Creating a playful experience to encourage participation in the meta-narrative of conference discussions

Lochrie, Mark and Coulton, Paul (2012) Creating a playful experience to encourage participation in the meta-narrative of conference discussions. In: MindTrek '12 Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference :. ACM, FIN, pp. 263-266. ISBN 9781450316378

Abstract

In the last decade we have witnessed; the rise of social networks focussing on the grouping of friends to whom we broadcast short blasts of information. Furthermore, services like “friending”, “tagging”, “following” and “hashtags” have all impacted the way we make quick and convenient communications with one another. At conferences in particular, we are seeing a growing use of the social network service from Twitter, for networking and as part of the discussions around topics raised during the event. The only issue with this discussion is that they are often separated from the main conference activities and does nothing to alleviate problems associated within the formal nature of such events, often discouraging audience interaction. In this paper we aim to facilitate such engagement through the playful experience of an online social word game, ‘BuzzBird Bingo’, which focuses on the buzz surrounding events. BuzzBird seeks to gamify the back channel discussions, by encouraging participants to contribute and partake in the online meta-narrative.