Hi Judith,

How are you doing? Still going steady or are you getting beyond? Well I am currently very excited about a Minor (Course, 10 full time weeks) that is developed at the Hotelschool Maastricht. Our colleague Jos Maas is the inspiration point for this Minor and he has organized several sessions with educators, innovators, experts in the field of hospitality and new media and new technology users to create a Minor were the borders of the Hospitality and Technology worlds are being crossed.

We are trying to add some innovation skills to the students that are participating within the Minor. But the Minor itself will be a first for me too. We are trying to get a gamebased approach. Jos Maas (Hotelschool Maastricht), Miguel van der Laar (Software Engineering Heerlen), Erik van der Dussen (Entrepeneur in a 2.0. world and former Hotelschool Student) en myself (iTeam) are building this minor and we are trying tot make a game of it. Check my Prezi to get an idea:

We already made a visualisation of a board, but this is still pretty much under construction.

I will explain the rules later when I have finished the rulebook. But what you see is the two worlds (Red and Green) of Hospitality and Technology. The participants of the minor will be Hospitality students (they’ll start on the technology side) and Software Engineering students (they’ll start on the hospitality side). The players are part of a multifunctional group (2 Software Engineering students combined with 2 Hospitality students). But the members of the group are placed on either sides of the board. They have to move towards the middle, where the group will ben together and try to bridge the borders of their own field of expertise and the field of the group members. This all under the Web 2.0/Social Media/Innovation Cloud which influences the directions the innovation is going.

At the moment we are developing several things, which can be categorized in two major parts: 1) Bringing the fun to the game (You should think of: Extra levels, unlocking specials, Bringing prices to the board) 2) Bringing the serious to the game (And what I mean by that is that this game and it’s challenges is played in an university of applied sciences. Students get grades for the minor and these are parts of their certificates en diplomas. So their should be a link between the challenges and the basics of the two different educationals basics from both studies.) Fortunatly both studies work with competences and prestation indicators, which can be translated into quests/challenges.

As students are free to choose their minors, I hope that people will like this one which prepares them to be innovative in a changing world. It lets them learn the game of Innovation. Which as you know can be a real frustration and fun like the boardgame Ludo, which in dutch is called something like: Don’t get annoyed!

The boardgame LUDO which is called: “Mens erger je niet” in the Netherlands (translated: Don’t get annoyed!)

The cardgame Innovation.

I am looking forward to play a round of … and Beyond in the Hospitaly, Web and Beyond. If sufficient students apply we will get to play a round in februari.

I will keep you informed on this topic.

With kind regards,

Marcel Schmitz