Trojanische Netzwerke

Trojanische Netzwerke

Posts 1-8 of 8
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    Message BodyDear Ingo,

    I have a favor to ask, and please start by reading this - even if you're currently fully employed.

    I just stumbled across a very interesting idea for helping people without jobs or who find themselves in jobs they don't like. The problem is nobody has implemented the idea yet.

    Job hunting and getting new skills is a grind, and nobody manages it for you or gives you rewards for the little steps that are necessary along the way to the big win.

    But I've just interviewed a game developer who has a novel suggestion that NOBODY has tried yet.

    What if a big game development company created a social game that helped encourage and motivate you each step along the way? After all, 1% of the world's population plays a game called FarmVille where people help each other grow crops that don't exist.

    Surely a company like that could create JobsVille, where people help each other in little ways like reviewing resumes, practicing interviews, making introductions, and teaching skills that could all add up to real work that puts real food on the table.

    We at No Shortage of Work voluntarily put in a lot of effort to keep this site going and we seldom ask for anything in return.

    This time is different.

    I'm asking you for a favor.

    Please go to the article entitled "Jobsville": http://www.noshortageofwork.com/pages/3159

    and post an encouraging comment at the end of the article.

    Then tell all your friends to do the same.

    Please do it now, and here's why:

    I think this is such a good idea - next week I am flying to San Francisco, the epicenter of the game development world (and home to Zynga, maker of Farmville). Tomorrow I begin setting up appointments and the more interest I can show from people like you the better.

    The following week, I'm pitching this idea in front of 300 business and game developers at Mega Startup Weekend. (see: http://mega.startupweekend.org/).

    No Shortage of Work is my mitzvah - the way I try to pay back the world for how good it has been to me. This trip is at my own expense and I do not wish to personally profit from it. I am doing it because I think there exists a good idea in theory that deserves a shot at being a good idea in practice.

    Won't you please help by going to the article and posting a few encouraging words?

    Regards,

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:01 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    Article and Video Interview by Brooke Allen

    I’ve often wondered what can be done to make it fun to learn new skills and hunt for a job. Surely if FarmVille can make farming fun, and Call of Duty can make war fun, isn’t it possible for the people who produce those games to apply what they know to making the process of finding and qualifying for a job just a little bit more effective and enjoyable?

    As it turns out, the answer is: ABSOLUTELY.
    Recently I discussed this very question with Gabe Zichermann, an expert in “gamification,” author of Game Based Marketing, and creator of the Gamification Blog.

    Gabe explained that the job search is usually a long process that has many moving parts including the concept of career mastery. He says this is the kind of thing that is well suited to modern multi-player social games.

    In order to take someone through the “player’s journey,” game designers break complex processes into their component pieces and by providing guidance and rewards along the way. As missions are completed and skills are “leveled-up,” the player can look back later to see that they have accomplished something amazing – and had fun along the way.

    After hearing his fascinating advice on how you can make your own job search more fun for you and for those who are helping you, I asked Gabe if this idea has ever been commercialized.

    After all, Zynga has figured out how to get 1% of the world’s population to play Farmville, growing crops that nobody can eat. You join for free through Facebook and begin building your farm. Then you invite friends to start neighboring farms, and you interact daily, by visiting each other and complete specialized tasks in order to receive rewards and “farm coins” which you can use to buy gifts for your friends.

    Gabe has famously highlighted Farmville’s social aspect by calling it “poke with cows.”

    Wouldn’t it be great if Zynga created a “JobsVille” as “poke with resumes” – a place where you and your friends can help each other level-up your real-world connections and skills, land good jobs, and put real food on the table? What’s in it for Zynga? After all, if Zynga goes public, they will have shareholders to feed. As Gabe suggested in the interview, if people help you with editing a resume, making an introduction, or practicing an interview, it is entirely appropriate you reward them, perhaps with a real (or virtual) gifts bought through the game platform.

    Better yet, why not help a charity in the name of the person who helped you?

    Zynga has already thought of this; they handle the distribution of charitable contributions from their users through their non-profit Zynga.org.

    Gabe told me he has not heard of a single person who has made a massively multi-player on-line social game out of the job hunt, but that it is ripe for development.

    PLEASE READ ON and POST A COMMENT NOW. I think this is such a good idea I’m flying at my own expense to San Francisco on August 23 to pitch this idea to game developers, and on September 9-11 I’m pitching it to 300 business and game developers at Mega Startup Weekend. I am not doing this for personal gain but because

    I believe that in theory this is such a good idea that it deserves a chance to see if it is a good idea in practice.

    The more of you who post supporting comments and positive criticism then the more credibility I’ll have and the better the chance I’ll get companies to try this.

    ————————–

    Post your comments, game suggestions, and especially the names of people in the commercial game world who should pursue this idea.
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:23 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^2: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.13.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    Steve,

    This is a valid point. War games are not war, and Farmville is not farming.

