward for beating a level 10 AI. This goes up with the number of people that purchase the AI (e.g. $1 of each purchase goes to the reward pool). The pool keeps filling up w/purchase money until the AI gets beaten, then it’s given to the winner and starts filling again.

This essentially defeats the torrents — the whole game is “free”. It’s highly unlikely people will be torrenting the AIs – and even if they do, without an account on the leaderboard you’d lose the benefit of the matchmaking (which I think would be very useful).

The average player that gets hooked will almost immediately buy the level 6/7 pack. At $5, it’s almost impossible to resist. This will get them REALLY hooked, because they’ll soon beat level 7 and then will be looking for a challenge.

I also think a lot of players will be enticed to buy the level 10 AI… just for a crack at winning the prize pool (seed it with $100-$1000 to start).

I’d be really interested to see if a pricing model like this ended up netting you much better sales. My gut says it will.

1) The display on each brick is very sharp and has a high resolution. Like a mini, square iPhone.

2) The defining feature of a siftable is its ability to be aware of, and interact with,  its neighbours.  If you can think of a way to create an app that uses just one siftable, you’d be better off making it an iphone app. This is also why an iPhone emulator for siftables is not likely any time soon – iPhones can’t sense relative orientation and proximity to each other. Plus two siftables are far less expensive than two iPhones.

3) They are primarily targeting the mass-consumer entertainment/education markets. They are aware that there’s a whole class of apps that are for power users – e.g. the data viz type stuff we’re looking at doing, simulations, art, music, etc. However it’s hard to commercialise those applications vs. creating one “fun” game, or educational tool.

That said, he’s in agreement that they will make a powerful collaborative interface for data visualisation and analytics. As soon as they do a “run” of their beta version hardware, we’ll be getting a bunch.

by Wes Sonnenreich, Director of Innovation for Deloitte Australia

Videogames have become a mainstream form of gaming entertainment for much of the world. In their early days, scoring systems were simple – one point for each dot consumed by a voracious yellow circle, hundreds of points if the circle touches a fast moving blue blob under the right conditions, game over if it touches anything else. Today’s games have scoring and statistic-keeping systems that are as complex as those used in sports such as baseball, cricket and American football – particularly if the game is played among many people online.

One of the current popular trends in videogames is a system called “achievements”.  These are frequent rewards for accomplishing tasks within the game environment that often have little to do with the primary objective of the game. For example, in a shooter game, someone might get an achievement for only playing with a pistol when everyone else is using machine guns.

Achievements can encourage players to try doing something that is otherwise not rewarded by the standard gameplay mechanisms. In the case of the above example, even highly skilled players would find that using a pistol exclusively would negatively impact their score and statistics. However, a player who retains an achievement by never using any weapon other than a pistol can justify their lower statistics, and even exclusively compare themselves to others who hold a similar achievement.

By engaging in non-optimal behaviours, players can often have a richer experience with a game, particularly in multiplayer environments. Once an “optimal strategy” for playing a game is discovered, those who use it dominate the game. This rapidly forces everyone to adopt the optimal strategy which often leads to boring, repetitive gameplay. However, well designed achievements can break this behavioural pattern and create a more varied playing experience. It can also lead people to explore aspects of the game that, while not optimal from a scoring perspective, may still be very fun.

Achievements in and of themselves are not new. They’re no different than tracking individual statistics of an athlete and celebrating when some otherwise arbitrary milestone is achieved (e.g. when a player achieves a “century” or, conversely a golden duck in cricket). They may have little or no impact on the overall progress of the broader game, but they can add little bursts of excitement throughout. These are particularly welcome when the game goes through a “stagnant” period where nothing much is happening. They can keep people in their seats and engaged even after the overall outcome is a foregone conclusion. They also can be a motivator to a player – many athletes are driven throughout their career with the hopes of achieving a record or a series of significant milestones. Having the right achievements can even translate into an increased salary and better sponsorships.

Why do we keep score?

Life is primarily about survival; but once you’ve got survival in the bag, life is about how well you’re surviving. Money, social status, possessions, leisure time and happiness are often used to figure out how well you’re doing at the survival game. Associated with each of these concepts there are many complex and interrelated methods for “keeping score” and “mini-games” that are played around these scores.

