How can a game contribute to strengthen democracy and citizen participation? This was the main question in the minds of the jury members of the e-Democracy Awards 2011, during the presentation of Marc Thébault last October at the City Hall of Issy-les-Moulineaux. Chief coomunications officer of Caen-la-mer region (in the north of France), Marc gave a presentation of "Geemik", a playful operation launched last September during the Fair of Caen, with the purpose to raise public awareness of NFC (Near Field Communication), the mobile contactless technology.
The idea behind it was to boost Caen-la-mer’s presence (225,000 inhabitants, 29 municipalities) on the web and to accustom its inhabitants to the NFC issues. An exhibition stand which had as motto ”Devenez accro aux jeux de l’agglo” (Get addicted to the games of our city) presented four funny games, available for testing on eight touchscreen tablets. The objective was to collect a maximum number of points – either via a cityzi symbol or a QR code – in order to win many gifts. The games were also accessible online on the geemik-game.com website. The game with the highest success rate among both the visitors and the internet users will be developed into a free mobile application.
It is thus trough games that the promoters of the operation want to associate the population to the digital projects of a region that was selected as leading territory of the NFC. The urban community doesn’t want to be the only one proposing or imposing services which use this technology. "We wish to work in a co-constructive approach", explained the vice-president for communications Jacques Lelandais in an interview for Blog Territorial. This device is the first piece which will allow to associate the future users in the design and development process of new future services. It’s what all the web 2.0 philosophy relies on, i.e. the development of collective intelligence.
This is the first time a conurbation uses the social networks and playful digital tools to educate the public and raise awareness of the potential and benefits of using digital technologies. As Marc Thébault put it, “The idea behind it is to pass from the Computer-aided design (CAD) to the Usage-aided design and to enable the future users of the new services created to make their voices heard”.
If only 26 written proposals were submitted during this first phase of the project, its designers are convinced that "the intelligence of a territory is always collective" and that their goal has been reached, if the game can help raise people’s interest and make them participate.
You can check out below Marc Thébault’ presentation:
