I was fortunate to be able to join in for part of the annual Web 2.0 Conference this year in San Francisco. The Moscone Center, where the event took place, is only a 5-10 minute walk from my office at R/GA, so that is always handy. It was great to be around so many smart people, talking about the future – and the start-ups? There were tons of new start-ups showing off everywhere.

Although I did catch some good presentations (the keynotes were particularly good), overall, I was a little underwhelmed by the event; I just didn’t hear anything new or exciting. I spent most of my time waiting around to hear “experts” offer advice like “your application needs to be easy to use;” and, “your website needs to be fast;” and, “your design has to be good.” Wow, great words of wisdom, thank you so much. I’d never thought of this before! It always reminds me of the sports announcer who offers his insightful advice to teams: “What the Jets need to do, is move the ball and get some points on the board.” It’s too bad that the coach for the Jets can’t learn from these geniuses. Also annoying, was the endless self promotion from presenters this year. One presenter spent more than half of his talk focused entirely on his own business (only loosely related to the subject of the presentation); and, even he even went the extra step to request “volunteers” to help him!

My snarky-ness aside, there were some good takeaways for me.

Game Theory.
My favorite keynote was “Beyond Gamification” by Amy Jo Kim, the CEO and Cofounder of ShuffleBrain. She gave a great talk that was both organize and fun. Although focused on “games,” it is not difficult to imagine how many of these game mechanics can apply to all kinds of digital experiences. Some of the note headlines I was able to jot down:

1. Know your players – design for their personal and social needs.
For example, some people like to seriously compete (taunt, points, “win”), while others prefer to collaborate (share, join, gift) – big difference! Some like to explore while others want to express.

2. Build Fun, Pleasure, Satisfaction
Cultivating your crops in Farmville is a good example of a game that provides satisfaction of a job well done.

3. Design for 3 Key stages of the Player
(1) Novice: needs on-boarding
(2) Regular: needs fresh content and challenges
(3) Enthusiast: needs recognition, and to see his/her impact

4. Make your game easy to learn, but hard to master
It must be easy to jump in, but a user needs to feel that he/she is developing their skills over time.

5. Use games mechanics to “light the way” towards mastery.
Provide support for the user to develop and master her skills; don’t just “give it away.” The coach in Nike+ (developed by R/GA) was given as an example of this.

6. “Find the Flow”: As players progress, create greater challenges.
IMO, this one adds to #4 and #5. The idea is to continue to challenge the user by rewarding him with access to more advanced tools (additional UI elements, badges, VIP areas, power tools, etc.)

7. Embrace Intrinsic Human Values (love, need to belong, accomplishment, etc.)
The task completion “progress bar” used by LinkedIn and other applications, is an example of providing the feeling of accomplishment. (Social media apps play to the need to “belong”.)

This “game talk” is getting super hip. Although I missed it, my colleagues said that their favorite Web 2.0 presentation was Gabe Zichermann’s Gamification. As well, as I mentioned before, one of my favorite presentations at SXSW this year was SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch’s talk about the “game layer” and how game theories can be brought into web applications to engage, and, in some cases, help to acquire new users.

I’m telling you people, this game stuff is gonna be huge.

Terry and I are almost done with the majority of our scorecard application prototype. It’s actually a bit more than a prototype as it has a fully functional database and iPhone application almost complete (although not optimized). We’re also sketching up a Flash-based website and (AIR-based) desktop application along with a “widget” version that could be used on social networks or any widget/gadget-friendly place.

This is what I love about web technology: We have a single data store and server-side application that can be accessed by any interface application in any form (as long as you know the APIs). Once you build a solid, scalable solution to store and access your data, you can go nuts with all the various portable interface options: website, desktop app, widgets, mobile, ad banner, in-store kiosk or digital display, etc. And don’t forget the mash-ups. Assuming everyone it building their tools with this in mind, any interface can tap into any data service and relate it to it’s data. In the end, it’s all about the content (the data); so create a simple and reliable solution for providing that data, and then create compelling, accessible (and simple) interfaces for the user to get to that data. Wow, it sounds so easy.

The iPhone app is what we spent the most time on. As most all of the data is dynamic, it was important to carefully plan out how the app would be built. Lot’s of AJAX fun, we used JSON to exchange data with the back-end (done in PHP/MySQL). I can’t talk too much more about it until it’s done…but I will post more soon!