Lessons Learned from a Conference Scavenger Hunt

GooseChase is a mobile platform that makes running scavenger hunts incredibly easy and exciting. Participants complete missions, receive points, and track progress on real-time leaderboards and photo feeds. GooseChase apps are available for download on iPhone and Android, but not Windows phone.  A very similar competitor is The Go Game.

The organizers of the March of Dimes 2015 staff conference decided to use GooseChase for all  attendees as a fun way to help staff get to know each other, and to engage with the mission.  I volunteered to assist from the administration side of the game, and below are some of my observations.

Lessons Learned

Mission setup

GooseChase recommends 30+ missions for a successful game.  When creating a mission a title, description and identifying the number of award points are the only required fields, although you can also add a photo and link to website.

Regardless of the duration of your event, you can continue to add and edit missions.  Our game was setup for 3 days, and we added 7 events each day.  There is NOT a way to pre-program when new missions begin (nor am I suggesting there should be), so we added new missions nightly.

While adding new missions certainly keeps the game motivation/excitement alive for a multiple day game, I think that starting with 7 missions was limiting.  My recommendation would be to take the GooseChase advice and start with 30+ missions from the start, and if you want to add more later, go for it!

One bit of advice I picked up from a YouTube video was that when you have >30 missions it can become difficult to scroll through the list.  One tip they offered was that if you do offer a lot of missions, to consider printing out a list of them, and numbering them so teams can quickly find them in the app's mission list.

Teams versus individuals

The pro's of this approach are that it makes the app registration process less confusing, and allows the organizers to identify individual contributions.
The con's are that you lose a lot of the team building benefits that could otherwise be achieved, and more importantly you have to pay for significantly more licenses.

We opted for individual registration.

Who is winning?

The leaderboard section of both the app and the desktop site allow you to see who has earned the most points.  The catch is that the only thing that displays is the team/individual name.  As an admin it would be helpful if you could see a full list of user information such as their email address, but I couldn't find that capability.

While doing a corporate event we assumed folks would use their names, instead we ended up with completely random gibberish which prevented us from being able to identify who was playing.  In hindsight, it would be well advised that you ask your users to adhere to a certain naming convention so that you can easily identify who is who (this goes for both team and individual games!).

Examples usernames from our challenge that proved unidentifiable:

• GFN1906
• ChicagoBabe3
• GloryDaze
• TrackyRed

Inclusion of those not in attendance

As mentioned, our implementation of GooseChase was for an invite-only staff conference, which is typically attended by around 35% of our organization.  Since the conference is not streamed and doesn't offer any remote participation, there was a suggestion that the game be modified to provide opportunities to include staff that weren't invited to the conference.  Ultimately it was decided that the GooseChase be focused on on-site participants to keep it as interactive as possible, but it might be worth considering how to include off-site participants in the future. 

Screenshots

The GooseChase app only allows you to utilize the camera from your mobile device, NOT your photo gallery.

Communication, promotion, participation

The March of Dimes staff conference attendees received a binder of conference materials upon registering.  Since I didn't attend the event, and wasn't involved in the promotion of our GooseChase event, I can't say what they received that informed them about the game, instructions on how to participate, or how much it was promoted in other ways (general sessions, posters, management, etc).

Out of 350 conference attendees (and an enterprise/unlimited license), only 40 attendees download the app, and 18 of those completed at least one mission.

Missions

Below are the missions we used and the number of participants in each.  Why am I providing this? When constructing our GooseChase we struggled to find ideas for what would be fun - so consider this us paying it forward!

