Day 2 Summary + Quotes of the Day

Overall, I felt day 1 was much more balanced in terms of sessions I attended. Day 2 was all over the map for me. SJ Klein was good, but didn’t really resonate with my goals for the conference. Ian Bogost is just a fun speaker, and gave great examples, but his procedural rhetoric theme must have been a bit above me. I either didn’t quite understand it, or I understood it just didn’t really impact how I look at serious games. The advisory session and Shaffer’s session on the cognitive side of things really didn’t do much for me at all.

On the flip side, McGonigal and Bower’s sessions were my favorite of the conference. Both were exceptional. From a purely public speaking perspective, Jane’s session was interesting because she was almost reading the entire thing by the looks of it, but she was able to pull it off in a very conversational, appropriate feel. What Bower is doing with Whyville is simply jaw-dropping. I had no idea this product even existed, then to find out all this educational material he was wrapping into it, and the reach it had in terms of unique visitors per month…amazing.

My favorite quotes of Day 2:
SJ, referencing Thomas Edison, “Hell, there are no rules here, we’re trying to accomplish something.

McGonigal, referencing Pierre Levy, “It’s no longer ‘I think, therefore I am’, it’s ‘We think, therefore we are”

Bower was the big winner, with two hysterical quotes and one solid closer (both taking jabs at Second Life, although he never made that explicit):
Bower, after showing his splash page for whyville which contains his population (2.1 million users):“This is our fake number, to compare with all the other fake virtual world numbers.”
Discussing the idea of community, and nearly everyone in his world using “we” as opposed to “I”: “In a real community, you don’t have flying things going through peoples’ heads during a tutorial”.
His closing quote: “Didactic learning and games are a match made in heaven”