BackPlayers Diary – Storytelling of a youth exchange

no border crew | agnese

February 28, 2016

“Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”

Marshall McLuhan

THE EXCHANGE DAY BY DAY

welcome | hostelling and social tourism | network architecture

pastaparty | volunteering | gamification | intercultural night

gamification | augmented reality and toy museum | near future design

design in group | public presentation | final event | bye bye

Day 1 – Welcome

H. 10pm. The group is almost complete. We’re waiting for the last guys coming, but we start to know each others. We learn our name in a very little time, but then we got to build a pyramid in groups… We discovered that everyone has his own idea about how a pyramid is!

H. 12pm. The last partecipant finally arrived: now the team is complete! Some pasta to welcome them, some chatting to introduce the other people.

Day 2 – Hostelling and Social Tourism

h. 9:30 am a nice energizer to start the day with the right mood 😉

h.10 am we share each other’s expectations and fears and we began talking about social tourism. We put on the flip charts the way we collect the info when we’re travelling and also the way we like most to share the experiences we live in our travels. Mostly we agree about social and real-life network as the main channels, but we underline the importance to get and give info at first with our friends and the local people we meet.

h 12 am, Marta from NoBorder Onlus gave us a nice presentation to introduce us the “Social Tourism”: is not just about travel, it’s about care about the local developements and improvements, and about the travellers personal growth.

h 1.30 pm. Time to lunch: thanks to our chef for this amazing food!

Day 2 – Network Architecture

h 3.30 pm We meet Cristina from OfPCina, from Bologna. She came here to make us a training about the networks. At the beginning, we front the “Spanning tree” and we solved in different group the Travelling Salesman Problem: we learnt that there is no “right answer” just different kind of logical or technical solution. Then, we also front the social networks issue, and we discuss about how the info pass through different channels and ambient.

At the end, we understood that when we build the architecture of a network (in real life or online), we’re going to modify the way the people interact between them.

Day 2 – PastaParty

What’s better than a Pasta Party to dive yourself into the italian local tradition? Thanks to the Chefs Teo & Tia for this cooking lesson!

Day 3 – Volunteering

H. 9.30 am – We had to overcome a strange mission: go beyond a rope without neither touching it nor passing under it. With a claver strategy at last we did… #IbelieveIcanFly….

H. 10 am – Rossella from NoBorder Onlus introduce us into the theme of volunteering with the SnowBall Methodology: cooperation, personal improvement, solidarity, empathy, fun… this are just some of the keyword we use to describe this kind of experience. We din’t understand very well why they divided us into frogs, donkeys, monkey and chickens, but in little groups we then analized some case study prepared for us: we had to agree together on what went wrong in these stories.

This is how Rossella prepared the ground to introduce us Matt, Fernando, Pepe and Marco, the team of volunteers of WikiHostel and Pantasema. Thanks to their story telling, we spoke about different kind of network to be engaged in volunteering activity, from WorkAway to Wwoofing, and the guys explained us how they find out the right experience to join (and enjoy ;).

Was nice to see this strange group of crew & volunteers… some of them is here just from one week but they feel like a family. That’s what you can find by travelling and volunteers… but it’s time for lunch now, we’ll speak about that another time.

Day 3 – Gamification

H. 3.30 pm – We give a funny welcome to our new trainer, Mauro from APS Yard and Ale from Lam’da: unfortunately they were not prepared to fight in the Samurai names battle and they lost soon 😉

H. 4 pm – They did not get offended that we eliminated them: they gave us a very nice presentation about the history of games and the main elements of the gamification process. We discover how the mechanisms correspond to human desires.

After the coffee break, we played in groups to Unusual Suspects, one of the games that Cranio Creations gave us as gift. It was funny 😉

Day 3 – Intercultural night

H.10 pm – As in every youth exchange, the intercultural night is an important part to get in contact between each other’s.

With game, quiz, video and live music Portugal, Spain and Italy introduced themself! Ah, also food and local products of course!

Day 4 – Gamification

H. 9.30 am – Sun is shining: another day started, another energizing’s been done.

H. 10 am – Again with Mauro. He ask us to apply the gamification method to volunteering and travelling. Marta sticked coloured labels on our forehead to divide us into groups.. let’s see how will work, right now we just have to decide our “players” describe their behavior and the goal we want to reach.

h. 12 pm – Coffee break. We have another task now: explain the mechanism of our idea. Levels, points, achievements… we got enough ingredients to do it… fortunately also the freedom to fail 😉 As Cristina said us in the second day, when we design a network, we’re deciding also the way that people will interact and how the informations will move in our ambient.

Day 4 – short technologies showcase & Toys Museum visit

H. 3.30 pm – We had an half-an-hour talk about new technologies and their use in the field of tourism. We saw lot of different ways to use the Augmented Reality can works. We’re ready to go to the Zagarolo’s Toy Museum now!

H. 5 pm – The President of the Rospigliosi Palace’s Institution welcome us in the main room. Then, with Federica we had a beautiful tour of the Palace’s Frescos and we arrived to the Toy Museum and she told us the history of the games… Thank you Federica!

Day 5 – Near Future Design

h. 10 am – Penelope and Salvatore arrived exactly while our group where trying not to fall down during the energizer. Almost everyone manage to resist in his group’s island, while they were looking at us with the face of those who visibly want to join the game. This is how we meet our new trainers.

h.10.30 am – We were wondering what was the Near Future Design. We started with an introduction when they show us in a funny way (have a look on http://www.incautious.org/) how can we deal with a present continuously transformed, exponential innovation and disruption. We started to discuss about the consensus reality of volunteering, exploring how the universe of volunteering and hospitality can mix to design new normals.

>> HERE ON NEFULA’S WEB SITE THE WORKSHOP SUMMARY

Near Future Design_BackPlayers from Nefula

h. 3.30 pm – Browsing the curious ritual, we underlined the tensions of human behavior in the present that can evolve in the near future. We discussed and we agreed about this three tensions: the micro, the ubiquity, the peer-to-peer. With this elements, we started to re-edit the project we design yesterday. Penelope and Salvatore helped has to fix the structural problems of our ideas.

h. 6.30 pm – Each group presented his idea. It was nice. We’re almost ready for monday. But before we’ll enjoy our free day 😉

Day 6 – Design in groups

h. 9.30 am – The day off was very nice but now is time to finish our project. We are again side by side with the rest of our group. At 1 pm we are going to meet again together to share the first drafts of our presentations.