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London Class
IG at Work
From the Blog
Game Spotlight
Intern Files
Cyberspace Roundup
Meet the Team
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Innovation Games in London  

IG Book
Join Luke Hohmann, along with 21apps Ant Clay and Andrew Woodward, for a  two-day Innovation Games class in London, UK. The class will teach your how to plan, play & post-process the games, in addition to covering facilitation skills.

 

Register here

Cost: �796.00 for IGO newsletter subscribers.* 

 

*Discount ends Oct. 17.  

Innovgames @ Design by Fire 2011    

Qualified Instructor Maarten Volders will be teaching an Innovation Games Workshop as part of the program for DXF 2011. The all-day session begins at 9:00 AM on Oct. 13, 2011 and is being held at the Miller House in London. For complete details, click here.   

Oct. 2011: Innovation Games Class in Belgium

Join Maarten Volders, an Innovation Games Qualified Instructor, for a 2-day Innovation Games class in Mechelen, Belgium

on Oct. 6-7, 2011.  

Register now.

Innovation Games for Consultants 

Join CEO and Founder Luke Hohmann for a

2-day Innovation Games class 

designed for consultants in Santa Clara, CA

on October 10-11, 2011. You'll learn how to plan, play & post-process the games, in addition to advice on structuring & planning client engagements.

 

Register here.

Cost: $500*

 

50% off Refresher Discount available for Trained Facilitators. 

 

*Courtesy pricing for Consultants only.

 

Innovation Games Class in Bucharest, Romania

Join Qualified Instructor Maarten Volders, for a 2-day Innovation Games class in Bucharest, Romania, on Oct. 17-18, 2011.

Register now.

 Innovation Games Class in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Join Maarten Volders, an Innovation Games Qualified Instructor, for a 2-day Innovation Games class in Cluj-Napoca, Romania

on October 19-20, 2011.  

 

Cost: 997 Eur  

Register now. 

 Innovation Games for Customer Understanding: Texas

Join IGQI Jeff Brantley for a 2-day Innovation Games for Customer Understanding class in Austin, TX on Nov. 2-3, 2011.  

Cost: $945 Early Bird (ends Oct. 19).  More information and registration here.  

    

 Innovation Games + Agile: Texas

Join IGQI Jeff Brantley for a one-day intensive Innovation Games for Agile Teams class in Austin, TX on Nov. 4, 2011.  

 

Cost: $445 Early Bird (ends Oct. 25).  More information and registration here.  

    

Innovation Games + IT-Agile bring Training to Hamburg

CEO and Founder Luke Hohmann will teach a 2-day Innovation Games class  designed for consultants, in partnership with IT-Agile, in Hamburg, Germany on Nov. 10-11, 2011. Attendees will learn how to plan, play and post- process the games, in addition to advice on structuring & planning client engagements.

 

Register  here.

Cost: 1400 Eur* 

 

*Special discounts for groups; contact IT-Agile. 

 

Innovation Games + Gamestorming:
 Toronto

Join CEO & Founder Luke Hohmann & Qualified Instructor Michael Sahota for a 2-day Innovation Games class in Toronto, Canada 

on November 21-22, 2011. The class includes instruction on all phases of both in-person and online games.   

 

Cost: $895 (early bird; ends Oct. 21) 

 

Register here.

 

Innovation Games Comes to Brazil

Adaptworks and The Innovation Games Company have partnered to bring our first Innovation Games for Customer Understanding Course to Brazil. Taught by Michael Gaines, the 2-day course will include instruction on all phases of both online and in-person games. 

 

Date: Dec. 9-10

Location: S�o Paulo, Brazil

More information & Registration 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.

Serious Games for Strategic Planning

Adobe Puts Innovation Games to Work

 

Who hasn't shuddered when you get the email about required attendance at an all-day strategy meeting? In common parlance that translates to 8 hours trapped in a conference room with PowerPoint, coffee and catered lunches -- if you're lucky. Strategy meetings don't have to be death by PowerPoint, though. They can be engaging, profitable and energizing -- especially, if the participants are actively involved. Our recent experience producing a two-day strategic planning meeting for Adobe Systems' Globalization team is proof of that day-long meetings don't have to be boring.

Three Adobe team members -- Francis Tsang, Senior Director of Globalization; Jean-Francois Vanreusel, Director of Localization; and Janice Campbell, Sr. International Program Adobe strategy meetingManager 2 -- recently shared their perspectives on how and why using Innovation Games� was crucial to the event's success.

