Mark again has been a star and here is his blog for you to check out.

Also for those of you who loved Leemail (the service that lets you sign up to any website, subscribe to any newsletter and never worry about what may happen to your email) but missed the link for a special invite just click here.

I will be collating all of the presentations and will post them shortly.

For now taverners watch this space…..

A message from Matt Bagwell 

“On the eve of the Last Orders at the Bar Fantastic Tavern event, I wanted to whet your appetite for the evening ahead and ensure that come rain or shine (mostly rain I suspect), you brave the weather, make the trip and are with us by 7pm at Ravensbourne.

I have worked with Ravensbourne, their students and incubating companies, Greenwich Council and their start up businesses and The Future Laboratories to make sure we have plenty of thoughts on 2012 trends to hear about and assess. We will also be joined by Mike Short, VP of Innovation and R&D at O2/Telefonica, who will help us understand the vision for the Digital Peninsula and what is already happening. As I have said before – and to paraphrase Alan Kay – the best way to predict the future is to actually invent it. That is true of what a variety of organisations – including Ravensbourne – are actually doing and it is something different, something special.

I’ve ordered enough beer and wine to sink a battleship (thanks EMC Consulting). Greenwich Council and our kind sponsors, Marcus Donald People, will feed you and make sure you have entertainment after the main event.

And yes, my twitter feed tells no lies. Jesus really is a DJ. From Fabric. Playing just for you.

I think we are set to finish on a high. Please be a part of it.”

The details

Thursday 26th January 2012 From 6pm

The informal formal bit starts at 7.15.

Finishes when we drink the bar dry.

Ravensbourne, 6 Penrose Way, Greenwich Peninsula, London SE10 0EW

For map click here

The nearest tube is North Greenwich (only a couple of stops from London Bridge), or for those of you who opted for the James Bond entrance your boat tickets will be emailed over shortly.

If you have not signed up yet we have a few places left so mail me on michelle.flynn@emc.com

Here is an update from Matt for those of you who have signed up to the TFT on the 26^th, and a reminder for those of you who have not signed up yet….

“Some three years or so ago, I started the Fantastic Tavern. It was to be a meeting of people who cared about ‘digital’ – as it was then – gathering in a pub and having a conversation. Over the months, we have run 28 events and the community has grown to over 1000 Taverners.

We have explored so much together and enjoyed a fair few pubs and pints. It’s been a great experience, made possible by great contributions – of time and content – from people.

Now it is time to assign the Fantastic Tavern to history.

In keeping with the brand, the next – and last event – is Last Orders at the Bar and it will be held somewhere magical on the 26^th January (that’s in three weeks). There are still lots of details to be planned but I wanted to ensure that you get a flavor for the evening and get it – and your attendance – in the diary.

Each year at about this time, we run a Trends Briefing. Typically friends and colleagues create the content and then pitch the trend to the audience. They in turn rate it as ‘hot’ or ‘not’ for the year ahead. Think Top Gear.

It’s great fun and also very informative. As it’s not broken, I’ll not change it this year.

Oh, go on then. Lets change it a bit. Change is good.

Firstly, we are inviting the students of Ravensbourne to create the content, not the typical crowd. This should give all of us a unique, fresh and cutting edge perspective on what’s going to be important to us this year – as practitioners but also as part of society as a whole. The students are briefed and already working away on some great presentations.

There will also be guest speakers not least my beloved friends from the Future Laboratories. Of course, we will not have time for one of their conventional trends briefing – an immersion I highly recommend – but they are preparing a point of view about 2012 to share with us. Trust me when I say that what they do and what they talk about is of the highest quality and well worth coming to hear.

Finally, lets reinvent the pub bit.

There is something – somewhere – that I have been involved in (a little) for several years and it’s an incredible gem that I want to share with you. I’m going to ask you to take a trip with me. A short one.

The Greenwich Peninsula, home to the 02 and Ravensbourne, lots of new enterprises and some established one (like TFL) and the Council itself – is an incredible place. Moreover, it represents an incredible idea. There is something different happening here – something powerful and full of promise.

Today, at it’s heart there is Ravensbourne. I guarantee you that this place for learning and developing will power you away. Set aside your memories of education and come and see the future, now.