    But I know professional soldiers who are in it for the fight, not for the paycheck, and every farmer I know doesn’t think farming is “perfectly awful” but would never consider doing anything else.

    And job hunting need not be awful either. My periods of unemployment have been wonderful; I’ve had more time to pursue learning new things and meeting new people. By concentrating on having fun while exploring I’ve been much more employable than those who wake up each morning to another “perfectly awful” day.

    Jane McGonigal describes in her book Reality is Broken how, after a traumatic brain injury, she elicited the help of friends in her recovery by making a game out of it. She describes it here: SuperBetter. There are even games to help make chores fun. (ChoreWars)

    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who has studied flow extensively, talks about how an assembly-line worker made his days pass quickly by making a game out of it. Have you seen Life is Beautiful?

    So, I disagree with your conclusion. Fun IS a reasonable objective in everything you do, and in the job hunt YOU make the rules, you have plenty of time to play, and there can be a great prize at the end. I believe for most people it is “perfectly awful” because they make it so, and because they don’t know how to make it otherwise. Hamlet said, “…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

    Regards,

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:24 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^3: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.15.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    Howard:

    More than a therapist, career coach, and consultant, I’ve discovered you’re one of the brains behind the game Family Matters.

    So, perhaps you would appreciated the following story – and then help create a JobVille.

    Back when I was beginning No Shortage of Work I attended a few career fairs and had variants of the following conversation with nearly everyone there:

    Brooke: What do you look for in a job candidate?

    Them: We need them to be self-motivated, personable, presentable, fearless, well-connected and capable of handling rejection.

    Brooke: In short, you need them to be good at finding a job?

    Them: Precisely.

    Brooke: But as an employer, finding a job is absolutely the last thing I want a good employee to be good at because I want to keep them. I want employees without a personal mission who will let me motivate them. None of us are able to face the complexities and risks of the world alone, and it is my job to put together a team that can weather fearful storms together. If I need someone to be good at sales, or programming, or writing, or just being kind-hearted, I create an enjoyable activity where candidates can demonstrate what they are capable of and can learn new things. And then I see who has fun learning and doing what I need done.

    Them: I never thought of it that way.

    Howard, people who can’t find work aren’t broken, the system is.

    Even those on the autistic spectrum who might interact beautifully on-line but can’t look you in the eyes might make wonderful programmers and on-line support reps. Why should they have to wait for Psychologists do discover a “cure” for what ails them when they are capable of things many of us don’t have the patience for? Perhaps the Human Resources profession could become more human, drop the “Resources” from their title, and treat people more like people than commodities.

    The motto for Zynga (creators of FarmVille) is “connecting the world through games.” They know how to keep people in the flow channel helping each other leveling-up their skills and circumstances; all while having fun. And they thrive on a revenue model that brings in less per “client” in a year than therapists and coaches charge for a single 50-minute session.

    Isn’t it time to change the world?

    Care to help?

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:25 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^4: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.16.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    c.l.

    Is the NY Times article: What is Business Waiting For?

    I have a 25-year-old friend I met through CouchSurfing.org who has been a vagabond for 7 years, doing odd jobs and learning Mandarin in China, Portuguese in Portugal, Turkish in Istanbul, etc. However a few months ago she had everything stolen in the Canary Islands and she and her boyfriend had to sleep in their clothes on the beach. She wrote that, although she has been without a home for 7 years, for the first time she felt homeless. My wife and I were touched and bought them Ryan Air tickets to England (which cost us less than dinner for 2 at a fancy restaurant.)

    After they got situated I asked her to tell me about that feeling of homelessness.

    She discovered that homelessness is a spiritual thing, not a physical thing, for she did not become homeless until her spirit was broke – and that can happen kicking around a mansion. After I read this on my laptop I was so moved I told the person sitting next to me who happened to have been an arcitect who spent over a decade designing housing for the poor. Then he quit because it was a hopeless cause. He told me, “homelessness is not a matter of housing.”

    Likewise, unemployment is not a lack of an income, and unemployment insurance doesn’t address the real problem. As my uncle said after he retired from the Foreign Service at the age of 50, “The worst thing is feeling like you are no use to anyone.” It can become a viscous cycle for nobody wants to hire someone whose spirit is broken.

    Business people aren’t stupid (corrupt, selfish, perhaps, but generally not stupid.) The reason they don’t hire, even if they have the money, is because the benefits of putting someone on the payroll outweigh the costs and the risks. Rather than underwriting a long hiatus during which a person can slip into depression, unemployment insurance could be a great source of risk capital, available to those who have an unproven idea for how they could profitably hire someone. (But if the idea has already proven itself profitable, then you don’t need a subsidy to hire more people.)