Why did you decide to use Innovation Games for your strategy meeting? 
Janice: We had read Luke's book, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products through Collaborative Play, in our Globalization Book Club, and decided to find a way to "put into play" our learnings from the book. Much to our delight, Luke was already working with some product teams at Adobe. What if Luke could help us drive the creation of our 2012 localization roadmap and three-year strategy?

What were your goals for the meeting?
Francis: It was a two-day meeting, with 40 participants, focusing on Adobe's Localization Strategy. We used the games to help us do short-term and long-range planning around localization and long-range infrastructure needs -- not only which languages and problems we may face in our globalization efforts, but also what kind of new localization experiences we want for our end users.

Did you have any reservations about whether games can really be used to do "real work"?
Francis: To be honest, I was kind of skeptical in the beginning-how can we do this with 40 people over two days, but after the two days, I found the experience extremely useful. It was much more useful than a cut-and-dry strategy planning session with PowerPoint.


Click here to read the entire interview.


From the Blog

The International Appeal of Visual Collaboration Games

Luke Hohmann
Luke photo 

We love our work, especially when it challenges us to think about Innovation Games� in new ways. This post was inspired by a two-day strategic planning meeting that we produced last month for the Adobe Localization team. The event was a notable success, and you can read an interview with three Adobe team members -- Francis Tsang, Jean-Francois Vanreusel and Janice Campbell -- here. In this post, though, I'm going to focus on what Adobe taught me about Localization, and discuss some ideas on how you can improve your ability to play games with a global audience. Bonus? Fans of Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics (which I love) will see the influence of his work in our games.

 

Background on the Adobe Meeting
With more than half of its revenue derived from outside the United States, Adobe has developed an amazing ability to localize its products. From my experience, Adobe's approach to Localization is just amazing, and it accomplishes many things I didn't think was even possible (for example, localizing an interface in every sprint). What makes this team extraordinary, however, is that they are simply not content to rest on their laurels. Their desire for dramatic improvement was the motivation for this meeting.

 

Click here to read more.  


Game Spotlight

Product Box and the 10 Year-Old Entrepreneur  

It's no secret that Product Box is a great tool for uncovering what your customers value about your products and services. The act of creating your ideal product (with an avalanche of office and school supplies) -- and then selling it to your peers -- triggers insights that you just wouldn't get any other way-and it's seriously fun. It's also incredibly adaptable, as is seen in these videos from Adobe System's Guta Riberio. 

Guta, a senior group program manager at Adobe, recentlyHenrique Product Box took part in a strategic planning meeting that leveraged Innovation Games� (see articles above). When we asked how the teams were using Innovation Games in their work as part of our follow-up, Guta forwarded three videos (in English, Spanish and Portuguese) of how she put Product Box to work to get know her niece and nephews better.

"I asked Felipe (10), Henrique (10) and Sarah (6), what they thought were the most exciting features of a product. Since I live so far away from them, and have missed most of their development, it was a good way to learn about them. And the videos are hilarious!"

Click here to read more and see the videos
.


Intern Files
Interaction Design, Board Games, Silicon Valley Secrets, Innovation and more...

Per Sunesson, who interned this summer with us at Innovation Games, writes about working on Knowsy (both the upcoming board game and iPhone versions) and his experience learning about the Silicon Valley way

If you have been following the ayond news flow, you might have seen that I was granted a stipend to the International Innovation Practicum (IIP) in the San Francisco Bay Area in August. During the one month stay, I interned as an interaction designer and graphic designer at Innovation Games�, a company in the heart of the Silicon Valley that does serious games for market research and user research, of which the latter interested me the most.

During my time at Innovation Games, I developed a boardKnowsy Board Game Front game version of the iPad game Knowsy. It was a fun project, since I was involved in everything from the beginning to the end, from finding out board game standards to having a dialogue with manufacturers and testing paper prototypes to the finished graphic design. The game had some new features, which will be integrated in the new version of the iPad game. I also did some early sketches of an iPhone version of the game.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to participate in the Innovation Games Facilitator Training that made me a Trained Facilitator, which means that I am certified to use the methods professionally. The work at Innovation Games was great, but it is only half the story. Just as important was going to events and meeting Bay Area entrepreneurs. Because it really is a special atmosphere, the energy and inspiration is flowing. Just about everyone you talk to have had a couple of start-ups and an interesting career. And most of the time the start-ups have been unsuccessful, but that's not less meriting, because this is how you get invaluable experience.