Mission	Participants
Adaptable: Is your glass half full or half empty? Take a picture of both,	8
Bold: Embracing change takes courage, get bold.  Visit the tech bar before 3pm and write on the courage wall.	6
Circle of Champions: Download the Circle of Champions logo, print and wear it proudly.	3
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!: Put a dollar in the March for Babies bucket.	8
Enable breakouts: ABT getting you down? During your morning breakout session, share a picture of your success during your beach task.	4
Entrepreneurial: Create a new breakfast food or beverage idea and encourage others to try it too.	4
Externally aware: Did you embrace the 30 day challenge and meet someone new? Share!	4
Feeling Floridian?: Ask the hotel waiter for the Tipsy Turtle Cocktail or key lime pie dessert at dinner tonight, share a picture of your treat!	8
Find a friend: Make a new friend on your dine around tonight.	10
Going, going, gone: Get ready to win big! Find out about Mobile bidding for auctions and download the link to our 2015, 24 hour silent auction at the tech bar.  Once you've received it send a picture of your screen.	9
Home improvement: On your water taxi ride to dinner, take a picture of the house with the best story.	6
I <3 technology: Technology getting you down? Take a picture of yourself having a drink and telling us about it the tech bar at 6pm.	9
I like turtles: It is sea turtle nesting season here at the Marriott Harbor Beach.  Find the 2 different nesting areas on the beach and take a picture of yourself in awe.	9
I spy with my little eye: Where's FRED? Find him and take a picture sharing a cup of coffee at the tech bar.	11
Long term focused: reflect on your time at the conference	4
Look at me now: Search yourself in CRM	8
Macro planner: Visit the tech bar and search within FRED to find out about the macro planning program.	8
Mobile giving: (no description was provided)	4
Nimble: team pyramid? leap frog? take a picture being in the right position for change.	3
Paparazzi: Find in your program and document the NICU Family Support photo of the year.	9
Publix: Find someone wearing an I Love Publix button	4
Research: Look in your programs and take a picture of the 2014 National Ambassador, Aidan Lamonth.	12
Say hello: Introduce yourself to a new volunteer and show it by photographing your two badges (should definitely be from different states)	4
Spread the word: 1 in 10 US babies is born prematurely each year, pass a note to a hotel guest or employee and take a picture.	8
Surgeon general warning: Find a picture of a smoke free zone/no smoking and take a picture.	7
Whip it good: from 4:30-5:30 get inspired for your next Signature Chef auction and see what the hotel is cooking in the lobby.  Take a picture of yourself and the chef.	6
You gotta be in it to win it: Use the tech bar and donate $1 to marchforbabies.org.  Then take a picture of the screen.  Note: You will NOT be able to donate from your mobile device and submit a screenshot that way.	9

How March of Dimes Conducted a 30 Day Challenge for Culture Change

For the past year March of Dimes has been undertaking a major strategic realignment to improve our operational efficiency.

Part of the communication plan around the realignment project involved using a 30 day challenge to engage employees in “micro-actions” each day for thirty days. The goal of the challenge was to focus on helping the Foundation establish a more open environment for communication and problem-solving.

Setup

To help drive traffic we posted a widget in the upper right corner for the duration of the challenge which linked to an area of the site with a deeper explanation.

Intranet homepage

30 Day Challenge area

We chose to use a discussion forum to post each challenge in order to keep responses organized and to make it easier to track engagement.

Results

Forum...	May	June (month of challenge)
Hits	299	2,848
Visits	199	1,857
# Threads	16	37
# Posts	23	779
# Likes	5	1958

Lessons Learned

30 Days: Calendar or Business?

Our first struggle with the task was the literal interpretation of "30 day challenge".

• 30 business days
• then should it just be called a 6 week challenge? 
• 30 calendar days, including weekends
• would staff really participate on a weekend?

Having already decided to kickoff the project in June, and call it a 30 day challenge, we went right down the middle and posted challenges on the 22 business days in the month (4 1/2 weeks).  In hindsight, this is something you probably want to put quite a bit of thought into well before your launch date and be extremely clear in your communications, because it was a source of confusion for our staff.

Tagging & Email Notifications

Our intranet software includes tagging capabilities where you can tag individuals or groups of users, and they are then notified via an email and system message on our site.

Using the challenge to promote this feature was a rare opportunity to educate staff on what had been an under-utilized tool. By the end of the challenge nearly every forum post included a tag to a users, department, or physical office location.

