Gaming The Future Of Conventions

Penguicon's Gaming Guest of Honor Jane McGonigal does a lot of work with museums, among other things. I recommend you read this NPR story about it which aired on All Things Considered on January 15. Here are the slides from her talk "Gaming the Future of Museums". Needless to say, when I hear her talk about

1 Satisfying work to do
2 The experience of being good at something
3 Time spent with people we like
4 The chance to be part of something bigger

I immediately think of science fiction conventions. When she mentions all the pent-up knowledge waiting to be unleashed, I think specifically of Penguicon.

I would love a storyline-based scavenger hunt, where what you are scavenger hunting are ways to get the most out of the weekend. I want to encourage attendees to get outside their comfort zone and explore the new fandoms, new knowledge, new friends, and new experiences that come together at Penguicon. The trick would be to define a set of challenges

1 of widely-varying difficulties.
2 using completely different styles:
A social
B physical
C technological
D creative
E culinary

... with ribbons for the completion of challenges. The number of badge ribbons earned by all players as a whole would determine the end of the storyline. Let's say for instance the storyline could be about Orvan the Ox, Starfleet Tux, Beastie the BSD Demon, TRON, Jer_ in a Cthulhu costume, Lojban, Steampunks, liquid nitrogen, and tesla coils. How hard would it be to come up with a quest storyline about that? I'm just thinking out loud here.

Also among our assets: a bubble machine, remote control helicopter, dry-erase boards and markers, sandwich signs with just grids drawn on them, a Hoberman Sphere, two crowns, and costumes for the complete cast of Monty Python and the Holy Grail including detachable velcro limbs.

The Difference Between Learning And Training

Forgetting frustrates me. I've forgotten more knowledge in my life than peasants in the Dark Ages ever learned. The point of taking a class is not about what I learn. It's about what I won't forget. Then I can move forward on programming projects with confidence that I don't have to waste a bunch of time catching up on what the keywords and punctuation mean. I refuse to cram for exams and just lose it all. I have to practice, practice, practice-- then I need to keep doing a regimen of projects to keep in the habit.

At an informational level, I've understood true-false logic, strings, variables, constants, conditionals, loops, iteration, and recursion for twenty years. But it was learning, not training. I can self-teach, but my life was too busy for self-training. There is a certain hump I must surmount.

I owe my desktop publishing proficiency to taking classes, with a set of practice exercises on deadlines. Now I can pick up a new program and not even think about it. I just get in the Zone. That is the hump I need to get over with programming, which is why I am taking a class.

blue_duck and ssanfratello will understand the concept of training, right down at the muscle memory level. It's not just what you learn about stances, balance, breathing, keeping your options open like water, when to commit to swinging the sword, and absorbing the universe juice. It's about what your body does from practice, just WHAM. If you have to stop and access the knowledge, you have been stabbed. With a sword.

That's what I'm interested in. When it comes to my daily Lojban regimen, it needs to be engraved in the brain at the level of instant linguistic connection between word and meaning. I know the vocabulary of Lojban, but most of it I still have to translate from English, which should not happen. Translation wastes valuable milliseconds, too long for comfortable speech. Fortunately I do not get hit with padded sticks when this happens.

When I program Karda, it will be for language training, not just language learning. Spaced repetition algorithms do training. I'm interested in software for self-training in various skills. As Napoleon Dynamite said, "You know, like nunchuku skills ... bow hunting skills ... computer hacking skills." The idea will be for the software to remind you to practice the skill again, get feedback on the result, and modify the interval for when it will remind you to do it again.

Seeking Silence

I have agreed to record a podcast for a highly-reputable audio fiction magazine. When I went to record it, I turned off the computer fans and other noise sources in the apartment, and realized my environment has more sound than I normally notice. There is rap next door, cars honk in the streets, and dogs bark in the adjacent apartments.

I just got back from WCC, where all the group study rooms in the library were occupied. The music department does not have any soundproof rooms for musicians to practice.

Can anyone suggest or offer someplace less than half an hour from Ypsilanti, with electricity and ten minutes of silence?