Then also hear the vision therest of the Peninsula – a vision for an enabled community that is being planned to be a better, prosperous, open and exciting place to work, live, learn and be entertained. You may remember we all brainstormed ideas for that vision in 2011? They are coming to life.

You have to see this to believe it, to understand its potential. Forget the Roundabout. This is where it’s at. It’s where something different is happening.

So yes, I’m asking you to be at Ravensbourne, which is at Greenwich North, at 6.30 for a 7pm start in two weeks time.

http://www.rave.ac.uk/about/maps-and-directions/

If you would like to be there and bring your colleagues and friends and haven’t already signed up, please email

Michelle.flynn@emc.com

If you would like to take the boat from central London to the north Greenwich terminal, we can provide times and tickets. Tell us you would like to get there on the boat in your email.

Greenwich Council, Marcus Donald and EMC Consulting have thrown some cash – very generously – into a tankard and there will be a pop-up pub, food and dancing.

I think that we have a memorable night planned and I’d like to think you could all make it – to hear the trends that we should think about in 2012 and celebrate the Fantastic Tavern as itcomes to an end. “

We already have over 100 people signed up so make sure you do not miss the grand finale.

If you haven’t booked a place, please email michelle.flynn@emc.com quickly – you don’t want to miss out.  If you are one of the 180+ people who have booked a place, let us know if you want to bring a friend as we have room for a few more.

The Fantastic Tavern team have worked hard to ensure that there’s lots of stuff to share during the course of the evening and we’d like you to contribute too. Our theme is exploring the return on investment of (doing things) in Social and how (or if) it can generate commercial value – even money!  There have been two ‘feeder’ builders’ breakfasts on the same subject and attendees of these will take the stage. There will be some quick summaries of the foundations of social strategy – value mapping, models and mechanics , a presentation by social business Giffgaff and then…

…we will be running a panel and audience discussion. We will have several representatives of leading UK brands and some great social agencies (EMC Consulting, Made by Many, We are Social and Human Digital) on stage to take questions – all of them do ‘social’ every day. We used to do this back at TFT #2 – #6 and it used to work really well.  

Oh and of course, bring your dancing shoes – we have a DJ or two to play us into the early hours.

By the time we had walked to the departure gate, I’d received a second text.

We decided to fly. Many didn’t. I later found out the airport shut as our flight departed. When I landed, my shocked and tearful family met me. I hadn’t comprehended the enormity of the atrocity that had befallen the United States on my departure. And given this happened in 2001, I hadn’t seen it on you tube or the bbc iplayer either. People still watched TV then. In fact, my parents lived in a little French hill town without cable or satellite TV, so I experienced the unraveling of the attack and declaration of the War on Terror in day-late imported newspapers. I distinctly remember how odd it felt to be so disconnected from the rest of the western world as it shared the experience that would define an age – and this without Facebook or Twitter!

Ten years has seen so much change for us all, some of it as a direct consequence of the attack itself and the seemingly inevitable response to it. I was in a tube at the exact time that my train’s power failed due to an alleged ‘outage’ in the network. That was on 7/7.

We’ve seen the dot com bubble burst but the resurgence of the web – as version 2.0 – and rafts of digital entrepreneurs – many of them kids in 2001 means we are now enjoying truly revolutionary change, especially in ‘digital’. Think about it, this decade gave us mp3 players, smartphones and the tablet device. We carry more compute power – and possibly cables – in our bags than sent man to the moon.

I’ve watched my two children arrive and grow up in a digital age. Like most parents of young children, I’m amazed at their adoption speeds and tenacity. Did they get Apple patterns of interaction genetically programmed in? Give it another 10 years. And like you, I’m both delighted that their world will be more open, accessible and connected but fearful at some of the evil and lack of respect that this can perpetuate. I only hope that they have learnt tolerance and forgiveness somehow while playing angry birds.

The last ten years has also given me the opportunity to work alongside so much creative talent. I’m proud of so many of their achievements in the worlds of branding ecommerce, marketing and information distribution and the friends that have developed as a consequence. The world has become networked since 2001 and I appreciate the power and pleasure of the bit I’m in. I’ve also enjoyed privileged position with my clients – enjoying the trust and transparency that are tenets of consulting. I love the ‘behind-the-scenes- insights we are exposed to.

