One of my favorite discussions at UnGeeked Elite in Chicago was by Tom Tentoglou about Gamification, or adding game mechanics into business in order to increase engagement and participation. Gamification isn’t about building games (necessarily), it’s about using aspects of games that people find enticing. It’s not really news that people are motivated by achieving things (just look at high-powered stock brokers). But these motivations can be added to just about anything to increase participation or encourage people to do things you’d like them to do. [Read more…] about Using Game Mechanics to Increase Engagement & Participation
What Makes #ungeeked So Special
You could say it’s the speaker lineup and that they lead discussions instead of giving presentations. You could say it was the variety and depth of topics — or that the price for a 3 day conference was very reasonable. You could even say it was the quality of attendees and the small room so you met them all. Ungeeked Elite in Chicago was all of these things and they certainly made it one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended. But what really made the difference (to me) is how everyone (conference organizers, speakers, attendees, and even previous attendees and attendees from other ungeeked events) formed a open, friendly, and helpful community. [Read more…] about What Makes #ungeeked So Special
Digging in the Cache – Hamster Dance
Digging in the Cache is a series where we go back in time to look at fun tidbits of Internet and computer history. One of the first Internet memes was The Hamster Dance, which was just a website with a bunch of animated pictures of hamsters and a clip of sped up music. It was one of the first websites whose popularity spread by word of mouth, and had no real value other than being silly (and having an annoyingly catchy tune!). [Read more…] about Digging in the Cache – Hamster Dance