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In This Issue
Save! IG in NYC
IG at Work: Fighting Poverty
From the Blog
Amex Small Biz
Eat Your Own Dog Food
IG In Cyberspace
IG at Work: PMI Agilie COP
Meet the Team
Play a Game
Quick Links
Play a Game!
Join Our Mailing List
Save on IG Training in NYC
IG Book
Many of you have asked when we were bringing Innovation Games back to the East Coast. Well, ask no further. CEO and founder Luke Hohmann will be teaching a two-day Innovation Games course on Dec. 9-10 at the New York Seminar and Conference Center in Chelsea.

The class is interactive, case study-based, and promises to make you ready to put Innovation Games to work the moment you step back in the office. Luke will cover in-person & online games -- including our new iPad game Knowsy -- facilitation and presentation skills and much more.

Click here to register and save $200!
PMI Webinar
Join CEO Luke Hohmann at 9:00 AM Pacific on Nov. 30th for a webinar on "Prioritizing Project Portfolios with Innovation Games�". Register here.
IG at AccessU West
Nancy Frishberg is teaching several coures at Knowbility's West Coast Web accessibility institute, including "Innovation Games and other Design Games" on January 10, 2010. For more information and to register, click here.
Creativity Cruise

Join Eileen Doyle et. al. on Feb. 7-11, 2010 for a Creativity Cruise in the Caribbean.


Play4Agile Unconference

Several IG Trained facilitators and other influential members of the Agile community have joined forces to bring an unconference on agile games to R�ckersbach, Germany on February 18-21, 2011. For more information and to register, click here.

IG Training Comes to Chicago

Join Luke Hohmann & Lowell Lindstrom for a 2-day Innovation Games for Customer Understanding course in Chicago, IL, on Feb. 21-22, 2010. For more information and to register, click here.

IG Master Class for Consultants

Join Luke Hohmann  for a 2-day Innovation Games course designed especially for consultants. The March 17-18 class covers both in-person and online games, along with information on structuring engagements, marketing and selling the games and more. For more information and to register, click here.

IG Class Comes to Boston

Join Luke Hohmann  for a 2-day Innovation Games for Customer Understanding Course in Boston, MA, on April 12-13, 2010. This two-day interactive class covers both in-person and online games--including our new iPad game Knowsy--along with facilitation and presentation skills. For more information and to register, click here.

Agile Games 2011

Luke Hohmann is keynoting the 2nd annual Agile Games Conference, Agile Games 2011, in Boston on April 14.  For more information and to join their mailing list to stay informed, click here.

Bay Area IG Class

Join Luke Hohmann  for a 2-day Innovation Games for Customer Understanding Course in Mountain View, CA, on May 19-20, 2010. This two-day interactive class covers both in-person and online games--including our new iPad game Knowsy--along with facilitation and presentation skills. For more information and to register, click here.

Greetings!

Welcome to latest issue of Your Next Move!, our monthly newsletter covering the latest news, events and announcements from the Innovation Games� community.
IG at Work
Video: Fighting Poverty at PDMA 2010

In mid-October at PDMA 2010, we had the opportunity to participate in the Project to Fight Poverty, a partnership between Games for Democracy, PDMA International and Grameen America. The project's goals were simple, but lofty: to channel, via serious games, the best and brightest minds in the product industry on attacking worldwide poverty.
Grameen America at PDMA
Katherine Rosenberg, Director, Education & Evaluation, Grameen America


We put Innovation Games to work by getting exhibiting companies like Accept Software, Decision Analyst, Innovaro and Ideas to Go to play games in their booths, tackling such topics as how to improve funding, identifying and exploring the relationships entrepreneurs must make to create success, which projects would have the most lasting results worldwide, and more. The results were amazing and rich.

In this video from the conference, Robin Karol, CEO of PDMA, Katherine Rosenberg, Director, Education & Evaluation at Grameen America, and Luke Hohmann, CEO and Founder of The Innovation Games� Company, discuss the project's results and explore how playing serious game can solve business problems.

Click here to watch the video.
From the Blog
Maybe You're Not Serious Enough for Serious Games
Luke Hohmann
Luke photo 

I just lost a deal to play Innovation Games� with the customers of a medical device company at its Customer Advisory Board Meeting. Surprisingly, I'm not that upset. Sure, as a boot-strapped startup, we need every deal that we can get. But not every deal is good for us. The silver lining is that it has motivated me to write this post. I suggest that you read this post with caution, because it is likely to cause you to reflect deeply on what you think of your customers. You may find that you don't like who you see in the mirror. Fortunately, I'll give you some ideas on how to change that image.

