A prediction of what will be underwater when the sea rises two metres. Water Water Everywhere I helped run this session as part of the CLWG design conference; CLWG being the Chestnut Lodge Wargaming Group. I believe the organisation is around forty years old, and is much more focused on the design of new games rather than playing existing ones. Well, I say “helped run” the session, I mainly took notes while my co-designer, Terry Martin, asked the questions. ...
Prologue An intentionally browseable set of weeknotes from my previous week1 of work, with different subjects introduced by bold text. The subject matter might not seem appropriate because I think I’ve finally acknowledged that the dividing line between work and not-work is fairly arbitrary, and based on which account I’m using to talk to someone more than anything else. Because of the amount of business development I have to do, any traditional division like “am I being paid for this?” isn’t a useful way to define what category an activity fits in. ...
This is a list of my thoughts on the particularly valuable points from the Georgetown University Wargaming Society (GUWS) talk: “Based on Mechanics & Theme: Synergies in Game Design” by Damon Stone. You can watch the whole thing on their YouTube channel. ( if you do watch it, there’s literally a couple of pauses due to intermittent connectivity; but they’re not a big deal, and are well handled by all ) GUWS event on July 7th 2022 Provoked thoughts: GUWS is pronounced “goose”?! ...
I worked: I attended DSET - an online military training conference. It was good to see them go hybrid, although I found their chosen platform Hopin disappointing. The event was well handled by Ruddy Nice Limited, especially the issues such as intermittent connectivity and an emergency alarm in the middle of the very first session. Similarly I was at CPCF 6, the Cyber Physical Convergence Forum. I was particularly impressed by Helen Sutton of Dataminr and their presentation, and the emphasis on selling through demonstrating knowledge rather than hard marketing. And also impressed by the overall aim of the event to be hybrid, even with a relatively small space representing the physical side of the event. CTG Intelligence is worth keeping an eye on if you work in any part of security. ...
As fifty percent of my readership complained about the breathless bulleted format I’ve been using, which is a very fair point to make, I’m experimenting with different formatting this “week”, although I’ve much less material. Considering how I create these blogs I should be able to generate an index easily, so it’s trivial for people to see if there’s something of interest each time. ( A newsletter that does this really well is the tl;dr sec newsletter, the format actively encourages picking and choosing the sections relevant to you, I aspire to do the same. ) ...
A summary of what I’ve done over the last month or so. I attended: I went to a Sarah Le-Fevre event where Nick Kellet demonstrated some aspects of his new product, Deckible. It’s an interesting idea, putting card decks on your mobile device, especially the aspect of making card-decks as accessible to everyone in the same way that Spotify does for music. Using an app doesn’t replicate all of the functionality of a card, but there were good demonstrations of the audio and video capabilities. It was interesting to see what the technology is capable of, but I’m not sure these are card-decks now, but also I’m not sure they’re not. Also I was reminded of this tweet thread, and many recent conversations about interfaces and form factors. As per the military trainees in the picture below, while surrounded by laptops, sometimes you need a pen and a shared map to make sense of the environment: picture courtesy of Jim Dawson on Twitter I was in another meeting of the PlaySecure organisers. We decided on ticket prices and discounts and some other administrivia. Follow this for the conference details and we’re using Papercall for content submissions. Ostensibly the conference is about game-based methods to improve decision making in cyber security, but anything related to game-based methods for training or planning will be welcome… especially anything half-complete that would benefit from audience feedback, or something unusual that won’t fit in elsewhere. ...
By Nick Drage, a cybersecurity strategist, and Indy Neogy, a coach who specialises in how we deal with the future. This is a “personal blog” version, where I’ve added a couple of pictures. Indy’s publication on LinkedIn can be found here. Comments welcome anywhere. Cybersecurity Strategy in the New Era The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been shocking. As a hot conflict it inevitably makes us focus on physical threats. However, it has also necessitated discussions that produced a lot of useful articles about how to improve personal and organisational cybersecurity - in particular how to improve them in response to a raised level of cybercrime and cyberattack activity. ...
The last three… threeish… weeks… I played games I finished Untitled Goose Game - well, the main storyline anyway. It’s a fun game, about being a goose… if you’re a gamer looking for something different, or a non-gamer who thinks video games are all Call of Duty or Super Mario, do look it up. Sometimes it was a little perplexing, so I had to “research” solutions online, but mainly this was really enjoyable and relatively gentle puzzle game based around an engaging concept. There’s a whole set of one player games waiting for me once I’ve stopped my Xbox360 being so noisy, so this was a welcome diversion while that task sits on a “to do” list. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I do enjoy online multiplayer games but due to financial limitations I can only play the fun but weird but twitchy Fortnite; or Rocket League - where I’m facing Real Madrid one match, and the Rose and Crown 2nd XI the next. I would imagine a multiplayer “Untitled Geese Game” would be fun, but I’m trying to think how competing gaggles of geese would work. memeable I did work The usual collection of promising and interesting conversations, but with a poor hit rate. I choose not to wonder “is it me, or is it everybody else” most of the time. ...
Last week Mostly work I can’t discuss. I’m behind on a lot of meetings, and thought it would be a good time to finally look at automated scheduling services rather than email everyone the same options and hope there’s no clashes. All the scheduling services appear to assume you work in just one way - you’re available unless specified otherwise, and free time is offered to all contacts or none. Disappointing, but I might play around with scripts a little, or search a little harder… A really thought provoking demonstration of a business game, lots of ideas around how it did and didn’t work, and where it could be used. Attended very little of a NATO conference, but got lucky and caught really intriguing ideas on modelling cyber conflict, and python based efforts to run through those models. This fits in with similar ideas I’ve discussed with people elsewhere, I just need to glue them together. And again trying to square the circle where I need a lot of time to work on products and ideas and games that would make money and make a difference, but having to spend most of my time and energy earning money to pay the bills doing “day rate” consultancy has doesn’t have such long term value to me. Suggestions or investment welcome. On a happier note, I had a very wholesome weekend, watching the funny and lovely Free Guy, and it was also my birthday in Animal Crossing… Happy Birthday to me...
Last week Mostly work I can’t discuss. Worked Control for another wargame, lots of thoughts about how to run a megagame with highly variable parcipation. Working with Stone Paper Scissors again. Oh, it’s going to be one of those seasons.