Continuation of Yesterday’s Game

This morning I woke up, and I went out to have a bagel with an old friend from college. The child with whom I had played the silly soccer noise-making game yesterday walked up to me with a soccer ball. His mother is indicated to me that he had done this. When she gestured this toward me, I was so excited! (I had completely not noticed at all. It’s not that I had misinterpreted his intention; I hadn’t even noticed he was indicating an intention.) Rupert and I went and played the soccer game again. This was absolutely delightful.

Later, Rupert’s brother came over to me and asked for a high five. I misunderstood him. I thought he wanted a hug, so I gave him a hug. Then someone said high five, and I was like, “Oh, I misunderstood,” and I gave him a high five.

Both of these were circumstances where the playing of the game was super fun. I just didn’t know what game they wanted to play, and once we understood, it was a great time.

Also, such a blast to have a not-quite-four-year-old want to continue yesterday’s game.

At the Game Conference

At the game conference this afternoon, I was put on a team to string up the ropes course puzzle. I am not the right person to design and execute a ropes course puzzle, at least not when given 2 hours to do so because the doors open in 2 hours. Fortunately, there were plenty of people who were the right people (e.g. a woman who had built rube goldberg machines and a couple who had built theater sets).

Their biggest problem was lack of management and lack of coordination. They didn’t know that they should divide into 3 groups of 2, each tackling a different structure. I organized the teams and ran between them, uncovering and solving their blockers.

Each solved their own problems very well, but nerds (engineers included) tend to focus on solving the problem in front of them. They operate best when someone else is thinking about the constraints and considering how the different problems fit together. There’s a huge value in coordinating.