Hive Mind Challenge 1.0: After-action Report
And breathe: Hive Mind Challenge 1.0 is done. This Wednesday the HMC’s Alpha run rumbled through the Coach & Horses in Soho with plenty of spills and thrills, and an ultimately satisfying ending. Over 35 people and 8 separate teams were present, and they were a seriously formidable lot.
The evening started on a stumble, as we learned on arrival that the pub’s WiFi was down that evening. But the players kicked things off with a bang as they mobilized to get connected.
Most people had 3G-capable smartphones or dongles for their laptops. Others were more enterprising: a few people went to the bar next door and conned their way into getting a password for their WiFi. As one member of the Brixton Hive put it, “Usually messing about trying to get on the internet is annoying – but this time it just made me feel all MacGyver.” Their gung-ho attitude ended up winning them the trophy.
You can download a PDF of the questions (and answers) used on the day. We eased people into the idea of a ‘pub quiz where you can cheat’ with Round 1, which pretty much everyone aced; Round 2 was a little harder but didn’t pose too much of a challenge for most. Round 3 was obviously the trickiest; even the best teams only got 4 out of the 10 questions within the 30 minutes they had, and they both had several ‘remote players’ who were helping them out by Skype, phone, and IM. Round 4 was rapid-fire, with the first team to answer getting the points, and really boiled down to how had the fastest Googling skills and connectivity.
On the whole, we were very pleased with the evening; it was an experiment, the ‘Alpha run’ of the Hive Mind Challenge experience, but people had a lot of fun and everyone seems to be eager for the next challenge. For other opinions, you can see coverage in Prospect Magazine’s blog (thanks to Tom Chatfield!) and quite a few reactions on Twitter.
And we’d love to hear from you, if you were there, or if you were participating remotely. How do you think Hive Mind Challenge 2.0 could be made better?
Let us know, and we’ll see you at Challenge 2.0, which will probably be happening in January! Follow us at @hivemindcontrol to get the latest…
