Episode 26 – Business Process Management and Immortality

Phaedra and Michael M, missing Michael R, have a very rare in person walk through memory lane conversation on how the Innov8 game was used to help explain Business Process Modeling, and how rapidly it was adopted buy universities all over the world.  Such repurposing first person shooter and then later real time strategy game engines in support of marketing and understanding BPM was highly successful in many ways.

Phaedra expanded on the subject by commenting that now, such process optimization games are being used to help expose the optimized new processes as a byproduct of gameplay, by how the game players actually play the game.  One of the best things about games is that they reduce the focus to the most important parts of the subject, removing all else.  This is a continuing thread, reminding us of the conversations had with Ian Bogost and Chris Hazard on earlier episodes.  Gameplay helps to optimize the process because of the focus on the most salient part of the game, and when there are real world elements incorporated, the game can make sense of the deluge of data because of the players who are playing.

For her saving throw, Phaedra shares that process optimization games are a hot topic — per Garnter & Forrester, 50% of organizations that are focusing on process optimization will be using games.  And for Michael’s saving throw, he muses on immortality and how the digital breadcrumbs that we leave everywhere could form the input to artificial intelligence agents which could consume all this information, and then provide insight as to how an individual may approach a problem or answer a question, long after that person is no more.

And with this, we’re taken right back to the start of the show with business process modeling as a strong method of capturing corporate memory.

additional links

 

Episode 25 – Social Reciprocity

As the the day are getting shorter, and our day jobs are getting busier, the Michael’s have a lot of fun talking about the latest tech news and how it ties back to playing games at work. Michael R even gushes a bit about the possibilities of Microsoft’s Surface RT, and how well they presented it to the market on Thursday. While there was no Oprah moment at the announcement, there were multiple people who walked away with one.

Links:
Windows RT Announcement
Apple’s iPad Kickstand
Data Visualization Widgets
Windows 8 is NOT Metro
Bean Traders
Awesome Coffee Visualization
LinkedIn Skills Profiles
Today’s Podcast on Storify
Michael’s iPad mini Review
Demon Costume

Episode 24 – Stop Zombie Mouth

The Michael’s talk about how you can leverage gaming technology to achieve zero-overhead in your business processes by leveraging good gaming design principles. How can you enable your customers, employees and partners to level up on your business processes? We tell you how! You too can become CPO (Chief Procurement Officer) by playing games. So sit back, grab a big cup of your favorite beverage and play with us!

Links:
Zero Overhead principle Healthcare
Raph Koster – Fundamentals of Game Design
Stop Zombie Mouth
Microsoft Clippy
What is Halloween
Zamfir for your diet
The Rock Doctors
Upcoming Tech Announcements
Google’s financial woes

Episode 23 – Mystic Transitions

We continue our discussion of the Freemium model, to talk about platform expansion and extracting customer value! (Welcome to business school). Trying to figure out the fine line between fun fermium and painful exploitation, as well as how can a business successfully transition from the pay model to the Freemium model. We talk about the musical instruments we want to play, thanks to Ian Hughes who brings us a review for RockSmith. Which get’s us to think about the transitions of musical styles and musical learning. So lean forward, grab your rhythm guitar, and jam with us at Games At Work dot Biz!

Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe and Eric Hodge at Rocktoberfest in Chapel Hill, NC.

Links –
A Real Educational Game that Rocks!
The Simpsons Tapped Out
Castle Walls from Styx

Nick Lowe
Dave Alvin
Yep Roc Records