For the past decade, we’ve seen the majority of our communication channels and social interactions migrate to the digital world. And while this shift has been instrumental in reconnecting us with friends and family across distant geographies, its often at the expense of face-to-face contact with our neighbors.
These tools for social networking can also be incredibly powerful in getting us offline and back into our communities. Recently, a new form of offline social networks have emerged to bring us together around common hobbies, the desire to share new skills, or even to simply to borrow a ladder from our neighbor. What’s missing, however, is a means to go play.
Recess is a social platform to organize and discover participatory sports and fitness activities in your local community. Recess connects people around the sports that they love to play, and makes it easy to do so. Players can join their friends after work for a soccer game, discover weekend kickball games in the local park, or organize morning runs with their neighbors.
Let’s go play.
Last night, I noticed my friend Lee check in on foursquare to a park in Denver with the comment “Rogue Volleyball, Week 1.” Asking her about it, it turns out that one of my best buddies, Andrew, recently decided to put together a rogue volleyball league (my “crew”), rather than join a conventional league. Not only is this fantastic zeitgeist for my thesis, but it now also serves as a tertiary prototype for me, as Andrew has been keeping rigorous documentation about attendance at his events. Awesome. I should call home more often.
Another one of those moments that reminds me that my thesis is on to something.
Coming soon…..
(brilliant identity work by Aeliox)
The joys of pickup basketball
There is nothing quite like executing a perfect pick and roll with a complete stranger. It requires timing, coordination, awareness, and most of all a connection, with someone that five minutes earlier you didn’t even know existed. The moment only lasts a few seconds, but it never fully goes away.
“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile….Most needed are those ‘third places’ [home and work being the first two] which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life.”
Our Vanishing “Third Places” - Ray OldenburgPickup basketball is a perfect social game. It’s flexible, able to be played with anywhere from two to ten people. The high frequency of offensive plays, and fast transition from defense to offence, mean you don’t have to feel too bad if you miss a shot, or fling that behind-the-back pass out of bounds. People of similar ability tend to end up guarding each other, so it’s not a massive problem to have people of varying skill levels on the court at the same time. Maybe most importantly, courts can be squeezed into lots of different places, so you usually don’t have to look very far to find somewhere to play. Playing with strangers is part of basketball’s DNA.
That DNA leads to small moments like forming an instant connection with someone you just met by pulling off an impossible comeback together. Or finding yourself guarding a friend, and the hours you’ve spent on the court together mean that you know exactly what he’s about to do, and he knows that you know, and everyone else fades away for a few seconds. Or getting a nickname for doing anything out of the ordinary, like ‘hotspot’ for hitting three shots in a row from the same spot on the perimeter, or ‘too-big-to-fail’ when someone with a height advantage is dominating the game. The rules of basketball and the culture of pickup turn the normally awkward and stilted social dynamics of interacting with strangers into the most fun thing you’ll do that week. Plus there’s the usual benefits of sport - competition, being in the sun and fresh-air, and getting fit.
Back in 2009 The Onion jokingly hit the nail on the head with the piece “90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles”. An avalanche of entertainment options keeps us indoors and separated from the community around us, and is amplified by the increasing difficulty of making friends once you hit your mid-twenties. The more time I spend playing pickup basketball, the more I am convinced that it’s both the easiest and most enjoyable way to solve this problem.
Source: benhartney
Class of 2012….1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings……5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids’ sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it’s fun? We are systematically creating races out of things that ought to be a journey.
Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Tree. Wait a minute….this looks a lot like a forrest
A key screen that didn’t fit into my wire flow, the Create a Game functionality. Amazing how much information needs to go into getting a game off the ground.
Definitely my favorite aspect is the scheduling of games around how many people in the Crew can be there. Inspired heavily from airline sites that help you discover the perfect time to fly.
In an attempt to restore some of the whimsy of childhood to a workaholic city, a group of Washingtonians wants to bring “adult recess and play” to the capital’s corridors of power….“This city is so obsessed with business and politics — you have to work 50 hours a week and then go to all the right happy hours — that we don’t prioritize recess and fun,” said Joey Katona, 23, the group’s co-founder.
Today, I had Guri Venstad use a clickthru of my app that I had put together using Tap. This served two purposes. I am trying to get a “working” demo of the wireframes, etc into as many hands as possible so that I can see where the app has dead ends and what’s confusing to people. I also had Leland, my thesis advisor, do a similar test today.
I was also testing a few video techniques for tomorrow’s shoot, and once again trying out the music. I’m still liking this treatment, but am a bit concerned about reducing my app to black and white. Something to consider moving forward.
Rain rain go away I can’t afford another rental day
April 20, 2012 at 07:36PM
http://instagr.am/p/JqP2RjnP9I/
Source: coopersmithphoto