Have I done enough with my life to date since 9/11? Have I made a difference? Perhaps, depending on your measures. But as we reflect on this tragedy and how it affected the world for the years that follow, I’m going to think about making the most for the next decade. Celebrating life – and seizing it. Pushing any team I work with – and myself – to design a safer, better, humanitarian world. I boarded a safe plane on 9/11. But by the grace of god go I.

It feels like a long time ago when we ran our last evening – all about gamification. Hopefully now, the holiday season has come to an end, the kids are back at school and we can get back to the business of having a few beers together and working out how to do more for – or with – our brands and the people who use them, buy them and interact with them.

The next event is on Thursday October the 13^th 6:30 for a 7pm start and I’m hoping the the theme will inspire you to join us. The event takes place at The Brickhouse, Brick Lane in central/east London

Social Media is the love child of pervasive technologies and the internet and our human desires to connect, share, be a part of a tribe and stand out. Many of us seemingly spend almost impossible (and improbable) amounts of time ‘out there’. There’s been much said recently about software like Twitter and Facebook – not least because of the riots that flamed across the UK. These aside, is social media really a gift to brands and if so, will it keep on giving?

Join me and special quests as we all go on a grail quest to uncover the real return on investment in social and how to capitalise on it. Park your Facebook likes at the door and hear how other brands have learnt to maximise the potential of both earned and owned social spaces. We may even discover how to do more than simply build brand awareness or improve customer experience – can you make real money ‘out there’? Once again, I’ll ensure that we have expert speakers but that we will also have a conversation around the theme – after all, the tavern is always meant to be a dialogue.

Given the popularity of the last event and how that worked, we will cap the invites at 200. So don’t miss out, say yes today by emailing michelle@thefantastictavern.co.uk, I’ll bring the beers.

If you’d like to co-sponsor the event or feel you’d like to contribute to the content, please let me know (matthew.bagwell@emc.com) . The more (of either) the merrier.

Hope to see you there.

The Fantastic Tavern itself is the main event. The invites to it go to all the Taverners in the community, all 900+ of you. I try to anticipate what the community would like to have a conversation, discussion or debate about and then draw on the community to contribute presentations to help fuel those. We alway have a lot of fun, food and (too much) beer. Who should come? Well. pretty much anyone who is involved in digital – although that seems such a limiting term these days. clients, practitioners, designers, developers – everyone can find the themes relevant. We do an event every two months or so. If you would like to come, email michelle michelle@thefantastictavern.co.uk

We also run something a little brother to the TFT, Builder’s Breakfasts. As the name implies, its a round table discussion at breakfast time. We don’t drink beer. Being honest, I do tend to invite a smaller number of people to this event – they only really work with a maximum of 20 people. Held under charter house rules, I will distribute the essence of the discussions as the themes and questions we discuss are widely relevant.

I have also run Private Taverns. These are events that are run for a single organisation. I work with those organisations to understand what they are trying to achieve and what their challenges are and then format an event to help in some way. We have used a Britain’s Got Talent format in the past to barrage ideas to a client panel – including BS Buzzers – great fun! To be open, EMC Consulting, the company I work, for pay for the drinks and the development of all the idea ammunition. Obviously they do this because they want to turn some of the opportunities into work for the consultancy. If you’d like to discuss this type of event, again email us michelle@thefantastictavern.co.uk

Hopefully across these events, there is something for every one. However, if there’s something else you’d like to see or something you’d like my help with, just get in touch. We are always open to ideas and beers.

Matt

In reality, quite the opposite is true.

After the boisterous evening discussing Gamification, Tom Hopkins from Fortune Cookie and I returned to the Cancer Research UK headquarters, armed with all the ideas that had been generated for them on the night. We met CRUK to help them determine which of the ideas could be developed further and what the value might be. It was a useful exercise as we established measurement criteria and scored each concept against it – what was the audience – broad or specific (age, gender etc)? What was the complexity or difficulty of development? What was the potential to yield funds or create awareness?

The discussion was also very useful for the CRUK team more generally – it brought them together around a common theme which they then used to actively debate their purpose, focus and strategies.

There is now a short list of potential projects and we are exploring ways for these to be tackled. As I said on the night, if you’d like to be involved in that onward development in some capacity, please let me know. My intention is to use what resources I can get my hands on – from the Taverners, from business, anywhere – to make one of these concepts a reality.