The Deal Started Well ...
The potential engagement started when the product manager of this company contacted me to explore playing some games with her customers at an upcoming Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting that was to be held at a major industry conference. This is a GREAT way to get started with the games. Typical CABs are often not very interactive. Integrating Innovation Games� and other kinds of serious games bring these meetings to life. We've helped companies like Wyse and Aladdin Knowledge Systems produce CAB meetings, and their customers genuinely appreciated the opportunity to actively engage with peers and help the company hosting the CAB explore strategic trends, improve product roadmaps, and provide feedback through games.our client successes over the years.


Click here to read more.  

Amex Small Business Promotion
Help Out The Innovation Games Company

This coming Saturday, American Express is promoting small business in the U.S. by asking U.S. citizens to shop at small businesses in their neighborhood. While we're really glad that American Express is supporting small businesses, it got us thinking: "Hey, we're a small business! How can we get in on this action?"AmexSmallBiz

Since we serve a global market, we thought of two awesome ways for you to get in on the action. The first is a great coupon code to Innovation Games� online. Simply sign up with the coupon amex2010 and you'll get a whopping 25% off of any Professional, Standard or Basic subscription for one year. This coupon is good for an annual subscription or 12 months on the monthly subscription. This coupon is good through Nov 30, 2010.

The second is that we're going to extend our discount pricing for Luke's Dec. 9-10 Innovation Games� class in New York, NY, through Nov. 30, 2010. Register for the class using this registration code and you'll get $200 off the regular class rate. Not only will you be taking a class that Da�i Ing�lfsson from Sprettur Marimo called "the best 2 days of training in my career", you'll make small business owners everywhere proud to know that you're helping out your favorite small gaming company.

Eat Your Own Dog Food
The Knowsy Product Box


Several weeks ago, Luke threw down the following challenge via Twitter: "Want a free one year license to #innovgames online Pro? Post a @knowsygame Product Box video PLS RT."

Bevill Edge Consulting's Scotty Bevill and Maria Matarelli took up the challenge and knocked it out of the park with their Knowsy Product Box. You can watch their video here. It's interesting to note that they intentionally used common household applications to produce the Knowsy Product BoxKnowsy Product Box video page.

For example, the spinning box effect was produced using a Lazy Susan, and the product box cardboard was harvested from an empty box of crackers.

Product Box is quite possibly the most popular in-person Innovation Game -- and not just because of the stickers, glitter glue and markers we use when playing the game. As you can see from the video, Product Box is an incredibly powerful tool for eliciting how your customers view your product. Thanks to Scotty and Maria for playing along -- and producing such a dynamic example of how Innovation Games can help you do work.

IG in Cyberspace
Infographics, Clients Only, 60-person Remember the Future, and more ...

It's been a busy month for Innovation Games in cyberspace,
from discussions on our LinkedIn Group to reports on new usess of Innovation Games. We've selected a few of the more interesting posts here, for your reading pleasure pleasure.

Gather Some Friends and Get Knowsy!
We're proud to let you know that we've received our first formal review of Knowsy from AppCraver.com.  Reviewer Derek Walter rates Knowsy a 9 out of 10 and says [Knowsy
] is a solid game that is fun for just about any age -- something that can't be said of many App Store games. Read the entire review here.

60-Person Remember the FutureRemember the Future
Trained Facilitator and Publishing Exec Jonathan Clark recently started an interesting discussion in our LinkedIn Group about how many people could participate in Remember the Future. As a rule, we recommend that Innovation Games be played in groups of four to eight, because it's difficult for groups larger than eight to truly collaborate. There are always exceptions, however, and Luke Hohmann, Nancy Frishberg and Teicko Huber all offered valuable insights on why you would play games with more than eight people, how to structure the game, how to facilitate to get good results and more. Check it out here.

IG Mind MapInnovation Games InfoGraphic
It's no secret that we believe in the power of visual thinking and collaboration -- after all three of the four online games we offer through IGO are visual collaboration games. So it's no surprise that we were delighted to see Michael Sahota's thoughtful post on understanding Innovation Games that included an InfoGraphic to explain how he sees the game. He sees three categories that the games fall into -- Generative, Prioritizing and Understanding Product Use -- which are different than how Luke organizes the game in the book. How do you see the games helping you do work? Let us know.

