Exergaming Health and Fitness Advocacy Group.
Brett (Taz) Young
of work has been happening in the background which I can finally make
clear to the the group.
I briefly spoke about the TEN advocacy group at the Games for Health
Forum in Melbourne on Dec 6th, so if you could bare with me, I'll
explain more about this group and our first initiative.
The advocacy group, called T.E.N. (The Exergame Network), is a
collaborative initiative to gather health and fitness professionals
and exergaming devotees together to deliver informed advice on
Exergaming to the general public. Most importantly, TEN is non-aligned
and not-for-profit. It is an open forum centred around an open Wiki
format and utilizing members from many associated social/business
media formats and applications. The participants in TEN come from a
diverse background ranging from researchers, clinicians,
practitioners, enterprise and commited individuals.
The initial results of this virtual collaboration is TEN's first
online media article, released early Saturday, the 19th of December
(EAST). Our goal, over the last 2 months, was to identfy a need, the
solution and work from concept through to a pre-xmas release schedule.
The article was created to be a 'perfect fit' for online release and
to leveraged through all social media and specific news media
applications and delivery services. This was to be achieved with next
to nil expenditure and cost outlay. Our hope is the article will 'go
viral' which will be determined over the next week or so until the New
Year.
Our first iniative was to create a list of 5 Exergaming methods that
would best appeal to the broader public and be an accessible fitness/
health alternative for people during the profoundly overly indulgent
and sedantary festive period. We specifically chose methods which
promoted socialisation, fun and encouraged active rather than
sedantary gaming. Our parallel goal, was to highlight the large array
of exergaming methods available outside of the 'default' option of the
Nintendo Wii.
It has been a thrilling and exciting project which I believe sets a
precedent for online collaboration. Many of the participants are time
poor, but our varying collaborative tools allowed everyone to
contribute in a way that best suited their schedules and expertise. If
anyone is interested in what applications we used in our online
collaborative 'toolbox' please feel free to pop me an email and I'll
gladly share this information with you. A key point along this process
was to utilize the best and most accessible, free, open-source or open
format virtual collaborative tools, some of these resources: Google
Wave, Google Docs, 37 Signals Basecamp Project Tool (free version),
PBworks (Wiki), Prezi (Beta) interactive presentation app etc etc.
Please view the release article at our Wiki:
http://exergaming.pbworks.com/THE-EXERGAME-NETWORK-%28TEN%29-PAGE and
for a blog example check: http://exergamingaustralia.com/ (amongst the
many blogs to have already released the article). You are encouraged
to make comment, and contribute to the wiki in any way you see fit. We
would also encourage you to retweet, reblog any and all content from
the wiki you believe is pertinent.
TEN is totally commited to delivering 'workable' real world exergaming
solutions to the general population during and beyond 2010. We are
most concerned with application, implementation and methodology rather
than 'specific' exergaming examples, but of course, we HAVE to be
specific to make the public aware of the choices available to them.
Our examples in the initial media release were chosen to represent the
variety of exergames available with further media releases being more
'critical' as we introduce a Exergaming Experience and Rating System
(EERS) in 2010 - http://exergaming.pbworks.com/Exergame-Rating-System.
The research for energy expenditure is out there and continues to
grow, along with the plethora of studies in virtual and exergaming
health and fitness applications. TEN's role is to disseminate direct
and indirect research and 'working examples' and make the public aware
of best practice Exergaming methods as they currently exist. We rely
heavily on the substantial expertise of the TEN contributors to make
the best decisions possible with the available data.
There are simply too many people who have contributed in one way or
another to this initiative and continue to do so, but many of these
people will be known to subscribers of this google group, including
clinicians and researchers such as Belinda Lange, Sheryl Flynn,
Stephen Yang, Ernie Medina, Alasdair Thin, Ole Petter Hoie and many
others.
As I mentioned at the outset, this is a not-for-profit and non-aligned
advocacy. We are passionate about delivering the best information and
advice we can in the time we've allocated to complete the project and
to do so with as little 'political' contamination as possible.
My apologies again for the length of the message. If you've reached
this point then I thank you on behalf of TEN and trust that you find
merit in this advocacy group. You are most certainly welcome to
contribute in any which way time and resources allow you as we plan
many more initiatives for 2010. Exciting times ahead :)
Merry xmas everyone and all the best for the New Year.