The website of BD & Comics Passion is online! This new festival, celebrating the graphic novel genre, will take place the 7-9 October, at the Institut français (London). Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), Jean-Claude Mézières (Valérien and Laureline), a cosmic party… and much more !

As webmaster of the Institut français, I worked with the Book Office (organising the festival, in association with Comica Festival) to make the whole website.

www.institut-francais.org.uk/bdandcomicspassion

The graphic design is based on the festival poster made by an illustrator.

Conference “Toward gamification ? Game mechanics outside game” (March the 3rd 2011) Summary Part 2

Josselin Perrus focused his speech on use of badges.
A badge is a social indicator : it’s a way of learning information about people’s type (eg. Top-rated Sellers icon on eBay).

Badges could be organized in hierarchy or in category. Category enables to distinguish users, and if the social indicators are well chosen, there could be a “mirroring effect” ; the user would want to improve his own image. Besides category limits content, only relevant information is displayed. Whereas hierarchy bores users, they grow tired of competition, and to heap badges could trouble reading information.

Good social indicators could be a solution of differentiation, to remind you of yourself rather than to show yourself. The more you could express your own identity, the more you could attempt to get to the identity you want.

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Conference “Toward gamification ? Game mechanics outside game” (March the 3rd 2011) Summary Part 1

Speakers
Nicolas Nova (Lift Lab) : Introduction
Josselin Perrus (eCRM consultant) : Bagdes as social indicators
Philippe Gargov (geographer consultant) : Game and city

“Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications, particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications” (Wikipedia), or to encourage desired behaviors (for instance to perform chores that people don’t usually like).

Eg : Chore Wars (ARG) suggests real cleaning-tasks as quests, the players are from the same house or workplace, and each completed chore gives experience points.

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(summary Web Culture conference – February the 10th – Lyon)

Virginia Heffernan developed several points : the social opportunities of internet, the cultural catastrophe and the likely reactions, and the safety feeling caused by the apps.

She had her first contact with internet in 1978, with US army’s chats. Since then she have reckoned that it was a wondreful way for practising how to present herself, working on her social-skills, talking to complete strangers (even from a different social background), being more confident without being nervous or blushing, inventing herself… being a “social super-hero”. But she also realised that her lies could and would be reveal, and after an actual date with another user she left internet (for a time) for the reality, which seemed more interesting.

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(summary Web Culture conference – February the 10th – Lyon)

Antonio A. Casili concentrated particularly on the effect of the web on our networks : does the web change the size and shape of humans groups, does it create new links ?
At the beginning of internet, it was considered as potentially risky ; cutting people from others, bringing isolation. Some studies spread this idea, especially one led by Robert Krauf (Internet Paradox, 1998), which noticed that “greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness“. Offline and online life would be directly related, increase of online relationships would cause a decrease of offline relatitionships. But this conclusion was disproved by another survey by Kraut himself (Internet Paradox Revisited, 2001), which deduced that this increase wasn’t relevant and possibily caused by a transition / adaptation time.
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The conference “Web Culture: New Modes of Knowledge, New Sociabilities” was held yesterday (10th February) at l’Institution des Chartreux in Lyon. Hosted by Sylvain Bourmeau (journalist for Mediapart), the speakers were Dominique Cardon (sociologist, researcher), Antonio A. Casili (sociologist, researcher) and Virginia Heffernan (journalist, New York Times Magazine), and talked about how internet changed our access to knowledge, art and the others.
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Gamasutra published an excerpt from “Reality is broken” by Jane McGonigal, in which she explains that we like games because we can focus our energy and work hard for a task we have chosen. Then she lists the different kinds of work we can find in games and how it affects us (mental work, discovery work, teamwork…)

Read the book !

the excerpt
Jane McGonigal’s website
an other excerpt : Practical advice for gamers

I’m developing a flex application for memorizing vocabulary, based on SRS (Spaced repetition learning systems).
I’ve used AmfPhp to connect to database, As3Corelib for JSON, and Google Translate API for translation. Translation works in local but I have still security issues to run it online.

flex sources
php and mysql files

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This year is done, I finished my internship at Kiniro (flash game with a tree-structure) but I’m still working until the end of november (AS3 flash development and participation in game design).

I took the TOEIC and got 930 (out of 990), which should be an advanced intermediate level.
I’m looking for a job in design (multimedia, video game) or development (flash, web) and I hope find a position in UK or North Europa to keep learning English.

Interview of Aurélien Tournier, new community manager and old schoolmate, on MediaEtudiant (fr).