Crosspost: Looking for Volunteers, Games and Game Developers

[Alnisa Allgood]

Hey Everyone-

Most of you know that I organize Madison Nonprofit Day. Last year, we had a basic scavenger hunt as part of the day. Participants located items from participating nonprofits, learn a little something about the nonprofits and got a prize at the end. This year, we'd like to make it better. I've been speaking with Caro Williams and David Gagnon, as well as the Games for Change folks and the idea of providing more of a narrative layer to the scavenger hunt. Possibly the introduction of QR codes, that provide 'museum like' added context to the scavenger hunt, feeding more information about participating nonprofits.

Caro said this:

An example of a non-linear narrative layer would be, say, that every non-profit group would have a "little known fact" about themselves, and those facts could be disguised into little exhibits that no-one expects. I'm trying to think of examples, hmmm--say that the logo of one non-profit is a frog. Then they could design a little terrarium with a frog in it, and a little message written on the floor of the terrarium in little stones that says the name of the non-profit. The goal of the game could be to find all little surprises and connect them to their non-profit. I'd call it the "Gleeful Surprise!" game. (This example is more about personalizing the non-profits for the players--who is going to forget that name after they discovered the hidden terrarium? You could always go more in the informing/educating direction, this was just a fast example.)

I like the idea or at least the idea of exploring the possibility of setting up something that combines real world tasks, with enhanced information and little challenges.  

David then mentioned that 18-20 April is ARIS's Global Game Jam! 2011 here in Madison, WI. They select projects to work on and build, so an app could be done for this by the 20 April. I can go to Global Game Jam!, but I can't be there the last day 20 April 2011 (I'm doing a workshop on Web Analytics with Google Analytics that evening, and use the day for attendance confirmations, presentation walk through, last minute research, etc.)

What I was hoping is to find at least 1, but hopefully 3 or more interested parties, so we could create a team to work on this project at ARIS.  The other option is we could work independently from the Global Game Jam! using either the ARIS software http://arisgames.org/global-game-jam-2011/ or the Google I/O SCVNGR http://www.scvngr.com/   I admit to not being familiar with either, so have no particular bias up front, and am willing to listen to arguments one way or the other.  I'm even open to other 'game' ideas for the day.

You can see more of the ideas that have been generated for Madison Nonprofit Day here: http://nonprofitday.posterous.com/  The gaming component is just one possibility. But I think it could be pretty cool.

Email madison.no...@gmail.com or reply here. You could also call 608.241.3616  if you want to talk about it.

Thanks

Alnisa

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Alnisa Allgood
Executive Director
Nonprofit Tech
t. 608.241.3616
e. aln...@nonprofit-tech.org