This is a brief personal reflection on igfest, the three day games festival which took place in Central Bristol from 19th to 21st September.

I was a voluntary member on the organising team, mentored some of the games, ran a game on the day, and generally helped out. I was immediately drawn to igfest as it combined festivals, games and things that anyone can do for free, and take home with them and play there too.

We will see a lot of ‘Game’ theory entering into the facilitator’s toolkit as well, so I wanted to get some hands on experience of all this stuff.

Also, I have been very impressed by Simon and Simon (the organisers along with Clare Reddington, Duncan Speakman and Helen Stephens) who have been running iglab since they met at the Media Sandbox launch event; the event was designed for people to meet eachother in a collaborative context so I feel broody when I see them together.

Iglab has been gradually building a community around games in Bristol all this year, so igfest is a fantastic example of what you can achieve if you nurture your community carefully and keenly.

This is not an all round review of all the games as I didn’t see or play many of them as I was working the gig. Like I say, a personal reflection, with a scarey picture at the end of the deranged and hilarious Welshmen who I shared a police station with during ‘Journey to the night’.

(Rainbow rain being played)

My favourite game was Holla Lu Lu. It’s easy, simple, quick, engaging, funny, age-less, and encourages everyone to enjoy their immediate environment while making funny noises. It’s very easy to facilitate and everyone enjoyed it.

I was very sorry to miss Bad Taste Party. This sounded brilliant and made everyone think about how very badly us Brits are dressed. I approached someone and asked if they were playing it, as I thought they might have got lost. They weren’t, I was mortified. Good game.

(Mercury began with an arm wrestle)

I was also a big fan of Mercury. As well as having Tom and Mike staying with me, and mentoring the game, I fully bought into Tom’s logic about how team sports have become focused solely on one movement with one goal (to win), hence breeding a bunch of people who can do only one thing. So when Mercury opened with an arm wrestle, moved through chicken noises, into backward football, past a haiku writing session and out with handball played with a huge silver exercise ball, I was hooked.

It was a shame to miss Harp Beat, I heard great things about it from 4 year olds and 40 year olds alike.

Congestion Zone made everyone very happy – essentially a series of mazes, some simple rules and a bunch of noise-making objects…

(Players piece the clue together in Holla Lu Lu)

I was very sorry to miss Sneaks and Blaggers. I hadn’t realised that it would book out so quickly, and it’s not really a viewing game, so I gave it a miss and had some pizza with the moose instead.

The Moose hunt game was brilliant – some technical issues with the mobile carrier aside, it got people outdoors, blending virtual with physical worlds.

(Simon Katan briefs the Congestion Zone players)

Rainbow rain looked hilarious. A barely concealed paint fight; brilliant spectator sport!

And Binocular football – currently doing the festival rounds at the moment – delayed due to traffic, but played later on Cathedral Green – another superb spectator sport with some brilliant comedy commentary.

I was sorry to miss Journey to the middle of the night. It sounded great. But I was acting in it.

As a delirious policeman in front of the old police station in Bridewell, waving my hoover extension around, ranting at the punters before letting them in to be ferried down to the cells by sergeants sledge and hammer (thanks to Joe and Lucy for gamely volunteering at the last minute) to be greeted by Jo and Simon the deranged prisoners to give them a clue to help them on their journey.

(Joe and Lucy as Sergeants Sledge and Hammer)

Given all the happiness around, and the superb location of a proper police station at nightime with real cells down a scarey corridor, and everyone being over 18 and all, we decided to go *dark* on everyone, and there was much shouting and screaming and banging of doors, honking of the bicycle horn, and so forth…

If anyone felt it was over the top, we’re kind of sorry and kind of not. We thought it was worth pushing the boat out for that special touch!

(Simon and Jo, the deranged prisoners)

All in all, a fantastic weekend, brilliantly organised, excellently and generously executed, great people and lots of games to enjoy and take home and play again.

One of the participants said that she couldn’t see why schools couldn’t run a lot of the games we ran as they needed no paid for equipment, instantly engaged children, encouraged them to imagine, collaborate and share their experiences while framing ‘competition’ in a less aggressive manner than ‘traditional’ sports… Well said!

Well done all!

• Igfest website
• igfest flickr group
• iglab website
• PM Studio website
• Moose hunt website
• Simon games

Over the last few months, we’ve seen superb bottom up and/or inclusive activities including Bathcamp, igfest, Bristol Festival, street parties, anarchist bookfairs, art trails, free wifi sessions, skillswaps etc. All run on an open basis, by local types for anyone to get involved in loads of ways.

