Anyone who has an account on Facebook knows about the games: FarmVille, Farm Town, Cafe World, MafiaWars, FishVille, YoVille, and so on. The opinions about the games are quite polarized, ranging from “I hate those stupid announcements. Ban the games.” to “I love those stupid announcements cause I get free prizes”. Of course, all interaction is virtual, all prizes are virtual. The only thing not virtual is the money some people spend to feed their ever-growing habit. Zynga capitalizes on a very basic fact. People really like to give and receive gifts. And just as someone buys a ticket at the fair to throw balls at rigged bowling pins in order to win a stuffed toy that falls apart in a few months, people buy food, land, animals, equipment, and guns that are all virtual.
I started playing games with my sisters so I could have contact with them on an almost daily basis. When they sends me gifts and notes I know they are ok for that day. A funny thing happened. Through gaming I discovered cousins that I hadn’t seen or spoken with for over 20 years. I discovered cousins that I didn’t know I had. And I really like that. Social Media at its best. Then I found old friends on the same games. It recreates the gaming atmosphere of my teens when we would sit for hours playing whist and bridge. “It’s ok not to have a lot to say. Let’s play.”
Many management courses that I’ve participated in use the game model to get the point across. Whether it is trust, conflict management, accountability, there is a game to play. Granted, these were usually done offsite, all employees of a particular group or division, similar ranking within the company. I don’t know if offsite training happens as regularly as it used to. I suspect not. It is too costly. Training now takes place online.
eLearning and its counterpart, mLearning (mobile), open up training avenues that are cost effective, easy to manage, and easy to coordinate. The individual takes a course online, tests online, and has his/her scores stored online. Management gets instant, unbiased feedback, and instant progression scores. Great. Except the community aspect of training is gone. Synergy is gone.
My question to research this year is how can we take the goodness of gaming (look at Second Life as a prime candidate) and the goodness of offsite training, mash it all together and come out with effective eLearning and mLearning systems? Is there a way to create a learning environment that lives and learns as the employee “goes up in levels”? And is there a way to instill boundaries in those games so that gaming does not become the primary focus of the employee?



Unlimited hosting is a great boon. I said, why not host the groups on the French Creek Press site? A writer’s club can make matches between authors and provide a forum for this kind of collaboration. Each group forms around a story, book, theme, whatever the group decides. The groups sets the schedule and out comes a product at the other end. French Creek Press then steps in and creates a free eBook, free for download. Writers maintain their “byline” so to speak and are acknowledged in the front of the book. Instant publishing.
Spending time with an agent to sell the idea before the book is written may clarify whether or not the book should be written in the first place. After all, the market may already be saturated with books about how to cook frogs and other potential road kill. The time spent marketing the idea is well spent if the author discovers that and avoids one more of such books. Then again, the author might find a publisher that is interested enough and encouraging enough to start the author writing.

I usually work with web-based applications like http://www.showdocument.comI use it for sharing my designs and documents with partners and clients,but ...