How Webstock Bingo came to be

By Joanna | Published: February 17, 2010

One of the highlights of the sideshows at Webstock last year was playing the Webstock Card Game – collecting trading cards and trying to get the highest score. Game-playing was a big aspect of 2009, as Hadyn Green wrote in his Public address post:

Bruce Sterling’s “Web 2.0 guys: they’ve got their laptops with whimsical stickers, the tattoos, the startup T-shirts, the brainy-glasses — you can tell them from the general population at a glance” caused us to start a game where we had to find that exact person.

It was me who won that challenge, pulling Darren Wood out of the crowd, which meant I got to set the next challenge. We hunted through the afterparty looking for content creators, foreigners and public servants and the like. We got to meet new people and start new conversations and it was a lot of fun.

Conversations on Twitter lately centered on what kind of games we could play this year that would enhance our Webstock experience. I think that so much of the value of the conference lies in the people you meet, both in terms of new friends to make and also new business contacts, so I figured that meeting as many people as possible should be part of the game. Collecting business cards would be one way, but what if we could use Twitter to keep track of what was going on? So I tweeted this, in hopes of some crowd-sourced help:

“We need random bingo sheet generator with twitter icons to cross off when you meet that person @ #webstock. Who can make this happen please?”

Walter replied back, and I showed him the game of Hipster Bingo that I was using as inspiration. We decided to use twitter profiles instead of hipster stereotypes, and he got busy building.

Because we were doing a lot of our planning over Twitter, we’d already started using a hashtag #webstockbingo to keep our thoughts together. We decided that people should opt into the game, so we asked them to tweet yes and include the hashtag so we could keep track of who wanted to play. Using our accounts and also the Wellingtonista twitter account, we soon found over 50 people who wanted to play, even though they didn’t know quite what to expect.

Testing the autotweets from the game, we saw some negative feedback from people who weren’t playing, who didn’t want #webstockbingo cluttering up their timelines. Although some people use twitter clients that can block particular hash tags, I realised that the easiest way to keep people happy would be to set up a new twitter account so that only people who were following @wsbingo would see game updates, and then only ones from people they were already following. Having a specific webstock bingo twitter account also makes it easier to do official announcements and follow people who are playing the game who I wouldn’t personally follow.

Now the challenge was to explain the game to everyone. 140 characters wasn’t really enough space, so we wrote out some rules, and then added an FAQ. Hopefully it all makes sense to people. Walter’s done a lot of tweaking behind the scenes, and I’ve been talking the game up everywhere, including making sure it’s included in the other Webstock Game.We’re launching it this afternoon before the Official Wellingtonista (unofficial) Webstock Warm-Up that I’ve organised, so hopefully tonight and tomorrow and Friday all our participants will have even more incentive to meet new people and have a great time. So, if you get me on your board, come say hi, buy me a drink for extra points, and let’s chat. Awesome.

Posted in Events, social media | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

My predictions for 2010

By Joanna | Published: February 4, 2010

Last week I was honoured to be asked to join the group of bloggers making predictions at the annual Bloggers Predict event held by UPNZ. They asked me to make predictions in the following areas:

  • Gadgets & Games
  • The Internet, Web 3.0…
  • Business & Technology
  • Wellington/NZ/the Universe (open slather)

If you check out the results of the twitter-poll done on the night it will appear that I won, but I think people voted for me after the fact, because in fact the wonderful Brenda was the winner of the tiara for the second year in a row. I had a blast though, and thoroughly enjoyed alienating myself from the room by telling them that they did not represent the population as a whole. If you’d like to see my predictions for 2010, you can view my slides on Slideshare (although I talk a lot more than I use words on the screen, which is as it should be), or watch the video of the event below:

So, do you reckon I’m right or wrong? What do you think will happen this year? And will I ever learn to present without fidgeting?

Posted in Events, Presentations, social media | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tips for not being a dick on twitter

By Joanna | Published: September 9, 2009

I’m currently coming up with some social media type advice for Community Central and since I just got to the twitter bit, I thought I’d share my bright ideas with you all. Because heaven knows there aren’t nearly enough people telling other people how to twitter, after all…

How not to be a dick on twitter

  1. Build up your posts before you start seeking an audience. People want to see what sort of things to expect if they start following you.
  2. Identify key stakeholder groups and start following them first. Try interacting with them by @ing them first. Don’t randomly follow everyone you can think of unless you’re actually at least vaguely interested in what they have to say, otherwise a) you’ll come across all spammy, and b) you’ll never have time to keep up.
  3. Try not to use your twitter as an RSS feed. If you think that your followers don’t use your RSS, (and you’ve already quoted my GOVIS presentation comparing RSS to a dog fetching the newspaper from your letter box for you, and have already pointed them to the great Common Craft video explaining RSS) try to add a little value to your post so people know what they’re getting into. As an example:
    • Bad: “http://joannamcleod.com/new”
    • Less bad: “A new blog post http://joannamcleod.com/new”
    • Better: “I express my thoughts on people sucking at twitter http://joannamcleod.com/new”
    • Best: “What do you reckon are the worst twitter crimes? My thoughts http://joannamcleod.com/new”
  4. Don’t start using Twitter unless you’re prepared to spend the time responding to people who respond to you. You don’t have to automatically follow everyone who follows you, but you do need to make sure you’re paying attention to things people say about you on there, and respond accordingly.
  5. Twitter is not the be all and end all of all channels. It reaches a specific group who use it a specific way. It isn’t a catch all for society. You need more ways of building your audience and getting your message across that you can use in addition to Twitter.
Posted in How to, social media | 1 Comment

  • joannatmcleod on twitter