Games are a simplification of life. Games take the unbounded chaos of life and create rules and boundaries so that a “winner” and “loser” can be easily determined within a reasonable timeframe. For example, chess is a simplified match up of two armies. They’re given equal resources and starting capabilities (which is unrealistic), and held to a set of very prescriptive constraints (e.g. a white pawn can’t suddenly go guerrilla, camouflage as a black bishop and headshot the black queen from a sniper perch behind the chess clock[1]). A chess game can end with a winner, loser or a draw. Unlike life, as soon as a draw is recognised, both sides accept it and move on to the next game.

The relatively simple nature of games allows us to come up with easily understood “scoring” systems for individual games, collections of games and the players of the games. In the simplest of games a victory occurs when one player achieves an objective before or more skilfully than the other. In a series of these games, a player’s overall score is the total of their wins. In more complex games there may be a number of parallel scoring systems; some which affect the outcome of a single game, but others might be relevant in an extended series of games.

As games become more complex, so does the potential for developing complex scoring systems. Keeping score can be a game in and of itself; fantasy leagues create games based on the performance of players of other games. Many sports fans spend hours keeping track of dozens if not hundreds of statistics associated their favourite teams and players. Every time there’s a new game, these statistics change and the fans can look forward to hours of debates about what the long-term implications of each moment of the game means for each player, each team and the future of the sport itself. Just read the back few pages of any daily newspaper if you don’t believe me.

What is new and exciting is the concept that an achievement earned in one game may change the experience in a different game. Right now, this has been mostly implemented in games that are part of a series, for example achievements earned in Gears of War 1 unlock new abilities in Gears of War 2. However, soon this is likely to expand into games that are less closely related. To go back to the sports analogy, this would be equivalent to allowing a cricket player who achieves a century to play a game of baseball using their cricket bat. He may or may not want to actually do that, but it opens up an interesting variation that wouldn’t be available to other players.

The reason this works is because the major game platform companies (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) have created standards for how achievements must work within games for their gaming platforms in order to receive certification. This standard ensures compatibility among achievement systems and thus paves the way for inter-game achievements. Of course, there is no compatibility at this time between the three systems and given the history of those three companies, it’s more likely there will peace in the Middle East than a common standard.

This is a very powerful model that leverages the ubiquitousness of standardised networked information systems. Similar types of models are emerging outside of the videogame world. Profiles generated on social media sites such as Blogger, Digg, Facebook, and Flikr all are becoming interconnected. A person’s social status and social web “achievements” in one context can carry over to the other sites. For example a blogger can have their blog appear on their Facebook profile page. Garnering more “friends” on Facebook can lead to increased readership and visibility of the blog. This is starting to get very close to the inter-game achievement model, particularly since some people consider collecting a large number of “friends” on Facebook to be a game.

There is an enormous potential for this model to be applied to the workplace and educational environments. Most of us engage in many activities during work or school that are “extracurricular” – on the job training, community service, participating in office sporting teams, playing in the school band, etc. We also occasionally accomplish things that go above and beyond the expectations set for us – such as having an exceptionally good year of sales, unusually high grades, etc. Our achievements in these activities are often only relevant while we’re in that environment. When we leave our school or job, the achievements aren’t portable. After three years of exceptional sales in a previous job, the next year will simply be your first year of exceptional sales in the new job… not your fourth. Your previous performance might have gotten you the new job, but it’s unlikely to be considered as part of your new performance history.

But what if these types of achievements were portable? What if when you left a job to go to another job, or back to university, you could continue to build on your previous achievements and you were evaluated based on your performance relative to your cumulative performance history?

Achievements that impacted a life-long system would be worth having, and therefore jobs or educational institutions could use these achievements to encourage new behaviours. Achievements could help break through some of the resistance to change when a new behaviour set is desired but people still perceive the old set as optimal. The new behaviour has a valuable benefit regardless of whether it’s seen as the best way to do things.

There are also interesting implications for using achievements as an enabler for preserving a sense of culture with workers who are employed under flexible arrangements. Someone working from home can participate in events and share their achievements with others in the company. Relevant achievements outside of the formal work engagement, such as community service, can count toward the work performance review even though it didn’t happen on “work time”.

In conclusion, the concept of achievements in games is a new application of an old concept; however the ability to translate achievements from one environment to another is new as it relies heavily on recent advances and standardisation of information systems. The potential applications of this concept outside of the gaming world are exciting and could have profound impacts on the way we live and work. Ultimately, it may lead to new ways of “keeping score” of how well we’re playing game of life.