Done my talk. Hmm - needed more preparation I think. I said the things I wanted to say, but the words jumbled together somewhat and I had to speak at double-speed (which to a human being is probably quad-speed) to fit it all in.

Still, the audience got dragged through feathery ecosystems, infinite play, and why I'm forever linked to Ross Kemp...

Slides here!

Playtime was absolutely excellent by the way. A big YAY to Tim and Rob for organising the whole thing, I found it really thought provoking and met some really interesting folks there...

Tim Wright steps up.

Grew up without computers, blogs or mobile phones. Talks about Oldton. First comments led away from where Tim thought it would go. It's all about putting childhood memories into a fictional setting.

Googlers took it up and started contributing.

Coincidences followed... Tim's dad *had* been to Oldton as a sailor! Folks then start accusing Tim of faking stuff, of course :)

Tim had a lot of content to deal with but wasn't sure what to do with it. At another conference he heard a lot of talk about cards as a story-telling tool, tokens in gameplay, as items of value, with suits, etc. "Cards are just an unbound book, aren't they?"> He also wanted to build and draw a map, using assets from the blog to create a guided tour of the town.

"You're not sure whether people will collude with you in your engagement, or sabotage you."

The project turned from a blog collection to a mapping project to a card-related narrative...

Gavin Stewart, poet.

Poetry is rooted in play. A poem is "a bicycle made out of jelly, an accident where no-one is to blame".

"There's no such thing as an audience any more, just artists who haven't discovered they aren't artists yet"

Showed off some quite amusing poetry/Flash crossovers.

Pat Kane returns to the podium to talk about blogging: having been a journalist, he feels the freedom of complete editorial control, despite the fact that your audience is way smaller. His experience of blogging is "a synergy between mental play and community play".

"For a successful blog, have a well-crafted and at first sight contradictory meme" :)

When you blog, you don't know how you'll be used - "you surrender yourself to the semantic enthusiasms of the world", in the same manner that during play you're surrendering yourself to the activity.

Talked about enthusiasm for one of his less relevant blog posts - I know how he feels.

Talked about "Crumping" - one for you James :)

Dan Hon of MindCandy, talking about PerplexCity.

No he's not - it's all about treasure, and everyone loves treasure. "Alternate Reality Games" is a term that puts people off.

They love puzzles and stories and treasure - PerplexCity is all these. Season 1: the story is about the disappearance of a fantastical object. Draws on the heritage of Masquerade (which really pissed off the National Trust, who objected to lots of middle class folks digging up England).

But Masquerade had an end.

Talks about the AI game, which many folks found more interesting than the film. One of the first examples of the ARG genre.

PerplexCity players have made a Google Earth-style scrollable map out of the backgrounds of the PC cards. PC has letters to the editor, articles, a newspaper written by players, etc. Giving the cards away for free today, because "they're a bit like crack, really". Some cards have heat-sensitive inks, UV inks, scratch and sniff, microdots, etc.

They do live events too - a conga around Trafalgar Square that got mixed up with an anti-war march ("the police don't like you doing human chains in Trafalgar Square"). Gender split in their players is 50/50, age range is 7 upwards, to pensioners ("the grey crowd").

They've also launched a board game.