Thursday, September 22, 2016

Croudsource Storymap GIS Game

We had a work retreat last weekend in Monterey, CA. 90 families from our Northern California offices gathered for a fun weekend. Terry, the president of our company, suggested our GIS team make a game for the retreat. (yes, actually, we are hiring ;)

Premise of the Game:
Earn points for sharing photos of your trip via a web app accessible on a smart phone



Our team created 5 different applications and tested them out in the field. The options we evaluated included:

  • WebApp Builder 
  • Public Info AGO Template
  • Find, Edit, Filer AGO Template
  • Citizen Report Web App
  • Crowdsource Storymap

We settled on the Crowdsource Storymap, key reasons included:
  • Intuitive, easy to use
  • ability to login from facebook, google, or ArcGIS Online
  • Gallery feature to easily view other employees' photos



Game Logistics:

  1. Point layer of 15 destinations at the Asilomar Conference Grounds and around Monterey 
  2. A second point layer with 3 hidden destinations
  3. A leaderboard webpage to display
    1. The top 10 point earners
    2. Clues for the 3 hidden stops
    3. Once someone found a hidden stop, display the username and date/time it was found 
    4. Link to launch the game
  4. Employees were set loose with their phones and a link to the leaderboard  
  5. A script ran every 15 minutes to download the crowdsource layer from ArcGIS Online to our SQL Server, give points based on proximity to the 15 destinations or 3 hidden destinations, verify the user did not already get a point for this location, and update a table with each users' point total. 

At the end of the game, we downloaded the photos and shared them at a slideshow during the Saturday evening dinner where the top three point earners won prizes. An extra prize was added for the funniest selfie with Terry!

Our Southern California offices are gathering for a retreat in one week in San Diego. We are working on a new dataset for their retreat and a fun new point scheme!

Check out the Crowdsource Storymap and let us know if we can help create a game for your next team building event!