Spun app aims to make everyone at Big Omaha just one intro away

We all know the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but what about the Six Degrees of Jeff Slobotski? Big Omaha is bound to create thousands of connections, which will continue on long after Friday. Attendees can see the relationships being built as they scan …

The Spun app tracks connections made at Big Omaha with a color-coded graph.

We all know the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but what about the Six Degrees of Jeff Slobotski?

Big Omaha is bound to create thousands of connections, which will continue on long after Friday. Attendees can see the relationships being built as they scan the crowds at KANEKO, but it’s impossible to grasp the full picture.

Spun, a new collaborative game made just for the event, aims to lower the collective degrees of separation by providing an easy way for Big Omaha attendees to track the people they meet, which will then be represented in a color-coded graph (below) that highlights the connectedness of the group.

The web app comes from What Cheer, a longstanding supporter of Big Omaha and Silicon Prairie News. The team created find-and-seek game SPDO for Big Omaha 2011, and its founder, John Henry Müller, is the creator of the “I Live in Omaha” grassroots campaign launched at Big Omaha 2009. Though Müller and his team last year stopped consulting work to jump on board with Bay Area startup Pack, the group still takes on fun side projects when they can. Spun is one of those projects.

Müller said this year they wanted to create a game that provided “an incentive to meet more people,” instead of pulling them away from interaction.

“The goal is to make everyone one introduction away from everyone else,” he said. “I’m most excited to see how Spun visually illustrates the tight-knit community at Big Omaha.”

How Spun works

Big Omaha attendees have a Spun ID on their event badge. When an attendee meets someone, they’ll enter that person’s ID into their Spun account.

The connections will the be visualized on the website with a graph that weaves color-coded lines (by industry) that connects dots (with their names) and the people they’ve met. In a twist on the business card (you may not need one this week), all the people (and their Twitter handles) you’ve met will be sent to you via email after the event. No more foggy memories on matching faces to names.

The top three connectors will win cash prizes, but the bigger payoff will be if Spun can bring the degree of separation for everyone from 100 to 1 percent.

Attendees can stop by the Spun table at the Big Omaha Opening Party tonight and at KANEKO on Thursday and Friday to read the rules, view the degrees of separation and high-five the What Cheer team.

Don’t be afraid. Let’s create a tight-knit community over the next three days.

 

Credits: Images courtesy of What Cheer.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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