the ‘PokéCare’ edition

Why you need to PokeCare. Startups harnessing the power of communities and get bored this summer to unleash your creativity.

Why you need to PokeCare.

Given the political climate, it’s hard to pick just one news item over the last week- I settled on Pokemon Go. In case any of you are in denial about its impact: more daily users than Google Maps, more time spent per user than Whats App (43m vs. 30m/ day), resulting in a doubling of Nintendo’s share price since its release. There are three reasons why intelligent adults are running around the streets collecting made-up monsters and let’s not forget the gaming industry is worth $90bn worldwide (double the value of the edtech market!).

First and foremost, it has the potent combination of escapism, nostalgia and cute animals. It did what FitBit failed to- getting people off their backsides with added bonuses of talking to strangers and congregating in actual public spaces, other than the Facebook feed. Games give people the ability to control a situation which isn’t true for real life and they’re unifying- who can blame us right now?! I’ve had to turn off my BBC Breaking News alerts.

Secondly, it’s not the Pokemaster’s fault! Games are purposefully designed to be somewhat addictive, setting off chemical effort-reward triggers in the brain or ‘leveling up’ — not dissimilar to how the most adopted digital products work. Further reading on Hooked here (which I don’t endorse btw).

Lastly, gaming can be for good

Games have been excellent enablers of getting consumers to adopt new technology habits. Some of the first Microsoft games- Minesweeper and Solitaire- taught mouse-fluency by stealth from left, right and double clicking to the delightful drag and drop without which you wouldn’t be able to nail your beloved Excel and Powerpoint, like a ninja.

In an interview with Yonatan Raz-Friedman, the co-founder of Kano, a UK-based company of child-friendly computer kits, he talked about how games can give kids superpowers, empower them to create and is essentially teaching them to code without them knowing it!

Technologists have long been piping up about augmented and virtual reality but Pokemon Go is the first experience to bring it the public, helped by Niantic Labs a small San Franciscan developer (aka Google spin out). It won’t be long before we’re using virtual reality in a suite of location-based services… Or not, these pundits sometimes get it wrong- in 2004 Bill Gates predicted spam will be solved in two years. I’m still here Bill!

Whether you’re game or think time is better spent on fixing Brexit and world peace, the industry is here to stay and poised for growth. This is evidenced by Amazon’s purchase of Twitch (a social network watching other people play video games) for just under $1bn a couple of years ago, Manchester City signing its first e-sports player earlier this month, people trading Poke accounts for cold hard $ and let’s not forget the guy who has quit his full time job to Pokehunt a few days ago.

Startup stalk corner (Companies I like).

In last week’s interview with Franco Abott from DreamAfrica- which has an ambition to be the digital version of Disney- we discussed harnessing the power of communities to fuel the company. They’ve tapped into writer, animator and design communities and are using an open-source technology stack as well as getting consumers to spread the word. They’re efforts to change the types of stories African kids grow up with have earned them a spot on the TED Residency programme.

This week I’ve been stalking Curio, an app which released this week for ‘writing worth listening to’, or an Audible for long-form journalism. It’s good timing with newspapers looking for new avenues to monetise and the the Brexit vote demonstrating how important it is to get your news from a variety of sources, rather than the Facebook echo chamber of what an algorithm deems relevant. This (old) TED talk on filter bubbles, a longer read here and the crazy tech guy in House of Cards demonstrates how dangerous one gatekeeper is. Curio curates long reads from respected publications (The Guardian et al), pays actors to narrate them and packages them up in an app- a perfect accompaniment whilst you take your summer stroll home from work. It’s gotta be better than listening to my podcasts (onYouTube now too) and full disclosure the brains behind it used to work in BBC Strategy with me!

Goal seek… creativity

This week’s Freakonomics episode on how ‘it’s such a waste to have this much intelligence and smarts being used to figure out how to keep you clicking on ten more animal videos’, got me thinking about creativity. Well that and Trump’s wife’s speech writers… With summer coming up, mother hens are starting to lose their minds about how to entertain their ducklings because it would be daft to assume the weather will hold!

(Pseudo) psychologists now suggest the best thing for creativity is to allow yourself time to be bored. Shock-horror-breathe for all you Type A’s out there. I trialed it for my 30th birthday over the weekend- traipsing the streets, playing throw and catch with strangers in the park and some nature lurvinn… I’m not sure how creative it was but I had a hoot! Try it — I dare you! Let me know what you come up with!

Digi-stationary for the pencil case

I use Canva for digi ‘creativity’ pursuits aka branding- it’s design for dummies. It can handle anything from posts to infographics and has a portfolio of stock images to pick from and an uploader tool, in case you cringe at the former. I’m not saying its going to win you any awards but it’s not embarrassing like any MS paint attempts and there’s always Prisma too!

Shower thoughts

(via Reddit- you’ve earned these, unless you’re a prolific scroller)

1. If Cinderella’s shoe fit perfectly then how did it fall off?

2. Why doesn’t furniture all come with inconspicuous handles for moving?

3. Books are just remixes of the dictionary

It’s a wrap!

Thanks for tuning in and the pats on the back for last week’s ‘mind your business’ edition. In the interest of transparency, I can see which of you have opened it, forwarded it on and am tracking the sign-up link http://eepurl.com/bQheMj. Share this s|-|;t- otherwise I’ll be forced to switch to make-up tips. I’m working on taking my own advice of offering rewards (aka pedestrian prizes), as online karma isn’t making the cut!

Have a great week, more here and stay curious!

Na-must-hey. SS