Client-Only Innovation GamesAtomic Objects
It may seem like heresy, an Innovation Game without customers, but Carl Erickson's report on how Atomic Object's been using Innovation Games with only clients struck us as an example of how flexible and effective Innovation Games can be for getting real work done. According to Erickson, Atomic Object uses Innovation Games to initially engage with clients for product development work. However, they don't necessarily involve the client's customers for these project kickoff events. Click here to read more about how Atomic Object uses Innovation Games.

Blog Roll
Miriam Morris, with the Australian Department of Innovation, Science and Research recently referenced Innovation Games in her post "Playing with Purposes: Games and Innovation".

Gameolosophy blogs about how our new iPad game Knowsy is a great tool for organizational improvement.

Dimitry Bekinin opines on the fact that "Provocateurs Gather the Best Requirements" and includes his take on Product Box and Remember the Future in the process.

  
Innovation Games at Work
Playing Games with the PMI Agile Community of Practice

We're thrilled to be working with the PMI's Agile Community of Practice, helping them use Innovation Games as part of their member engagement initiative. Over the past year, we've worked with other Agile organizations like the APLN, the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance, on similar projects as they sought to elicit actionable feedback on how better to serve their members. Innovation Games, and especially the online games are powerful tools for organizations like these. They enable collaboration and ease decision making for distributed teams and members.

As part of our engagement with the Agile COP, Luke will be kicking off the project with a webinar on Nov. 30, "Prioritizing Project Portfolios with Innovations Games�", introducing the games to the membership. Then over the upcoming weeks, the Agile COP leaders and Innovation Games Trained Facilitators will be hosting a series of online Innovation Games for the membership.

If you're a member of the PMI's Agile COP, we encourage you to get involved and make your voice heard. (Find the schedule of games here.)


  
Meet the Team
CTO Dan O' Leary

This month we've convinced our CTO Dan O'Leary to take a few moments away from working on the next release of Knowsy and Innovation Games Online to tell us a bit about himself.

Dan O'Leary
Dan O'Leary, CTO



As CTO of
The Innovation Games� Company Dan leads the development team in charge of delivering Innovation Games to the web and to multiple mobile platforms. A Silicon Valley veteran, Dan has 20+ years commercial software experience, including 10 years focused on mission critical enterprise software products. At Callidus Software, Dan was vice president of engineering where he delivered a high performance rule-based enterprise incentive management system called TrueComp. Prior to Callidus, Dan was a staff engineer at Sun Microsystems.


What's your favorite Innovation Game�
I really love visual collaboration games like Prune The Product Tree and Speed Boat.

What makes you smile?

When our customers say "Your games really helped us solve the problem..."

What is your favorite place in the world?
Subject to change, but currently, I would have to say Italy. It has it all -- food, wine, gracious people, geography, history, culture ...

What has been your proudest moment?
On the professional side, it was probably working at Callidus Software from the beginning and helping it to grow to a $100M company.

If you could meet any famous historical person, who would it be?
A toss up between Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus. It would be interesting to hear what they would say about how humans have progressed.

What's the coolest thing you've seen or done lately?
I performed at a benefit concert last week with 10 other parents. The proceeds went to a child who needs spinal surgery.

Who do you want to play Knowsy with?
My family.

More Friday Games
Play a Game; Be a Featured Facilitator

Are you curious about how Innovation Games� can help you solve your problems? Do you want to play a game and find out? We launched our "Play a Game with ..." program in May, featuring our trained Innovation Games facilitators and Innovation Games staff. Each week, we'll be featuring a new facilitator and game on our website.

 

Want to play a game? Want to be a featured facilitator and host your own game? Contact Brett McCallon at [email protected] for more details.

Have any news about the Innovation Games� community? Upcoming classes, conferences or events, public games, tips on facilitation, where to get a great deal on office supplies... Whatever it is, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].

 

Can't wait for the next newsletter? Do you have to know what's new with Innovation Games�, right now? Find out what's happening with us at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, our blog or at Games for Democracy.


 

Sincerely,

Tami Carter
Director of Community and Training
The Innovation Games� Company
Save 25%
Small Business Saturday Savings on IGO!
Save 25% off of any Professional, Standard or Basic subscription for one year. This coupon is good for an annual subscription or for 12 months on the monthly subscription.  Sign up with coupon code
amex2010
hereAnd pass it on!
Offer Expires: Nov. 30, 2010