PixelMEDIA

A recent conversation revealed an interesting dilemma to me. My client is a CIO of a large consulting services firm and has about 125 project managers and just over 500 total employees across 15 or so offices.

Aside from the general challenges they face in attempts to streamline project and document management – they face a greater, generational struggle.

They’ve got a good number of Baby Boomers poised to retire in the next few years – and there have been no attempts or programs put in place to facilitate the transfer of their knowledge. These are folks who have been with the firm since the 80s and have grown with – and really have the most knowledge of - the business.

They are also the least likely to adopt or embrace any new collaboration tools that may be rolled out.

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This article on VentureBeat just caught my attention. It’s a great summary of a design approach called “funware,” which Dean Takahashi defines as:

applications with game-like mechanics and game-like behavior that really aren’t traditional video games.

He’s summed up a trend where social networks, business apps, and even some fairly utilitarian (read: dull) websites try to engage users with game-like mechanics. His examples come from both directions - games that liven up social networking sites like Facebook, and applications such as eBay that use points systems, competition and collection to reward and incent their users. The industry experts Takahashi speaks with see big rewards in the proliferation of mini-games, Facebook games, and game-like applications in our everyday lives.

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Well, for us old-schoolers, long before Flash was anything but an idea, there was Director. Back in the day it was Macromedia Director. And way way back - it was Mac only and you had to use “the Gaffer” to convert Mac files to play on a Windows machine. Way way back… like early 90’s. I think Teece was 10.

I’ve got many thousands of hours into this program; and this company, PixelMEDIA, was largely built on the back of Director.

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