IntroductionWhat is this? you might wonder. An event? Hosted in my city? Why would I spend tax money for something while I don’t know the smallest thing about design?Well, if you stick with me and read this small work, I promise you I will have your interest by the end. It won’t take that much of your time, or at least make every read word worth your while.

You see, what I’m going to explain to you, is how we eventually will all be a part of some form of design, and why it will be a very good and progressive idea to host this event in your city. Not only will it be useful for everybody who is in the design business, but also for those who are involved in society.That’s right. we all are involved. And if you want to know how some of the most intelligent and inventive people see all of us between now and the upcoming six years, you’d best read on my friend.

For the game of design has been changing the last few years, and it will only keep changing faster. We accidentally picked the ‘hard mode’ from the main menu, en we can’t change it anymore.

This event is ment for you. for me. and to take our distance so we can see everything more clear.

story and adventure

time

Reality is BrokenThere’s a book called ‘Reality is broken’, and it is written by Jane McGonical. Basically, the text is explaining to us why on earth computer games have become so popular;they are much more interesting than reality. Even more we learn about people who study the concept play,how we can learn and engage more by using games as a tool.This ‘gamification’ as it’s called, is something special.Why shouldn’t we make every boring thing possible much more open to stimulate the mind, learning capabilities and motivation of people.Imagine a meeting where you will not only be challenged to pay attention to the presentation cause it has a hidden code in it, but this will also be added to your experience points and overal statistics. An interactive world where people don’t call in sick anymore cause they just have too much fun going to work.You might think it’s quite impossible, but from a distance, it’s just the most logical counter reaction to bureaucracy.

This gamification has left it’s testing phase, and the interactivity is on a high, different level compared to the interactivity which came along with tablets and other more advanced screens.

If you want to delve deeper into the ways of real life games,commonly known as augmented reality, you can look up these examples on the internet:

- Chore Wars:Chore Wars is something derived from the basic tabletop and roleplaying gaming. You can get experience points, loot and gold for real life chores.

- Superbetter:Superbetter is basically the same as Chore Wars, but with given quests, depending on what kind of sickness or disability you are suffering from.

- Quest to Learn:Gamification implemented into a real elementary school. Students get quests and gain levels. They get challenged by games.

‘It's no wonder that truth

is stranger than fiction.

Fiction has to make sense.’

-Mark Twain

The full design packageSo where does this leave us? And our event? Well, with upcoming inventions such as the Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, there’s a good chance that design will get more and more digital and interactive as the technology evolves further. In the event that we are trying to set up here, we want to give visitors the full package. So maybe it should be more than one day. Maybe we should turn it into a two, maybe three days convention. What we would need is a location which has multiple rooms. The main room, where all the lectures and interesting people are. This will be a place with enough seats to house a lot of people, and also the place where the main focus of the event is being held. In the main room or the challenge room, depending how big the main room is, there is place for a competetion, and the visiting designers to show their vision on the future. With a small prize, such as a statue ‘Designer of 2020 in 2014’ or a small cash amount, I’m sure we could see many interesting views turned into some sort of exposition with stands. Also a good time for people to show themselves to a broad public.Talking about expositions, the exposition room should be a nice addition to what we are setting up here. In the exposition room we can collect and put out to see a number of objects and graphic works from the past, perhaps only linked to interactivity and gamification.

Furthermore, to finance this event it would very well be posible to ask some entrance fees, thanks to the high quality of the lectures and top design we give people. But we will come to that.

stagescreen screen

Main room

Challenge room

Exposition room

Speaking to youIntroducing the world’s best options to get on our event. Some of them are more known then others. I’ve tried to give as much information as possible without boring you. These people are just suggestions, nothing is obligated.

Name: Pranav Mistry Known for: TedTalk’s ‘Sixth Sense’ video. Very progressive interactivity. Link: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg

Name: Jane McGonical Known for: TedTalk, and author of the book ‘Reality is Broken’. One of leading researchers when it comes to gamification.

Name: Palmer Luckey Known for: Realising the Oculus Rift, THE upcoming VR device.