Email notifications, generated from tagging, helped keep daily challenges on everyone's mind and fostered a herd mentality where those tagged quickly joined the thread.


Example of one of our forum threads with a few tags, click to expand

Email Overload

Our intranet allows users to subscribe to entire forums, or to individual threads, and a thread reply triggers an automatic thread subscription.  I love these subscription features, but in heavily utilized threads, the quantity of emails can cause some staff to get frustrated.

From the start it would be recommended to provide clear instructions about any email subscriptions your system has and ways to handle overload.  We took this as an opportunity to educate our staff on how to utilize Outlook email rules to maintain an organized inbox - an invaluable lesson that many staff were unaware of.  We also provided opt-out instructions.

Gamification: Leaderboards & Badges

Let's face it, competition is fun. So why not post a leaderboard of your most engaged employees, departments, offices - or award badges to users upon passing certain milestone!

We didn't implement leaderboards because of concern about quality of engagement over quantity, and to be sensitive to those users that were taking part off-line.  In hindsight, I feel that a leaderboard would have been helpful and that its value trumps other concerns.

Load Testing

We weren't sure how many users would participate in our challenge, but assumed it would be a manageable enough number that our intranet platform would be able to keep up.  We were wrong.

On the second day of the challenge we noticed that we had the same number of posts as the first day - which seemed very unusual and soon after were informed that some users were unable to post.  It turned out that our software had an IE specific bug which was preventing the display of >72 posts.

How to get around this? When a thread reached 50 replies, we edited the thread and marked it closed.  This locked the thread, preventing additional replies. Then, we created a new thread, using similar title, and the same thread copy to capture additional responses.  Problem solved!

Challenges

Below is a brief description of the challenges we posted, and the amount of engagement they triggered.  Why am I providing this? When constructing our 30 day challenge we struggled to find ideas for what would make a good challenge - so consider this us paying it forward!

Day	Challenge	Responses
1	say hello to one person you do not normally interact with	72
2	share with a colleague what you value about them	72
3	volunteer to do something that is out of your comfort zone, or normal scope of work	28
4	encourage those around you to think of themselves as part of a team	51
5	post one word that describes the team that you work with	72
8	complete an employee satisfaction survey	42
9	seek out a perspective different than your own by inviting a colleague, volunteer or partner to participate in a conversation or meeting, and seek out this person’s input and ideas on the topic being discussed	20
10	congratulate a colleague, volunteer or partner on a success	26
11	keep an open mind all day long	16
12	post one word that you feel best describes <the company you work for>	60
15	ask a colleague, volunteer, or partner, for their input on a problem or challenge you are facing	19
16	consider your team members involvement before making a statement that begins with “I”	13
17	redirect any conversation that becomes exclusive or siloed	13
18	share the title of a song that you think of when you think of your work team and the work you do together	55
19	share the Olympic sport, or event, that you think of when you think about <the company you work for>	29
22	contribute to a culture of “yes” by maintain a positive attitude in all conversations or meetings	19
23	take 5 minutes and offer to help a colleague with whatever they need	20
24	provide encouragement to someone around you	21
25	describe your favorite “team” moment	20
26	share the tool (from a toolbox), that you think of when you think about your team of colleagues, volunteers and partners at <the company you work for>	29
29	have lunch with someone who you don’t interact with on a daily basis	19
30	what are you coming away from after 30 Days focused on open environment? do you and your team have plans to continue on the path towards a more open environment for communication and problem solving?	22

Here are additional challenges which we considered:

• Fill in the blank (Mad Libs style)
• Example: The company I work for reminds me of  _____ and inspires me to ______.
• Share something you are looking forward to happening this year
• Share something about yourself that most people don’t know
• Share something funny (joke, picture, etc)
• Share your favorite inspirational quote
• Repeat one of the challenges that you especially enjoyed
• Share your thought on the 30 day challenge – what worked well, what could have been better?
• Take your 15 minute breaks and unplug on at least one of them – walk, stretch, meditate