I have also been busy developing a series of Builder’s Breakfasts, sponsored by EMC Consulting - the little brother of the Fantastic Tavern. We began our new quest yesterday as a small group of Knight Taverners set out to find the Holy Grail of Social – what is the return on investment? Two more similar events will culminate in the next Fantastic Tavern on October 13th, where all the discussions will be turned into a wider debate at the Brickhouse, Brick Lane. Please save the date – if the last one is anything to go on, its going to be busy!

Looking out of the window as it pours with rain, I cannot help feeling its actually a very bright and exciting time to be involved in the world of digital. As I have a flight coming up next week to visit the Digital team from EMC Consulting in New York, I’ll put some thoughts to pixels about some of the things that are making me thing so these days.

Maybe it is because we fundamentally like work. We like tasks that challenge us, we like laboring to a goal and we like to feel we have achieved something, especially as part of a group. Last week the goal was to understand a little better what gamification is and why it might be important and then directly relate this insight to the cause and concerns of Cancer Research. I wasn’t sure how we would orchestrate over 250 people brainstorming together over three floors, fueled with a beer or two. But it worked and worked really well. Personally, I think that is because people collectively wanted it to work and want to make a difference for Cancer Research. The ‘work’ felt important.

I would like to thank everyone who took part. Cancer Research will work through all the ideas to establish if any of them are tenable and if so, how they get them done. You can be involved in that process too. Just email me at matthew.bagwell@emc.com if you’d be able to give up some time to this.

Also thank you to everyone who bought a raffle ticket to win the Xbox Kinect (thanks EMC Consulting and Microsoft), we raised over £450 for Cancer Research

I am not going to document the event itself, partly because that’s tricky from where I was stood and mostly because that’s very adequately done by a long time Taverner, Mark Wilson (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3). Thanks Mark for these write ups, you really do a masterful job of capturing our evenings together. 

However, I do want to give you the chance to see what 250 people can come up with when they put their collective minds to it. I intentionally didn’t do this on the night as I thought that would be difficult to pull off and I did get criticized for that. You wanted immediate feedback and I’m sorry I overlooked that. Nevertheless, here is a list of the ideas you had. If you feel compelled to build on any of them here, I have opened up the comments functionality in this blog. They are raw and unedited – the elaboration will happen next week – and I think there may be more but this gives you a taster.

1. Jogging route on bus stops, have bar codes to collect points as you exercise
2. Matrix signs for bus stops, when not in use display cancer messages (e.g. Trafalgar Square 1 min, Aldwych 3 mins, Check yourself for cancer 15mins)
3. Plane safety checks, make checking yourself for cancer part of the demo
4. Tesco self check out (check yourself out)
5. Round up the change at Tesco checkout to donate to cancer research (e.g. total comes to £9.34, donate £0.66 to cancer and check out at £10 even)
6. QR codes on bus stops and then construct your run around the city – zig zag running around the city.
7. Tesco Express Checkout -> Make these ‘Check your self out’ Cancer check
8. Cancer linked in -> Find people in your existing extended networks who share cancer experiences
9. Compare my mole
10. Nike Plus for your whole lifestyle – Pink! – Includes diet
11. Allow spare or uncollected Tesco points to be collected (make a game of it!)
12. Big red donation button

• button appears randomly on your mobile phone, when you press it it makes micro donations of 20-50p
• size of donation depends on size of the button, the bigger the button, the higher can the donation be
• could be time based, e.g. you need to be quick
• donation could be made relevant to a person you know or to a specific cause, e.g. not research in general, but scanning
• brands could be partners for this and match your donation

13.  Map visualising donations

• show where in your area donations are just being made and what they were made for

14.  Check in for Cancer

• check in app to show that you went to preventive check ups with your GP, you get badges
• possibly integrate in existing app like Foursquare

15.  IHOBO game

• A virtual person that you have to keep healthy / cure of cancer, Tamagotchi style.
• This game already exists, but could be adapted: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ihobo/id364005732?mt=8

16.  Compareyourmole.com

• take pictures of your/other peoples moles and have them checked

17.  Anti-cancer shopping list

• shopping list app that tests if your shopping is healthy and contains food that can potentially prevent cancer

18.  Similar to “Mappiness” an app could spontaneously remind you to do certain check ups to prevent cancer, e.g. did you consider having your moles checked?

19.  Stop smoking: collect points for not smoking (RPG)

20.  Myth buster app: Check if what people are saying gives you cancer is actually true

21.  Show that you are trying to prevent cancer, e.g. buy sun protection, scan receipt and Boots will match it

22.  Connect people who have donated to cancer research to people who have cancer to create a neighbourhood help connection

23.  Create a news app where cancer patients can (anonymously) present their story which will make people donate

Thank you to Michelle Flynn and my army of helpers and The Brickhouse who made the night run smoothly – we will be back I promise! Given we had a night club at our disposal and plenty of beer tokens thanks to EMC Consulting and Fortune Cookie, it was great to see some (bad) dancing break (who knew the running man was back in fashion) out at the end of the evening – thank you DJs H, Webb and Edgley for dropping the tunes.

Finally, thank you to the speakers (Tom Hopkins, Richard Sedley, Alex Lee and James Wallman) who set out a context for the evening. What is very clear to me is that gamification is far more than just a trendy fad; it’s permeating many aspects of our virtual and real lifes. However, its tenets and techniques cannot simply be applied ‘over’ what we already do. Far from being a game ‘layer’, we need to rethink things fundamentally and design and hack new worlds, not paper over the old one.

There will be a link to the video of the event once we have edited it, also check out some photos on our Facebook page.

If you would like to continue this conversation, why not do so here?  Or as always we are on twitter @TFTLondon.

Then something happened.

Maybe its the theme of ‘gamification’ that appealed, the lure of a more central location, the whiff of beer or word of mouth hitting a tipping point. Whatever, over 300 people of you are preparing to join us on Thursday night at the Brickhouse on Brick Lane. The location is a great place with lots of space, somewhere to smoke, a large dance floor and a roof that comes off (apparently).

And more importantly, I think we have the best evening yet all planned and ready to go.

We will start with the fantastic team from The Future Laboratory setting out the context of our evening. I have known the Future Lab and their brand LSN Global for several years and I have been inspired by the quality and thoughtfulness of the work that they do. It’s a privilege that they want to help us all understand the opportunity that gamification represents – they practically coined the phrase!

We will then be inspired by four rapid fire presentations relating to one of four tenets of gamification. Any one of these presenters would be great to hear exclusively but you’ll get all four in 30 minutes.

Then we get to the heart of the evening. Cancer Research will explain some of the critical challenges that they face before I split you up into four or five think tanks to address their questions of the Taverners. I have never done a brainstorm with 300 people – it feels like one of those mass weddings that take place in the Far East! This will give us a chance to use the wisdom of the crowd and apply what we have heard to an organisation that does something I think is very important. More than (just) save lives and striving to fund research, they care about the communities and culture of cancer and they need help. If you have time before you arrive, familiarise yourself with what they do and how they campaign today.

With great ideas and observations all over the walls, we then return to a panel discussion, with guests from Microsoft Kinect, Foviance, Fortune Cookie, Electronic Arts, Wolff Olins, Kempt and Gamoolasoft. These experts will attempt to answer your questions – if you have any that you’d like to submit in advance, email me at matthew.bagwell@emc.com or use #tftlondon

Finally, we will hear from the Kinect team about how they see the future of gestural interactions and interfaces unfolding. Yes, we might be familiar with wii and Kinect but what are the educational, enterprise and industrial possibilities? Hopefully, you’ll get a change to play with Kinect to give you a first hand experience and Microsoft have offered up a machine which you can win. Bring a fiver – all proceeds will go to Cancer Research

If all of this isn’t enough to ensure that you all turn up, we have several DJs preparing sets for you to dance the night away, EMC Consulting and Fortune Cookie have stocked the bars (three) and we have the place until 2am, at which point we’ll have to be poured into taxis.

As always, there is food and drink served at 6.30pm. Be prompt if you fancy some tasty treats. The evening (in)formally kicks off at 7pm and it will be fast and furious until 9.30pm. You will need a few quid for drinks later – my budget will be blown quickly I’m sure…

I’m sure that the evening will be the very best Fantastic Tavern yet and that we’ll plan another soon. After all, it seems that beers and ideas go down rather well.