For the last couple of years I have wanted to form a professional group of experience makers. I’ve finally started to reach out to some colleagues to get this started.
Like most projects, I prefer to work up a draft mission statement.
Here’s the one for the IRL Experience Makers Group:
To help creators of unique IRL participatory experiences by providing education, personal connections, moral support, camaraderie and other resources to help them continually improve their craft and be successful.
The salient parts being:
- IRL (as opposed to VR, video games, etc)
- Participatory (as opposed to movies, most theater, and other passive entertainment)
A good mission statement makes it clear what the organization does and doesn’t do and who it is for and who it isn’t for.
Some of the areas I want the group to focus on include:
- The Four Pillars of Experience Design:
- Makering: the high and low tech building of things.
- Performing: the acting and interactions with guests.
- Arting: the physical design elements.
- Writing: the story, theme, and world building.
- Participant psychology: influence, fun, mood, persuasion, status, group dynamics, cognitive biases, etc.
- Working with the muse: generating creative ideas and dealing with the resistance.
- The business side: sales, marketing, operations, starting up, planning, decision making.
- Personal psychology: managing your attention and your emotions so you can do the work you need to do.
I know there are groups out there already that focus on one of the pillars, but I am wanting one group to bring them together in a structured and extremely helpful forum so that they can meet and learn from each other in the pursuit of their craft.