Embracing your weird: Community Building through Fun & Play
summary
Built an automated badge system hooked to a messaging bus and later made Mozilla badges compatible, ran a candy-swap since 2016, a Zelda‑style virtual event plus a Minecraft server, minted physical challenge coins, and shipped a mobile scavenger‑hunt app on Android and iOS. The badges and coins drive surprising engagement, the scavenger hunt draws ~35 active players and turns shy attendees into team builders, and private karaoke rooms create a safe, optional space for bonding.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:23Core concepts of community
- 3:11Personal passions and values
- 5:20Inspiration from decom
- 7:03Why fun builds communities
- 8:08Four steps to grow a community
- 13:24Secret plan: playful ideas
- 14:27Badges experiment
- 16:56Candy swap tradition
- 17:39PowerPoint karaoke
- 18:00Virtual event Nest
- 18:42Challenge coins
- 20:27Scavenger hunt at AWS
- 23:39Safe space karaoke
- 26:57Q&A and closing
related talks
31mZeBadge: The community badge - what?
35mWe Built 2,000 Custom Electronic Badges for Our Developer Conference, Replay (Here's How)
44mThe 10 Commandments of Community Organizing
47mHow to (Re)build Community in 10 Easy Steps—Post Pandemic
39mCommunity - What is it good for?
01h 01mBuilding Developer Community Panel
27mBuild dumb sh*t
51mChallenges Accepted and Lessons Learned: A 10-Year Retrospective