(It’s important to clarify that when I say “gchq” I do not in fact mean the government entity, I mean the EMF village name inspired by some guys who discovered in the pub one day that the domain gchq.net was vacant and purchased it for a tenner. Delightful.) #emfcamp
All of these side quests demonstrated a really beautiful thing: literally everyone who was there brought something with them which contributed to the experiences of everyone else. Sometimes as humble as a random interaction which sparks an idea. This is really quite a beautiful thing.
Sometimes/often it’s easy to feel powerless: that our voices can’t change anything. But that’s not true: we can. We all can. #emfcamp
@herdingdata Things like this work *great* in closed, trusting environments. You find them at sci-fi conventions (especially small ones, like Redemption) and bigger, weirder, events like Wasteland Weekend.
I could even see pulling off a lot of stuff in a semi-open environment, like maybe a uni campus at Fresher's week.
But to have stuff just out in the open in public, all it takes is one arsehole and the thing falls apart. So do you now guard all the elements? Needs a lot of people!
@semanticist yeh you’re right. I definitely don’t have a good answer. I was impressed at how generally trustworthy the EMF crowd were. I can’t help but wonder: if there were more fun easter eggs to be found, could it sway some people to divert their effort from being am asshole into going in search for them…? Idk
@herdingdata I think no, not least because some people have no imagination. Others have no time and have been ground down. In the EMF/convention/Fresher's Week context one thing attendees generally have is a lot of flexible time. It's hard to go a wander through Greyfriar's to find the secret wossname if you've only got 30 minutes for lunch, or worse, are late for work, or picking up your kids, or...
@herdingdata I think you need to adapt to the reality of the situation to make stuff work.
Signs in local shops with QR codes that lead to an app that gives location-based instructions. Did you know that you can make a slightly illegal AM radio out of a RaspberryPi + a long piece of wire, and then make your own numbers station with a <50m range (or use a car-FM-radio adapter)? An ESP32 can do similar with wifi.
I'd forgotten how much semi-planning I'd done for this sort of thing in the past!
@semanticist ok I see where you’re coming from but can I offer a little counterpoint: pokemon go was pretty successful for a little while. I could barely grab a sandwich without hearing colleagues chat about it excitedly and make plans to go find more