ON GAMING ENVIRONMENTS FOR YOUNG AND OLD

GAME ON

Two separate articles and discussions on Techmeme today point to two entirely different ways how the culture of gaming is impacting future working and learning environments for both the young and old.

First up, is this piece in Venture Beat, which highlights the former:

"TiECON 2007, the big technology conference in Santa Clara, Calif., kicked off yesterday.

The buzz on the expo floor was about Silicon Valley gaming startup Elementeo and its precocious 13-year old founder and chief executive, Anshul Samar.

“We inject fun into education,” the fast talking entrepreneur confidently proclaimed, touting his new fantasy role playing board game which he believes will change the way kids learn chemistry."

The picture on the left up there is the current executive team of the company, which includes the founder's sister and best friends.  For one of the best elevator pitches done by someone of ANY age, check out this YouTube video:

As an aside, this piece is a great addition to the discussion to date on how young successful tech entrepreneurs need to be (see my post here, and Fred Wilson's foll0w-on post here).

For a look at how the computer games are influencing the evolution of enterprise software, check out this New York Times Article from this weekend.  Here's an excerpt:

"WORK is not play. But maybe it should be. 

In fact, Paul Johnston has remade his company on the idea that business software will work better if it feels like a game. Mr. Johnston is not some awkward adolescent, but the polished president and chief executive of Entellium, which makes software for customer relationship management."

The piece goes on to describe several enterprise software companies, that are taking lessons learned from the world of computer, console, and online gaming, to evolving various types of software used in everyday business, to empower today's "Knowledge Workers", to use Microsoft's verbiage.

What both these articles illustrate, is that it may not hurt to inject some fun in the work involved in the everyday quest for knowledge, whether it's in the class-room, or in the office.

Comments

[Adrian Heilbut]

I was digging a little more around the learning and training games meme, and thought I'd point out a couple more links that may be of interest:

Education Arcade describes some projects at MIT around educational games - their augmented reality games sound particularly cool

For those readers in Boston/Cambridge, there's actually a talk about "Serious Games" tomorrow (May 21st) involving some game development companies and academics that sounds very interesting and relevant.

for details, see:
MITX
nelearning
rsvp

[sai]

Youngsters that havent learned the fear of failure can be the best crucibles of innovation and creativity. TiE Boston has a program to tap into their potential.

You should check out http://www.tieconeast.org for details about the June 14-16 TiECON East Conference at Boston, MA!

Cheers, Sai