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.