Institute For The Future

Applying Superstruct Design for an Augmented Reality Developers Camp

Recently a few colleagues and I organized an Augmented Reality Developers Camp - a perfect example of a "Superstruct" an idea introduced In 2008 by Jane McGonigal,  Kathi Vian, and the IFTF Ten Year Forecast team. 

<dfn>Su`per`struct´ v. t. 1.To build over or upon another structure; to erect upon a foundation.</dfn>
Superstructing is what humans do. We build new structures on old structures. We build media on top of language and communication networks. We build communities on top of family structures. We build corporations on top of platforms for manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. Superstructing has allowed us to survive in the past and it will help us survive the super-threats.

The original IFTF Superstruct game was focused on responding to climate change and  played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces.  For our project, colleagues and I applied  the general principles and methods suggested by the Superstruct project on the topic of an Augmented Reality Web.  Augmented reality,  the superimposition of  media graphics on objects, places or people in a camera viewfinder, which is a currently hot new mobile application category for  smart phones like iPhone, Android, Nokia and Blackberries, was actually forecasted by IFTF all the way back in 2004. Unfortunately the current crop of applications are mostly one-off implimentations with no common  interchangeable web data.

In order to ignite a dialog on open web software for Augmented Reality I drafted a loose team to organize an event over e-mail as a moonlight task;  Gene Becker, Chris Arkenberg, Anselm Hook, and Damon Hearnandez . We  decided to stage an open camp style meeting and hackathon on December 5 based on a provocation:  I wrote a little manifesto  and posted on a project wiki we set upon an open augmented reality data web; an ARweb software, and services ecosystem.   The ad-hoc team branched out and spread words through our own networks to attract  a diverse, interesting and expert participation.  After we had a feel for attendance, We  hunted around and found and booked the garage back room at the Hacker Dojo, a grass roots developer hangout in Mountain view 

In the Mountain View prototype event, We simply showed up on Saturday, arranged folding chairs, set up projectors, and taped an open camp agenda session grid on the wall.  Eight companies sponsored, donuts, coffee, lunches, beer wine, pizza. for our event in California. Turnout  for the 12 hour session dojo was impressive. I estimated that at peak, 130-140  people were in and out of the space more comfortable for 70-80.

The mass of expert devcampers  was simply astounding  and uniformly brilliant hackers, mobile techies, mappers,image recognition scientists, 3D designers, artists, NASA guys media designers, nav, techies, game designers, a  teacher  a museum guy, several anthropologists, . . . it was a  barely disciplined, hugely fun!  massively parallel dialog  (and party) in 40 discrete sessions, mostly technical and social, with exponentially complex interactions in between all day into evening.  there we still 70 people there when we started to clean up. Everyone pitched in and by eight o clock the place wish shinier, cleaner than when we arrived. The Hacker Dojo team said that was the most amazing, we staged even ever held there! 

Interest around the world was also amazing.  On the first weekend there were three simultaneous events, in Mountain View, New York, and Manchester, now with more planned in Amsterdam, Seoul,  Zurich, Frankfurt, New Zealand, Brisbane, Sidney, Toronto, and San Diego.

From three weeks, start to finish,  it was a great example an extremely lightweight, highly effective superstruct !!!