Get Your Green On Team wins at IMEX Frankfurt!

From left: Judy Kucharuk,
Trevor Roald, Shawna McKinley

I am so proud to have been a part of the Get Your Green On Development Team. 


Co-development and co-creation of the GYGO Game for Event Camp Vancouver was one of the most professionally and personally rewarding experiences in my career. 


I was proud to stand on the stage with Shawna McKinley, MeetGreen and Trevor Roald, Quickmobile to accept the IMEX-GMIC Commitment to Community Award during the Gala Dinner, May 23rd, 2012 in Frankfurt, Germany.


What was Get Your Green On? You can download a post project report here


Judy

"CAUTION" Learning Curves Ahead

When I was little and I would screw up (which was often), my mother would say to me, “Now Judy….what did we (meaning me) learn from this?”. I would scrunch up my face and wrinkle my nose (all indicators that I had my “thinking cap” on) and try to figure out the appropriate response. I sometimes came up with a good answer, but I also developed a deep wrinkle at the bridge of my nose.

I replayed this many, many times as I was growing up. Yup....I tended to screw up often.

Recently, I realized something. Why don’t we ever ask ourselves that question when we succeed at something? Of course, we learn a lot from failure, but we learn from success as well.

Last year, I was lucky enough to work on a project with Shawna McKinley, Director of Sustainability, MeetGreen (Shawna also has a great personal blog located here) and the team from QuickMobile. We collaborated to create an interactive mobile "Sustainability" game called Get Your Green On that was embedded into the Event Camp Vancouver mobile event application. 

It was a tremendously rewarding project and I walked away with a sense of accomplishment unlike anything I have experienced before.

I thought I would share some lessons learned along with some mushy “hug a puppy”, “share your feelings” stuff…..

1. It is more difficult than it looks: Working on a game requires a unique thought pattern and it took me a while to get my “game brain” in gear.  I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough experience gaming to be able to contribute to the project. We had to think about the game from the perspective of the player and imagine what they might be thinking as they tackled each challenge. You find yourself working backwards from the end result to troubleshoot and identify any potential problems. Definitely a learning curve for me, but one that I enjoyed immensely. 

2. Trust is defined as “Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing; or something committed into the care of another.” Although I knew and highly respected everyone on our team of collaborators, we had never worked together on a project. We were separated geographically, which meant that much of our contact was done online, via telephone and email. We needed to have trust in one another to get the job done. We all had to be invested and committed to the end result. I don’t like to throw words like “serendipity” around, but that is what it felt like. We were brought together by Tahira Endean (Event Camp Vancouver was Tahira's brainchild) and Shawna, James and I just clicked! I had complete faith in my fellow collaborators.

3. Share: In a project like this, you have to be willing and able to share your ideas and sometimes it can be difficult to fully articulate what you are thinking. James Hu from QuickMobile was like Yoda…..he intuitively knew what we were trying to express and he would respond back with solutions.

4. Everyone crosses the finish line together: There is a commercial on television showing a race where a child stumbles and the others stop, come back, help the child up and then they all cross the finish line together. That is how it felt working on this project. We were determined to cross the finish line together. When we felt that there was a loss in momentum, we stopped, came back, identified the bottleneck and then moved forward. Good/bad, success/failure….we were all in it together.

5. Yes we can! I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished with “Get Your Green On”. I will look back on this project fondly, with the knowledge that I contributed to a project with such a positive outcome and was able to create lasting friendships.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of the complete “Get Your Green On” Report – it is available for download here.

Judy

After the Final Rose

Ahem (clears throat…shuffles nervously) my name is Judy and I am a reality show junkie. I have watched: American Idol (but generally just the audition stage), The Celebrity Apprentice, The Amazing Race, Top Chef, Top Chef Canada, Top Chef Just Desserts, Project Runway, Project Runway All Stars, America’s Next Top Model, Britain’s Next Top Model, Australia’s Next Top Model and Canada’s Next Top Model.

Weekly, I may tune in to watch those zany Kardashians as they take New York, L.A. and Miami and I will admit to watching Kim marry Whatshisname. I cry when they Say Yes to the Dress in New York and Atlanta and I root for my favourite nuptials during Four Weddings and Four Weddings Canada. I love watching Tabatha take over a salon each week and last but not least…..I have sat in judgement of The Bachelor and Bachelorette wherein a teeny, weeny part of me hoped upon a rainbow that the Bachelor franchise would head north (and yes, wishes do come true).

It can safely and accurately be established that I watch a myriad of reality shows, but would like it to be known that I draw the line at the Jersey Shore, have lost interest in Survivor and refuse to watch Hoarders, Intervention and anything else that involves creepy obsessions lest I begin identifying mine.

56% of my PVR is filled with reality television programming that I haven't enough time to watch. Frankly....there aren't enough hours in a day/week/year.

Don’t judge me.

I am pretty sure that I love reality television for the same reason that I love planning meetings and events. Anything can happen!

Why did I tell you any of the above? Well….unlike some of my colleagues who do fancy, schmancy research for their blog posts or perhaps....book learnin'…I prefer to fall back on what I am familiar.

Reality Television.....yup, that old chestnut.

I know reality television. So…sit back and relax because I am going to take the giant leap of comparing post project wrap up with the “After the Final Rose” ceremony on The Bachelor. I lean on my strengths people…I lean on my strengths.

“After the Final Rose” ceremony is the part of the Bachelor show where Host, Chris Harrison sits down with all the gals who were unsuccessful in luring/baiting/manipulating the Bachelor. Now…..any reality television producer will tell you that they don’t go into these without having a pretty good idea of what might happen, what might be said...they have a goal. In fact, I think they cast for these shows in such a way that they have a pretty good idea what will work aka “what conflicts” will develop.

Event planners and producers also go into each project with goals and objectives. They plan their events in such a way that they have a pretty good idea what will work and the conflicts that they will avoid. Decisions are made early on to ensure that different aspects can be measured post-event. They are banking on this.

You can’t create an event or produce the event and then go back and say, “I would like to measure the impact of this or that”….unless you have a time machine (which would be pretty darn cool), you simply cannot do that.

Last year I was fortunate enough to team up with Shawna McKinley from MeetGreen (Shawna also has a great personal blog here) as well as the group from QuickMobile to design and create a sustainability game called Get Your Green On [GYGO] which would then be embedded into the Event Camp Vancouver mobile app. (Event Camp Vancouver was the brainchild of Tahira Endean, a Dreamer/Doer extraordinaire).

Going forward, both Shawna and I knew that we wouldn’t be satisfied with just creating the game and then walking away afterward. We both love data too much…eek! Luckily, we were working with an amazing team from QuickMobile who completely understood what we wanted….what we needed.

Recently we were asked, “when did you start working on the Get Your Green On wrap up?” I replied, “before the event began”.

From the very first meeting, and as we proceeded to design the game challenges, we considered the possible outcomes. For example: Check in Codes could be tracked back and tallied according to sponsors, vegetarian meals could be calculated, we could measure how much water was conserved by our attendees through their use and documentation of how many minutes they showered each day (we provided shower timers).

We didn’t waste an opportunity….we didn’t waste a game challenge.

Which brings me to today and not unlike the “After the Final Rose” ceremony, we have gone back and looked over the game carefully, trying our level best to document our experience in such a way that you may find it enlightening and inspiring.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of the Get Your Green On White Paper – I should probably ask…..

Will you accept this rose?

Judy