Game On!

The games are underway and if you’re reading this in the morning on Saturday 9/9, it means that you’re missing out on the fun. That’s OK, since YOU can see how things are going live on the web…

CLICK HERE
to see the LIVE game progress of
the Urban Reversi games
@ Sidewalk art festival

Put our next Birmingham-based event on your calendar for Saturday, September 23rd, during the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. If you’re in New York City next Saturday, join us at the CONFLUX 2006 festival.

Play Today @ Artwalk festival

We’ll be kicking today’s game off at 9:30am with an orientation about the game and formatoin of the team matches. Gameplay should start at 10am. If you are so inclined, feel free to come in matching costumes and BRING YOUR OWN DIGITAL CAMERAS to capture the action. Of course, we’ll want you to upload them to the flickr Urban Reversi photo pool.

Find your way to the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival offices at 2312 1st Ave N. Click HERE for a Google map, which lets you get driving directions from wherever you’re embarking on your visit downtown.

Play Urban Reversi this weekend in Birmingham

Urban Reversi: 50% photo scavenger hunt, 50% peformance art, 100% fun (yes, it all adds up to 200% more fun than staying home on a Saturday)

Come play with us and recapture the magic of childhood playtime with a modern twist. The game of “Urban Reversi” turns the downtown city streets of Birmingham into a large-scale urban game loosely based on the board game of Othello. Challenges will be in the form of performance art using a combination of noun, verb, and adjective randomly assigned to the team when they arrive at an intersection. Contestants must think quickly on their feet, using wireless technology and their wit to win their match against another team.

Join Catalyst and TechBirmingham as we “play in the streets” of downtown Birmingham. Event #1 of the 3 consecutive weekends is upon us. Come out and play in downtown Birmingham during the ArtWalk 2006 festival!

• THIS WEEKEND’S LOCATION // smack in the middle of Artwalk in the loft district of downtown Birmingham, Alabama
• THE GAME BOARD // a six by six city-block area surrounding the Artwalk festival
• THE GEAR // you, your (new) friends, and a few Verizon Motorola Q phone/devices
• THE REASON // to have fun and meet other fellow young professionals
• WHAT TO WEAR // something comfortable and good walking/running shoes… costumes are encouraged!!!
• THE REWARD // see your city in a new way

Gather at the Catalyst/Sidewalk table at 2312 1st Ave North in downtown Birmingham (Sidewalk offices)… registration and team assignments begin at 9:30am with gameplay kicking off at 10:00am.

If you have a Verizon Motorola Q (or other smartphone that can wirelessly browse the internet, has a built-in cameraphone and SMS capability), please bring it along… otherwise, we’ll provide the devices for gameplay.

Can’t make it? Watch the game as it progresses online via the web. A link will be posted here on the website to view the gameplay!

Urban Reversi gets a big boost from Verizon Wireless

VERIZON WIRELESS PRESENTS $20,000 GRANT TO CATALYST FOR ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY AMONG BIRMINGHAM YOUNG PROFESSIONALS

Grant Presented with Verizon Wireless’ Launch of High-Speed Wireless Broadband Network in Birmingham; Takes Catalyst “Hip to Be Civic” Campaign to Streets

BIRMINGHAM, AL (5 September 2006) – Verizon Wireless announced today a $20,000 grant to Catalyst as part of the August 31 launch of Verizon Wireless’ Broadband Network in Birmingham. The grant will allow Catalyst, a group of emerging young professionals in Birmingham, to incorporate technology into its “Hip to be Civic” campaign by conducting large-scale urban games as a way to recruit new members to Catalyst and raise the awareness of Birmingham as tech-savvy community for businesses and young professionals.

During three weekends in September, Catalyst, with the help of its technology partner TechBirmingham, will stage two large-scale urban games during festivals in Birmingham and one in New York City. The two Birmingham-based events will be used to recruit young professionals in the city to join the Catalyst’s efforts to improve quality of life, celebrate diversity, and encourage sustainable development and urban revitalization and much more. The New York event will focus on bringing national awareness to Birmingham’s tech-literate community.

The urban games leverage the Verizon Wireless EV-DO broadband network as competing teams use instant messaging, picture messaging and other wireless services to determine locations and act out challenges based on scenarios given by game officials.

“Catalyst is proud to receive the Verizon Wireless grant as part of our ‘Hip to be Civic’ campaign,” said Cherie Fields, director of Catalyst. “We believe this use of technology will be a fun way of generating buzz among young professionals not only in Birmingham, but also on a national scale with the help of the New York event,” she said.

“We are thrilled to present Catalyst with the Verizon Wireless grant to support their efforts to raise awareness of technology in the Birmingham area,” said Jim McGean – president of Verizon Wireless Alabama/Georgia region. “An important part of our business philosophy is giving back to the local community. The Catalyst program not only gives us the opportunity to do just that but it gives the local community the chance to experience our broadband network in a unique way and it demonstrates how technology supports our daily life socially, recreationally and professionally.”

BroadbandAccess is Verizon Wireless’ high-speed wireless broadband network geared toward mobile professionals and business customers. It provides average access speeds of 400-700 kilobits per second (kbps). The service gives customers the ability to connect to the Internet using a PC card that slides directly into most laptop computers and enables a download of a 1 Megabyte e-mail attachment (the equivalent of a small PowerPoint presentation or a large PDF file) in about 20 seconds.

Urban Reversi – play in the streets this September!

coming to Birmingham, Alabama and New York City, New York

Planning for NYC

We’ve identified the team members heading north to NYC mid-September for the Conflux 2006 event. Now we’re investigating costs so that we can pursue a sponsor to back our trip. If you have ideas of an organization that can underwrite our visit, please contact us directly.

Renaming the game

We’ve determined that if we’re going to take this game to the next level, we need to avoid a copyright infringement dispute, so are changing the name of the game from Urban Othello to Urban Reversi. It’s still the *game* of Othello, just not branded as such.
We still own the urbanothello.com domain, but it will point to the newly bought URL before we start playing the game again in September.

Green Light!

We just got the following email last night… now the fun begins!

Thanks for answering the questions we had for you. If there’s still anything we need to discuss, the curators will be in touch. This email is to let you know that you are now officially confirmed to participate in Conflux. Welcome!

Will We or Won’t We?

On May 15th, we got a very exciting email…

We are happy to inform you that the Conflux 2006 curatorial team would like to include your proposed project in Conflux 2006. Before we can give you the final ok, we may have some logistical questions for your individual project. […] Please reply to the questions by May 20th and we will follow up within a few days. We will be in touch again soon with more detailed information regarding the schedule, travel and planning for your project. Thanks again for your proposal. We look forward to working with you at Conflux 2006!

Best regards, Conflux 2006 Curatorial Team
http://conflux2006.glowlab.com

After answering their questions, we’ve got our fingers crossed that we’ll get the go-ahead soon and get our travel plans in order.

Coming back for more!

Good news! We’ve decided to stage our 2nd TechWalk event this summer during the 8th Annual Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival on Saturday September 23rd. Keep checking back here for more details.

If you can help in the staging/planning of this event, please join us at our monthly TechFriday breakfast meetings every 3rd Friday beginning in June leading up to the event in September. See the TechBirmingham Events Calendar for dates and location.