№ 10 | Collaboration, the Futures Bazaar, Ladders of Participation, Level Design, and… a POEM?!
Demystifying collaboration…
Collaboration is such a Rich and nuanced topic. I love posts like this one “Demystifying collaboration (pt 1): Decisions” that explore “emerging and evolving reflections on better ways of working together.” Lots of good conversation starters in this short post: Collective vs collaborative. Decision making vs problem-solving. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series…
Host a futures bazaar?
I recall reading about “The Futures Bazaar” when I was researching the ‘Four Futures’ method, a few years ago. Fast forward: Stuart Candy is offering the Futures Bazaar as a free downloadable toolkit so anyone can now host a Futures Bazaar. What is it? It's “an event designed for creative teams, communities and classes everywhere to explore alternative futures collaboratively and playfully together.”
And, because we're all about critical thinking, here's a dissenting voice to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions baked into this activity.
Ladders—or petals?—of participation
I love a good curation article—it's the precursor work to synthesis, analysis, and the evolution of interesting ideas. This time, it’s a really long roundup of various 'ladder of participation' models, essentially “moving from consultation to co-design and ideally devolving power to citizens.” But it gets better: The twitter thread where I came across this article adds an interesting level of discourse about ladders of participation, with some critique of the ladder framing, suggesting instead something more like flower petals.
“Growth, Monetization, or Engagement?”
Gibson Biddle asks people in the audience, “If you were on the executive team of Netflix, how would you prioritize [these] three goals?” Uh, wow. I think this simple classification explains a LOT about how most businesses operate. I might even map these three priorities to the evolutionary stages common to most organizations. [source]
Learning level design via twitter
Last week, I discovered Tommy Norberg (@the_Norberg) via Pinterest, of all places. He teaches—and freely shares—some really great nuggets of wisdom about game level design, all in succinct visual cards, like this one:
Here's a few more such tips/threads:
- Occluders!
- Rearranging objects to create different feelings
- How Gestalt Principles can more directly be applied to level design and World Building
- Player Paths
AND THIS WEEK, A RARE 'EXTRA' FIND…
[POETRY] “Letter to Bruce Wayne” by Matthew Olzmann
Every now and then, a poem just hits me between the eyes, and leaves me pouring again and again over the words. Here's one such poem: “Letter to Bruce Wayne”