Don’t fear, all, lusting after product doesn’t have to be included in all our leisure activities!

(image from thebristoldo website)

The Bristol do deserves a good visit. It’s a great sounding two dayer around Circomedia and Portland Square, with games, performance pieces, high wire trapeze stuff etc. It’s free.

Ignore the shopping monster leering over your shoulder, urging you to reach for the credit card, go and hang around in Portland Square instead.

And if you need more bottom up mayhem, go to Artspace Lifespace‘s deranged fundraising party ‘Carny Ville’ in the old police station, Bridewell,Friday night. I have been reliably informed by Joe (known to me as Sergeant Sledge from ‘Journey to the night’ in igfest) that it’s going to be brilliant, and having seen him acting and had a tour round the old police station last week, I believe it, and couldn’t approve of raising funds for artspace lifespace any more than I do already.

Good work all! Don’t shop, share!

We are both very excited about bringing it to 2gether08 and hosting it throughout the two days. I love it because it’s an honest and fun knowledge focused facilitation technique with a heart of gold. Dan loves it because it’s part of his phd research into pervasive media and technology, and one day, sock puppets will be involved.

Here is a picture from when we designed LTS in The Duke of York, Bristol, February 2008

We first experimented with Live Tag Surfing at a gathering of Bristol’s Grumpy Man collective in 2007. Our aim was to explore how to existentially invert tag clouds and bring them back into the physical world; while they are debatably useful online, we felt that they could be more powerful physically as a group intervention method.

The core aim is to give event attendees an open platform to express their ambient knowledge and enquiry as a group, thus surfacing relevant group memes, turning them into useful conversations focused on people deepening their understanding of a topic of their own choice.

Simply – it’s a way to help people find others who are interested in similar things and assist them to talk about them. Facilitation-y – it’s a meeting between mindmapping, knowledge networking, open space and knowledge cafes.

Workbook scan: words and pictures at the high level

We are also interested in flattening the power laws relating to personalities. While social networking is a very liberating opportunity for people to relate to eachother on their own terms, we have observed that some personality types use it more ‘effectively’ than others, and this can skew practice and dicussions in those directions. Shy people need support at big social events.

Some of us are great networkers, some of us aren’t, and many conversations revolve around magnetic personalities rather than ideas. Live Tag Surfing will help conversations revolve around ideas and knowledge; help attendees find others who want to discuss similar topics.

When people come out of event sessions, there will be stuff in their heads that they want to share with others, connect over, deepen their understanding of, turn into actions and more.

Workbook scan: memes radiating from speeches

Live Tag Surfing provides an open platform to facilitate this desire by hosting a huge ‘tag wall’ at the event on which anyone can add one of their (limited number of) tags. By adding a tag, you are saying ‘I want to talk about this – does anyone else?’.

Gradually as the event progresses, more tags will appear. Patterns will emerge; bubbles will begin to surface. The tag wall doubles as a dynamic mindmap of the event, enabling anyone (at the event or not) to gain a high level map of what attendees are thinking about.

The wall will be nurtured and navigated by Dan and I with the noble support of some special invited guests in order to help make sense of it all.

Workbook scan: physical layout

As the patterns emerge in the tags, and the bubbles begin to rise, so the topical conversations can begin – the wall is now a springboard to help attendees self-organise their own breakout conversations based on the patterns in the tags. Attendees will be given bamboo poles with labels on them and let loose to take those ideas forward in any way they chose.

Conversations can bubble up serendipitously, and there will be specific ‘bubble bursting’ moments when we facilitate the breakouts.

Then what? Ah well, that would be telling… the rest is the future…

I am now ‘curating’ Bristol’s Gurteen Knowledge Cafes. Erica Hurley has agreed to co-curate with me which is cool.

This is good news as I:

• think that the regional k-cafes are well worth keeping alive as they have some great people involved and some great conversations
• enjoy the format: have participated in many k-cafes, and include them in events I design where suitable
• have got a bit of a thing going for physical events at the moment – find myself enjoying designing and facilitating events and group interventions more and more
• want to draw some of my attention back to the ‘knowledge’ side of organisations

The next gathering will be on Thursday 26 June in Bristol. I am putting together an announcement mail list and event booking widget and will do another post when it’s all sorted. Until then, you can sign up to be on the list by subscribing on David’s website

It’s a voluntary role (with a lofty title of ‘Gurteen Knowledge Community regional director, Bristol – England’), and Debbie Lawley has been doing great stuff with it, but she has passed the mantle on, so I hope I can take it onboard with aplomb and keep the spirit going.

Good work all!