Hunting - the digital way :

"ExoSocial" - this is what we have every month at Exoweb. In short: a gathering of all mates after work in order to discover something new while pushing some of our limits and, above all, having a good time together. Roughly 4 weeks ago we organised the most recent one: A digital scavenger hunt in Dashanzi Art District. Did you go: "Digital scavenger hunt; what the hec?!?". Here we go: the "how to" in a nutshell:

• Define a "playground"- In our case: Beijing's rocking Dashanzi Art District. In Dashanzi fat-ass, old and rusty factories co-exist with new art galleries; steaming pipes impress or irritate the "ätepatäte" visitors of fancy "haute couture" shows, expensive parfume mingles with the smell of a peaceful looking but definitely dead rat and nobody would be particularly surprised to walk pass a supersized earthworm with flames coming out of its nostrils.
  
• Split into teams: 6 à 5 or 6 mates and externals in our case
• Organise one decent digital cam per team
• Define and explain tasks to solve in roughly 90 mins
• Make sure you've got a cosy restaurant, loads of food and barrels of drinks ready once the hunting is over.
• Important detail if you like your mates: Distibute maps of the "playground" and get the cellphone number of at least one person per team.. ;)

The tasks: Shoot a picture that illustrates, in our case, "Something connecting", "Something geeky", "Something funny", "Something risky/scary", "Something agile/dynamic", "Someting representing the home country of a mate" most eloquently. Additional requirement: At least one team mate has to be in the picture (position? Go play!). Supplement: Shoot a telling group pic and come up with a group name. Well then, "Club Sandwich", "Fan Ban", "FOOART", "Hungry", "Wu jia yi" and "Zong Heng Jiang Hu" hit the road to hunt, the digital way.
Here some of the resulting pics:





"Open" Tc, A chain with a "rose" at the end reaching for a star, Two guys falling for each other, another guy falling for a fish, Stylish V-as in Vim or Vincent, Rena's scary (well, I still disagree) butt, Gary wating for snowwhite, The stretching Indian dragon, The fight of the brooms, mutely expressive Darren, Agitated "Wu jia yi" (or yi jia wu?), Park taking on the challenge, Vincent and Krishna back from a (what is likely to be risky) insight, some alternative form of dragon dancing,.. we had it almost all. Some more examples on: http://www.flickr.com/groups/exoweb/

At the end of the day, after savouring quite a tasty buffet at the fancy "at cafe" we had a look at all of them and choose the most popular in every category. Voting: Everyone has two ballons. One yellow, one black. Everyone has one vote per category. For your favourite: put your yellow balloon up in the air. If you want to censor a pic: the black one it is! And yes, Cindy is the queen of censoring.. ;)

I appreciated this ExoSocial a lot since:

• There is one blind spot less on the map of Beijing. Great, since Dashanzi is a melting pot, a place to be, hang loose, discover, flirt, play or simply have a drink or two.
• It provided me with a great opportunity to introduce my parents and my brother, the probably most exotic externals present at this ExoSocial, to all my mates and, thus, bring them closer to a big part of my life here in Beijing. A "little" hug here, a common visit to the women's toilet there -> I was very impressed how quickly my parents and Krishna were integrated/integrated themselves..! A terrific start into my parents, Krishna and my common Beijing and Yunnan trip.
• Not only I seemed to enjoy this evening - I do admit that I was a bit anxious before the game, since I did not know if this type of game pushed too many limits, was to unknown or forced creativity too much and thus, would not be much appreciated. But hey: look at Greg (below) and see why I had a blast of a time and am now sure that ExoMate do not fear the new, or being creative but rather embrace it. Geeky!! ;)
  

Do I need to say that I'm looking forward to other ExoSocials? ;)

exoweb, software, event, company, beijing