A New Type of Scavenger Hunt

Last weekend I tried out a new type of scavenger hunt.  Because of the technology we used, it would not have been possible a few years ago.  I thought I would share the details of it here on my blog for others to copy and improve upon.  Why would I simply give away my hard work?  Because many others have been generous to me in this way.  All I ask is that if you try this and successfully improve upon it in some way, leave a comment and tell us how you made it work better. I will call it the reverse bingo scavenger hunt.  Here is how it works.

First I went around town and took pictures of both public places and homes of church members.  If those things were obscure enough, then I left them as they were.  In other cases I cropped the context out of the pics.  For example, in one case I took a picture of a lake behind an apartment complex, that is completely beautiful and completely public, but there's no reason to assume that anyone in my youth group had ever seen it.  That photo I left intact.  But then I took a picture of just one panel of a window in a nearby school, or the back side of a sign, leaving very little contextual clues surrounding it.  Then I assembled the photos into a bingo board.  Here it is:

The reason I am calling it reverse bingo is because in normal bingo each player has a different board and everyone has the same numbers to cover it.  In this case there is only one board and the teams get their pieces separately.

I gave the teams a 10 second look at the board.  Then I provided them a handout with all the pictures printed on it, but not in any order.  I also gave them a sealed copy of the bingo board with instructions not to open it.  The sealed board was only to be opened when the teams were notified.  (My plan was to allow them to open it after 1.5 hours, or if it was obvious that no team was going to get a bingo.)

Now you see the challenge.  The teams knew how to get the pieces, but not where they fit on the board, only I knew that.

Here's where the technology comes in.  Each team had a camera phone, and the email address of a flickr account and a twitpic account.  Their instructions were to take the same picture with one of the team members in it, then they send the pictures to the 2 addresses.  I would place a chip on their board as soon as I received it, and the first team to get a bingo was the winner.

The weak link was definitely with the phones and photo services.  Flickr worked perfectly.  However, twitpic was not up to the task; it only received the updates from one team.  (My hope was that twitpic would get the photos and twhirl would alert me when they arrived.  That plan was an epic fail) Another team had to switch to a new phone, because I was not receiving any updates from them.  After a couple of adjustments however, I was receiving photos from all teams.  Then it was jut a matter of covering the right square.  As soon as a team got a bingo I texted out bingo and they returned to the church.

Our church is in an urban environment and no picture was more than 6 miles from the starting point.  It took only abuot an hour to complete.

Twitter part 2

A while ago, I posted about the very useful tool that I believe Twitter to be. Obviously, based on the comments, most of you still don't get why it is worth a try, or how it is different from the other social networks.  Let me see if I can address that with this post.

The real difference in Twitter and the other social networks like Facebook is that it is portable.   There is a facebook mobile, meaning I can use it on my phone.  But Twitter can be fully experienced from a non-internet phone that gets SMS.  (If you don't have to pay for individual texts.)  Although my favorite way to use twitter on my phone is using betwittered.com/m.  Also, with a camera phone you can post pictures just like sending MMS.

Even on your computer, it is portable.  If I use twhirl, I never even have to visit the twitter.com website and I still see all my friends' tweets and am able to post my own.  As much as I love RSS, it is not two-way like twhirl.

Facebook, myspace et al, are all about your profile, Twitter is about the updates.  In fact, you only get a very barebones profile on twitter.  It is assumed that you know who you are following .

Twitter is a bit like an IM to multiple people all at once.  So if I'm driving home, I can update people in NC and KY all at the same time.  Everyone can know when I arrive and when I left.  And all my followers who just don't ccare, they can disregard those twitters.  We have all become very good at ignoring what we re not interested in.  I'll prove it.  Look at your inbox right now.  You will see 3 categories of things there, stuff that gets immediately deleted because you don't care, stuff you are genuinely interested in that you will take the time to read, and stuff that you only have a mild interest in that you will glance over but give no real thought to.  Your twitterfeed is like that.

There is one more twitter-related post coming.  It will be tomorrow, then I'll try to get back to blogging about more substantive things like fishing.

Twitter For the Masses

In predictions for 2009 I said that I thought Twitter would catch on and finally become popular with "the kids".  What I mean is that non-geeks will begin seeing it for the incredible tool that it is.  Later when listening to the Buzz Out Loud prediction show, I heard Tom Merritt make the same prediction. I know a lot of my regular readers read my twitters (they are supposed to be called tweets, but that is just so stupid that I refuse to) because I can see when you click on the links from my feed in the sidebar.  So my goal today is to get you to try out Twitter, and explain what it is exactly.  Next week I will post about different ways of using it, cool apps and stats, and some ways not to use it.

Twitter is microblogging, for lack of a better term.  You get 140 characters to say whatever you want.  Here's how it works.  You sign up, choose people to follow, then participate.  Your page will automatically show you all the updates of the people you follow.  Likewise, everyone who follows you will see all your updates.

You can update it from the web or by text message.  You can also post pics to twitter using twitpic.com.  It allows people to see into the lives of those you follow.  And in turn your followers can see what you are up to.  You can use it for prayer requests, to send out information or to keep up with old friends.  I follow people I know from college and from seminary.  And if you sign up, let me know and I'll follow you as well.

You can keep track of your twitter feed on the twitter.com website, but  the best way to use twitter on your computer is http://www.twhirl.org/ Twhirl works with Mac & PC and is a very handy tool.  (You will also need to install adobe air)

Here's a list of a few cool people to follow to get you started.  (I don't follow the last few)

me - https://twitter.com/jmmath Ed Stetzer - https://twitter.com/edstetzer Mark Hall (from Casting Crowns) - https://twitter.com/markhallCC Tom Rainer (Pres. of Lifeway) - https://twitter.com/ThomRainer Alvin Reid - https://twitter.com/docreid7 Darth Vader - https://twitter.com/darthvader Natalie Grant - https://twitter.com/NatalieGrant MC Hammer (Can't touch this) - https://twitter.com/mchammer Shaquille O'Neil - http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ Greg Grunberg (Weiss from Alias) - http://twitter.com/greggrunberg

You can always just sign up and try it out. Let me know how you feel about it in the comments.