Click here to read more.

Cyberspace Roundup
Behavior Modification, 20/20 Vision, More Games for Retrospectives & Google+ gets the Speed Boat Treatment ...

It's been a busy month in cyberspace for Innovation Games, from Buy a Feature games for behavior training, to more games for Retrospectives to Google+ meets Speed Boat. Read on for a few of this month's gems.

Buy a Feature for Behavior Modification
Aymeric Libeau, CIO at Pentalog, a European IT outsourcing company, writes in this post about the experience of using Buy a Feature at a Pentalog PM Camp in Chisinau, Moldova this summer. Libeau writes that Pentalog is creating a training session, "Agility within Projects", based around the
Pentalog Currency
Pentalog's custom-made currency.
idea that individual behaviors are often critical factors in a project's success. 

"Our aim," Libeau writes, "is to emphasize the valuable behaviors when working on a project, through several practical games." Libeau used a version of Buy a Feature with participants to explore not only prioritization, but how good agile practices can influence and improve decision-making. Full post here.

20/20 Vision
Protegra's Terry Bunio writes in his BornAgainAgilist blog 20/20 Vision about how he's using a combination of customized Innovation Games -- including a great game for quick prioritization, 20/20 Vision -- for both a strategy meeting and a rapid discovery meeting. 

Instant Play Games
Our Instant Play Games get a plug from Elena Yatzeck in her Pragmatic Agilist blog, writing about how these online games are really incredible online games for distributed "Iteration 0" or "Inception" activities, depending on what you call them. Check out her post here, or check out the complete gallery of games here.

Innovgames for Retrospectives & Futurespectives 
While Speed Boat gets a lot of press for its effectiveness for Project Retrospectives, it's not the only Innovation Game that can be pressed into service for process/project improvement. Remember the Future gets the focus in Gaetano Mazzanti's post Premortem Retrospectives and Ken Powers' detailed write-up about ALE2011's retrospective.

Google+ Gets the Speed Boat Treatment
Innovation Games are everywhere, and we're always hearing about new sessions featuring the games at conferences around the world. At the recent Product Camp Melbourne, Jen Leibhart from PlayUp, introduced participants to Speed Boat, evaluating Google+ from a user's perspective. Jen's session was entitled "How to Harness the Power of Negativity."
Meet the Team
21apps, bringing Innovation Games to the UK

Our newest Qualified Instructors, 21apps Chief Strategy Officer Ant Clay and founder and CEO Andrew Woodward are back from their California road trip and ready to bring Innovation Games to the UK and beyond (beginning with our joint Innovation Games class in London on Nov 3-4). Read on for their take on how serious games and collaborative play can help organizations be successful.  

 

We're back from our business trip to the USA! Our first time in the San Francisco Bay Area, great place and great people!21apps and the Ford Mustang In case you hadn't realised we'd gone (or why), we were over there (myself and Andrew) being formally trained by Luke Hohmann of The Innovation Games� Company in a fantastic "serious games" technique called Innovation Games�, which you can use to help your organisation:  

  • Innovate
  • Engage stakeholders
  • Identify and prioritise requirements
  • Gain customer feedback
  • Market research
  • Product development, and more  

The technique can be used face-to-face or using their on-line platform, Innovation Games Online. Luke wrote an awesome book on the technique, and we have been using the techniques listed for a while now to great effect.  

 

We spent two very, very intensive days in Mountain View, CA, learning about the rationale behind Innovation Games�, understanding the planning process, learning in great detail about each game (through serious play of course!), understanding how to process the and action results and exploring opportunities, scenarios and ways in which these Innovation Games� can be played in real world situations. I learnt a heap more about the technique itself, but also about facilitation, human behaviour, product development and lots more -- really well worth the trip to the US to take the course. 

  

Click here to read more. 

     

Have any news about the Innovation Games� community?  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 and our blog.    

 

Sincerely,
Tami's signature

Tami Carter
VP, Marketing
The Innovation Games� Company
Two Months Free!   
Sign up for any Innovation Games Online subscription  and get the first two months free with the promo code YNM911. Both subscriptions include access to all the games, including Design Your Own visual collaboration game and Buy a Feature, public and private games, advanced analytics and more. This coupon is transferable. Please share it with interested parties.
Offer Expires:
Nov. 2, 2011