Reply To: Ideas for helping new cruisers acclimate?
Something I thought of was having a branch/update of the Geek Code on our badges. I have a plan to hack something together on Seamonkey.us to demonstrate. Maybe somehow print on demand stickers to put on badges?
Personally, I end up standing around most of the time just observing. It would be nice to have some way of indicating a couple of areas to initiate conversation about, so we can geek out together. By the same token, it might be helpful to know of things to avoid.
I’ve been thinking of it along the lines of ShadowRun skill trees, so you’d have a general attribute, then a smaller subset, then a specific item. Something like TV -> SciFi -> Firefly. And then use something like the Geek Code modifiers to indicate level of interest.
So TV SciFi + Firefly ++ says I think TV is ok, more so if it is SciFi, and I like Firefly, but there are people who are more into it than I am (hence the ++ and not ++++).
I could also say TV — SciFi + Firefly +++ which says that I don’t much like TV except for SciFi, and especially Firefly.
I don’t think all the modifiers really apply, and I think there are
others needed. I like the ! for not participating in the topic, but
there could also be one for watching vs participating.
This could apply to anything/everything people are interested in.
Sports — Individual – Fencing ++
Sports — Individual Darts +
Sports — Individual Juggling ++
!Politics
!Religion
Electronics ++ Home Theater ++ TV ++
Audio/Visual ++ Video ++ Recording +++
Music + Internet ++ JoCo +++
Games ++ RPGs +++ Shadowrun ++++
Games ++ Board Games +++ Hanabi ++++
If each person had at least a couple items like that on their badges, it might be easier to start conversations about other topics than “Oh, is this your first cruise?” Maybe a Tag Cloud?