Name: Gabe Zichermann Known for: Gsummit, organising gamification events and also speaks himself. To make the market more c clear.

Name: Jesse Schell Known for: Walt Disney Imagineering, and a book: ‘The art of Game Design’

Name: Nicole Lazzaro Known for: Several books, a lot of years experience in research

Name: ZspaceKnown for: created the soft- and hardware called Zspace. A program with 3-D futuristic components.

Name: Massimo BanziKnown for: TedTalk, about the Arduino computerchip. He is co-founder of Arduino, the chip with endless possibilities

Name: Bastian SchaeferKnown for: Tedtalk, about 3D-printing

Name: Jonathan BlowKnown for: Indie game development.Solo realisation of the game Braid.

Name: http://www.thefuntheory.com/Known for: Volkswagen’s projects to make everyday stuff more fun andinteractive.

- And of course there are a lot more interesting spokesmen to be found. Also on a national level. This list is just full of suggestions that might work very well, and will attract a lot of people cause of the recognition these people have already acclaimed.-

Search and destroyStill feeling bored? The key to our event is to integrate the key elements of gamification and other subject that will be talked about into the promotion, streetsigns and the event itself. Besides normalsigns such as a broken monitor(destroying thelooking glass),I think we shouldfocus on whatis fun to do.Even better, we need to start thinking about what will be really rewarding.The pot of gold on the end of the rainbow must be some-thing cool. People are on their best when they are curious in-stead of bored. When everthing feels as if they are discovering some sick conspiracy, people will be very driven to put their current occupations aside to feel like they are part of some-thing bigger. So how do we remove screens, looking glasses,

how do we remove distance?

A few years ago, in 2009 to be exact, during a Nine Inch Nails tour concert, they had t-shirts printed which had a code on the back. The deciphered code would spell out: ‘I am trying to believe.’ If you would google this, you would come on a strange site about some pharmaceutical business. From there on you had to do some search on IP adresses, and so on. Eventually people had to be at diffe-rent payphones to receive calls with special information, or clues as you might call it, that would ultimately give what was a community by then, more stuff to carry on. Basicly they gave a search which had the potential to go viral all on it’s own.

It’s not very hard to create a buzz these days I reckon. If you even think the tiniest bit as a Banksy, and you put something reckognizable here and there, people will even-tually start to question what’s going on. It’s the opposite of the rather screamish printed commercials that are asking for your attention these days. The people, or players, need to feel as if they discovered your game, or our event, them-selves. Also you could try to create a Viral Video, some-thing that has been used the last few years quite a lot. Rich company’s buy commercials where a lot of attention and money is used. Simply to not attract too much attention at all. The best buzz is not screamed. It’s whispered.

A signatureevent

Financing

NumbersWhat budget do we need? I’ve tried to cover all costs.

- Room for the event: 7500 to 15000 euro’s a day

- Presentation from famous speakers: 3000 - 5000 each, +- 15x plus hotels, flights etc, average: 1000 - 2000 +-15x

- Catering --> It would actually be smart to see which compa-nies want to cater on such a huge event. You can ask money for them to take their spot.

- Promotion material (all included): 7500 for prints and small video, up to 20000 to let people build an actual cam-paign (see the other page why this could be useful)

All together you will need about 150.000 euro’s to make it good, and about 80.000-100.000 minimum. And these are still some small fees. A entree ticket to TedTalk costs visitors about 2.500 to 5000 euro’s.

TOO MUCH you say? Let’s take a look at the page opposite of this one.

Free eventgoing viral ‘In fact, one million views could bring in between 800 and 8,000 dollars for the person who uploads the video.’

It’s quite easy these days to get a viral video. And consi-dering the people that are coming to our event to present their ideas already have lots of attention, it would be wise to document everything and post them as single video’s on youtube. Considering they are already being viewed a lot, we could easily make 15 x 8.000 euro’s of it = 120.000. Not even including the possible viral video we could be planning to give our event some media attention. Besides that, if we think of one thousand, maybe two thousand visitors, we could charge at least 100 euro’s for tickets (which is cheap for these things considering who and what we offer!), bringing another 100.000 euro’s at least, broadening our budget or making profit.