Encouraging Exploration
Lauren had an idea the other evening.
Following the rush of activity that was the TLT Symposium this year, we met up for a drink with other equally exhausted-but-happy coworkers. She ran this idea past me as she handed me a vodka tonic (always the best way to ply me) and I loved what I heard. Basically, the concept was to share inspiring content – the sort of thing we each naturally gravitate towards while browsing between tasks – in a way that also connected the physical space we all work in to the online world.
What we came up with Snewokolis. The site (a WordPress-based installation) is the home of what we termed the Snewoks, creatures of pure inspiration, creativity and curiosity who will curate the content. Each posting or “Wok” highlights something that the human behind the avatar has deemed worth sharing.
Where this gets fun is in the sharing, though. The posts will be tied to QR codes and one of each code will be printed out and hidden somewhere in the ETS areas of Rider Building. The preference is for the code to be stashed somewhere that either adds meaning to the media artifact it links to or vice versa.
An example of how this could work is found in my avatar’s first posting. My Snewok, Trill posted a music video that explores the concept of the creatures of inspiration that live in each of us (an apropos first posting, to be sure). I stashed it around the side of an information kiosk that displays the latest news about projects in our unit and from other departments and institutions. A bit of a play on the creativity coming from within to be put on display and also a link to the video nature of the object to be found.
We wanted to make it really easy to take part in this activity, too so we took active steps to ease the migration to the Snewok’s home. Lauren put together a default avatar, Fedault as well as a PSD file with other options for his appearance, should anyone want to customize him. We also opted to do basic QR codes on nothing more than regular office paper held up with tape because we want to make it simple to quickly share posts and to ensure that they are a non-permanent, ever-changing part of the office. We also assembled a Migrate page of the Snewokolis site to get everyone up to speed quickly.
Lauren’s hope and my own is for this to grow legs really quickly and to be adopted by others in the building. The more unique viewpoints that can shape the course this art project/game takes, the better as I’m sure there are lots of directions Snewokolis could be taken that we hadn’t even the remotest inkling of.
