Saving Slaghampton

I had not seen this particular game before, and it very cleverly took a  realistic social change context, together with a wide variety of tactics and tools for interaction and social engagement. Of particular value was the ability to add new tools, and needless to say the requirement to balance budgets of costs and resources was a strong source of focus. Special thanks need to go to Drew and David – here is David who is normally behind the camera:

I was intrigued by the set of coloured objects that Amy brought into the room.

Eventually all became clear – they were to be flags, as demonstrated by Drew:

The way that there was a “simple” worksheet on a flip chart, each of the four sections being worked through in sequence, was elegant and efficient.

Andy Gibson gave a great introduction to the report, and I liked the way he read aloud a key section of the document straight off the screen.

Saving Slaghampton at Reboot Britain

As Amy reports here, we launched the Social by Social handbook at Reboot Britain on Monday … and then brought the content to life with a run of the Social by Social Game.

Before we started games designer Drew Mackie – aided by handbook co-author Professor Clive Holtham – prepared a challenging scenario: the town of Slaghamptom, suffering from rising unemployment, declining industry, public services under pressure,  some social frictions, and a football team recently relegated. What could social technology offer?

Here Drew explains how enthusiastic players formed project teams (we gave them flags to gather round), developed proposals, and then used sets of cards for engagement, technology tools and funding to create a plan. There’s a more detailed explanation of the game here.

Our teams were incredibly creative and produced three projects:

The Carbon Neutral Project

The Community Cohesion Project

The Tourism Project

Afterwards I asked Jag Gill how useful he had found it. Jag works with local voluntary and charity groups in Sheffield, including through the BashMash collaboration days to promote grassroots digital engagement.

You can see the content of the handbook here. We aim to create a wiki version, and make links between the game and handbook content. That way you will be able to play the game for real – in a local community or organisation – develop and plan, and look to the handbook for advice on how to follow through.

During the game I asked Andy Gibson, our co-author, for a quick explanation of what the book is all about. Here’s Andy’s 30 second pitch.

Launching at Reboot Britain

Tomorrow we’ll be at Reboot Britain playing the Social by Social Game and launching our handbook. You’ll be able to see all the text, download it, and order print copies here**. We’re excited by  publication – not least because it is all Creative Commons licensed so you can remix and re-use.

The handbook is funded by NESTA, and we hope that it will contribute to their aim of helping a wider range of people understand the potential of using social technology for social benefit. In the video above, shot at last week’s Tuttle Club in St James’s Park, Roland Harwood of NESTA Connect explains what he is hoping for.

While at Tuttle I was also able to talk to Toby Moores, Joanna Jacobs and Steve Lawson about the way they are planning to help everyone at Reboot be a social reporter using Twitter, blogging and any other means to create a cloud of online conversations to complement the live streaming that will be provided by Richard Jolly. There should be more soon on that linked from the official site – but meanwhile keep up with everything Reboot through the Twitter tag #rebootbritain. Toby and friends are using techniques developed through Amplified09, so you can be sure there will be plenty going on, with some good analysis afterwards. The creative force behind the event is Steve Moore, who curated 2gether08 and morphed the 2gether09 plans into Reboot. The event is produced by our friends Jess Tyrell, Lizzie Ostrom and the team at  Germination.

** Handbook site will be live from about 1.30pm Monday July 6

Longer version of this post on Socialreporter.

.