    Now, to your question: Can a game like JobsVille be elastic enough to adapt to opportunities as they come up?

    The answer is “Yes” – because it must.

    Modern social networking games are interesting creatures – they are microcosmic worlds. They don’t have rule-books; you learn the rules as you go along, and the rules can change and you just have to figure that out. They are really Participatory Democracy Platforms, and by that I mean, you don’t get a vote just because you exist and you can’t buy votes with money. You change the world by doing the work (and you can’t even pay others to do the work for you – you can only convince them to help you without pay).

    For example, CouchSurfing does for travel what JobsVille will do for work. CouchSurfing is not a relief organization, but it supports “special interest groups” and minutes after the Japanese earthquake there was a group for it, and within hours there were hundreds of offers of places to stay. Although CS is not a relief organization, there is no rule that says members can’t make it so. In fact, the only rule I can find is the unwritten one, “Be decent.”

    Cool, eh?
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:27 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^5: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.16.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    Ted:

    The question is not how do we make it SOUND like fun, but how do we make it ACTUALLY fun.

    I’ve almost always gotten pleasure from what I’ve done (even what I’ve done when I’ve been unemployed). My kids would interrupt their video games or movies on the weekend and look at me working on No Shortage of Work and say, “Why are you working on the weekend; that’s no fun.”

    But they are confusing fun with entertainment. So, what is “fun?”

    Jesse Schell, who we interviewed here, defines fun as pleasure with surprises. Wiping a baby’s butt might not seem entertaining, but every so often they surprise you with a giggle or a smile and your heart melts. Perhaps learning how to find the fun in parenting is an essential part of good parenting.

    Likewise, the person who is having fun on a job search will (all things equal) land the job before the person who hates it. And the person who has fun on the job will keep it longer than the person who doesn’t. (NOTE: the person who has fun goofing off at the office is not “on the job” and doesn’t count.)

    The problem is that the job hunting process as it exists is dysfunctional – and it offers very few pleasurable surprises, even small ones, and lots of negative ones.

    Anyone up for the job of trying to see if we can make things better? What’s the downside? How much should we worry about making things worse? With the early beta of our game, should we concentrate on those who can see how to make the process fun, or beat our heads against the wall trying to convince those who don’t?

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:28 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^6: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.16.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    c.l.

    I think the JobsVille mantra should also be “How Can I Help You?” just like NSoW.

    In the 2 years between returning from Japan in 1993 unemployed and landing my current job in 1995 I probably helped 1/2 dozen people land jobs before me. (I was not without work; I kept busy consulting.)

    Most people have a problem asking for help because they know they haven’t done enough to deserve it. JobsVille could have a Karma Bank, where you don’t get to ask for any favors until you’ve performed many.

    Much of what I see people do on-line is pose questions for discussion. And there is no end of discussion – blah blah blah.

    “How can I help you?” is not a discussion question. It is a request for you to give me a call to action.

    Ask people to do things and they do them, and it is by doing things that they actually improve skills and productivity. I meet so many people who’ve been unemployed for a year or more who have nothing to show for it other than finely honed theories about why it isn’t their fault. Even if they are right and it isn’t their fault, nobody cares. Then they develop a theory for why people should care, and are surprised to discover nobody cares about that either.

    Had they been helping someone do something they’d have something to show for it. At a minimum, JobsVille could crowd source recruiting. But it could do so much more.

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:29 am
  • Ingo Potsch
    Ingo Potsch    Premium Member   Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^7: Die Welt Ein Wenig Besser Machen
    On 08.16.11 Brooke T. Allen said:
    David,

    You asked if employers could see a benefit in hiring successful JobsVille players.

    Absolutely.

    In fact, they could submit challenges to the game.

    We once wanted to hire a secretary. In our ad we said, “Rather than send a resume, please do the following.”

    We listed 5 tasks and I remember 3 were:

    - Write a cheerful but stern letter to SantaClaus thanking him for the Teddy Bear but putting him on notice that nothing less than a 10 speed bike will be acceptable next year.

    - Find the cheapest airfare from NYC > London > Frankfurt > Milan > London > NYC.

    - Create a spreadsheet valuing a portfolio of 4 long and 3 short stocks for two historical dates.

    We ignored the people who wrote long essays on why they don’t have time to do this because they must look for a job, we didn’t care for the people who wrote humorless Santa letters, offered to introduce us to their travel agent, and berated us for not telling them how to evaluate a portfolio.

    But some people we absolutely loved. These were the ones who thanked us and said they had so much fun learning new things about travel sites and portfolio valuation, or even what a “short stock” is.

    Knowing how to learn on your own is priceless. Having fun doing it is worth twice as much. Double that again if it is done without a promise of a job.

    Employers could post fun examples of work they need done and see who has fun learning how to do it.

    Brooke
    • 17 Aug 2011, 08:29 am