Field notes
What we've learned about crowd participation, hyping a room, and pointing cameras at audiences that would rather not be pointed at.
Running a crowd game inside a tight run of show
Most advice about audience participation assumes you have as long as you want. In a real run of show you have a slot, it…
Read →Crowd games for festivals and outdoor events
Outdoor events are the best-lit and worst-behaved environment this technology operates in. Here is what changes when you take a crowd game outside. Daylight…
Read →Warm-up formats that work on a cold corporate audience
A cold corporate audience is the hardest warm-up in the business. Nobody chose to be there, several people are annoyed about the travel, and…
Read →The first thirty seconds are always awkward
Every crowd activity has the same shape. You explain it, and then there is a gap where nothing happens and it looks like it…
Read →Why phone-based audience interaction keeps failing
Phone-based audience tools have been the default answer to “how do we make this interactive” for over a decade. They are still the default,…
Read →How to hype a crowd before a keynote without a hype man
Hyping a crowd is usually described as a performance skill, which makes it sound like something you either have or you do not. It…
Read →Camera placement for crowd-controlled games: height, angle, and the 28% problem
Camera placement is the single biggest determinant of whether a camera-driven crowd game works. It matters more than the camera, more than the lens,…
Read →What is a crowd participation game?
A crowd participation game is one that a whole audience plays at the same time, as a single group, rather than as a set…
Read →Introducing CoMotionPlay
The crowd-games project we have been writing about since January now has its own name, its own home, and a catalogue plan. It is…
Read →What a crowd game needs from your venue
A checklist worth running before anyone commits to putting a crowd game in a show. Every item here has broken a test for us…
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