Web Directions

Shall we click bracelets?

• In: Blog
• By:Maxine
• March 19, 2008
• Leave a response

OK, off the cuff I’m trou­bled by all the ref­er­ences to girls and fairies in this inter­view with Chris Heatherly, Disney’s VP of Technology and Innovation, but there is men­tion of an inno­v­a­tive solu­tion to a real prob­lem. That prob­lem being risks to per­sonal secu­rity of chil­dren brought about by the con­nec­tions they make in vir­tual worlds.

My recent favorite inno­va­tion is a new tech­nol­ogy called Clickables that we are launch­ing in con­nec­tion to our new Disney Fairies vir­tual world. It’s a way for kids to take their online world expe­ri­ence into the real world. The core of it is a mag­i­cal bracelet. By sim­ply click­ing their bracelets together, girls become friends in the online environment.

(and what do boys get to do? bump span­ners or some­thing? but I digress … )

I’m think­ing about how this kind of idea can trans­fer to the adult world, specif­i­cally the world of adults at a cer­tain web devel­op­ment con­fer­ence. Obviously, we’re not going to make you all wear bracelets, (my pref­er­ence would actu­ally be for col­lars any­way:). That would be crazy in a time when we all carry around a col­lar dis­guised as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions device. Every year I’ve tossed around ideas for using mobiles to help peo­ple cement con­nec­tions they make at Web Directions, but never really come up with an idea engag­ing enough to imple­ment. Maybe this will be the year we make it happen.

6 responses to “Shall we click bracelets?”:

1. • By:Jachin Sheehy
   • March 19th, 2008
   

   It seems to me that peo­ple have been doing this with busi­ness cards for years … but that doesn’t always work at conferences.

   Perhaps you could extend the Mikon sticker idea for the next Web Directions con­fer­ence as follows:

   In addi­tion to your name tag and the Mikons to describe your­self, each attendee is given 2 sheets of small stick­ers that have a very short, unique hash code that rep­re­sents that attendee and is reg­is­tered against their MeetWeaver login.

   When you want some­one to remem­ber you, you give them one of your stick­ers … and ask for one of theirs. Stick that on the back of your name tag and pop it into MeetWeaver when next you’re online and that cre­ates the con­nec­tion. From MeetWeaver you can get their blog, Facebook pro­file, FriendFeed, etc

   If you wanted a pro­fes­sional con­nec­tion, you could stick your sticker on the back of your busi­ness card and hand that over: busi­ness card bud­dies and MeetWeaver friends!

   Sound fea­si­ble?

2. • By:john
   • March 19th, 2008
   

   Nice thoughts Jachin.

   I’m a big fan of sema­codes these days — not so much for any spe­cific pur­pose, but for their potential.

   http://​sema​code​.com/

   Perhaps a sema­code mikon of your email, blog, or other address you wish folks to have.

   That way, those with cer­tain phones can sim­ply grab your details from your badge!

   And in def­er­ence to max­ine, they’d be explod­ing badges!

   OK, must be silly time now, but excel­lent thoughts.

   john

3. • By:Ben Buchanan
   • March 21st, 2008
   

   I’ve found that the prob­lem I usu­ally have later is remem­ber who was who. You end up with a fist­full of cards and can’t always con­nect names/​cards with faces.

   I like Thomas Vander Wal’s solu­tion: get a photo of the per­son hold­ing up their card :)

   The unique ID thing would work so long as every­one added a (non-​​stylised) photo of them­selves. Which not every­one would be will­ing to do.

4. • By:oliverw
   • March 21st, 2008
   

   John,
   QR Codes are a good idea, as long as there is infor­ma­tion pro­vided to atten­dees on how to down­load the appli­ca­tion (if their phone sup­ports it) and some­one to code the infor­ma­tion to cre­ate the codes on the badges.

   More about QR Codes:
   http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​Q​R​_​C​ode

   I’m friends with Anthony at http://​www​.qmcodes​.com/ and am happy to ask for assis­tance if we need it.

   cheers,
   oli

5. • By:Bracelet
   • August 3rd, 2010
   

   I am very pleased with the thought and don’t feel like adding
   any­thing in it. It a per­fect answer.
   _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

   Bracelet

   Bracelet

6. • By:Bracelet
   • August 3rd, 2010
   

   I am very pleased with the thought and don’t feel like adding
   any­thing in it. It a per­fect answer.
   _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Your opinion: