We’re hosting a day-long business gamification experience in Amsterdam, on June 6th, 2013, and you (and yours) are invited! Evergreen and always-useful, our Gamestorming workshop focuses on applied visual + game thinking for the purposes of innovation, problem-solving, optimizing systems and processes, and generally making everything in your work/life better. Our partners – the folks who brought you the gorgeous best-selling business book Business Model Generation – are peer pioneers in applying this kind of work to infinity and beyooooond! And tell me this doesn’t look fun:

As a Gamestormer, you’ll go forth with confidence around the value, methods and functionality of visual thinking and problem-solving frameworks. Click here to see a video describing the practice. (And, we did mention this is in Amsterdam, right?! Land of cheese, chocolate and spacecakes? Although we can’t safely recommend that last food group…)

BUT WE CAN SAFELY RECOMMEND REGISTERING, which happens HERE*.
*(Be sure to scroll down to the “Discount” section for €100 *off* the workshop price!)

Questions? Just let us know. Hopefully we’ll be sharing a canal view with you soon. Until then, bedankt and tot ziens!

See more photos on Flickr

Steelcase is one of our repeat clients, and one we have a lot of respect for. The company started out 100 years ago specializing in file cabinets and safes, and has since gone through so many evolutions that parts of it are unrecognizable from its humble beginnings. Where Steelcase and Sunni Brown overlap involves innovation, design thinking, and a deep interest in workspaces and how they impact collaboration. Steelcase recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary (we here are going on six – ha!) and to celebrate that milestone, they asked “100 Minds” to share a dream we have for the future. To contribute some kind of creative output that will show where we hope the future will go if we put our minds to it. So with that request, I designed a Prezi that showcases MY hopes for the curriculum of the future. Above is a summary infographic showing the high level, but CLICK THROUGH TO DIVE IN. These are the topics I wanted to learn in school but ultimately began to teach myself in life. So here’s to future generations, that those who come before you strive to serve you better each day.

Dave Gray and his work have long been an inspiration to me. I’ve had a fan-girl devotion to XPlane for several years now, and a deep admiration for its founder, Mr. Gray, who obviously had a remarkable grasp of visual language AND customer behavior. I like to tell Dave that I Internet-stalked him into being my friend and eventually, my co-author. (Dave, James Macanufo and I have a best-selling visual thinking book called Gamestorming.) Now, Dave has come again with a contribution from his ever-seeking mind by writing his second book called The Connected Company. Published with O’Reilly, the book is an entertaining, smart and visual jaunt through the process of moving your business from a fragmented, disconnected structure to a responsive and connected company. Dave has always anticipated the marketplace and been on the pre-curve, if you will. Buy his book and join him in the future, where companies and their customers are meaningfully linked.

If you’d like a sense of the book and its contents, click here.

See all of the event photos on flickr.com

Purina is a well-established brand (you know you remember those Fancy Feast commercials) and they’re also ever-the-innovator when it comes to pet food. The Purina team invited our team to immerse ourselves in the current fancy-feline-food culture by researching and then touring tasteries in St. Louis, MO. Our facilitator later designed and led a gamestorming session that resulted in a cacophony of new visions and strategies for tapping this market. They needed to create a dynamic wedge in new market share. So they came. They gamed. They wedged. Our pets will be licking their chops in the years to come. And, if you haven’t rescued a kitten, why not now as the purrrrrfect time? (Sorry. We had to.)

Created for TED-ED, animated by Amber Lewis for sunnibrown.com.

Created for TED-ED, animated by Sunni Brown for sunnibrown.com.

Created for TED-ED, animated by Jake Mendez for sunnibrown.com.

view the event pictures on flickr.com

At some point in their careers, most designers end up–at least once–at the HOW Conference. This time the respected swirl of design thinkers and font nerds was held in Boston, home of some baseball team people get very excited about called the Red Sox. (Please, Bambino, don’t curse me.) I missed the HOW Conference held in Austin a couple of years ago, so I was pleased to be invited to host a Gamestorming workshop to spread the tools of gaming to more masses. Design thinkers are primed for the Gamestorming technique, since so much of their work requires thinking beyond the default. The group that joined me for this were exceptional participants, simultaneously skeptical and playful, and the concepts they produced surprised even me. (Who’s down for a Virtual Motorcade?) The workshop reinforced, yet again, how much I love teaching AND how creative people can be when given the right circumstances. So God bless games for upleveling us all, and many thanks to HOW for introducing Gamestorming to their audience.