Want to have a conference in Minecraft?
It happens more often than it should: crappy online meetings. Worse than that, people opt to travel and convene at a time when our youth are crying out for us to address a climate crisis.
Meanwhile, daily, my son engages with people from around the world through his keyboard and screen. They go on missions together, solve puzzles and build worlds.
When I think about how hard it can be to really connect with others at a distance, I can’t help but feel maybe Minecraft is one answer.
Mom Levels Up
He let me in. I paid $30 to download Minecraft onto my 6 year old business laptop and after a brief keyboard “WASD” control lesson, I was punching trees.
When closely located, we can easily get into each other's worlds via our home Wifi network. We sat in the same room across the table, but we were closer than we had been in a while…
You see, he’s 14 and he calls me a boomer. That’s my parents generation, but he’s not aiming for accuracy. He’s conveying his frustration with how slow I seem to be at keeping up with him.
Here I am, working daily on maturing a system that boomers built so that it is more responsive to our changing world, and I don’t pass the test for the person I’m doing this for. That hurts.
The bright side: I’m leveling up. That’s key you know, when you’re digital. You take a growth mindset, learn that zombies come out at night, and figure out how to build a house out of the dirt you punch. Or, something like that.
On the even brighter side: he let me join his friends server and we can play together from anywhere now. (I just have to make sure I follow their “partially communist policies” around sharing the stuff I mine for the progress we all seek.)
Why Minecraft?
When I’m wandering around my son’s world, I’m experiencing all kinds of settings, buildings, and interactions with the non player characters (NPCs). Some of this is designed and some is randomly occurring.
When we meet in real life, we often do so to:
- Build relationships
- Share information and gain understanding
- Create together
All of these things occur when I’m playing with him. Impressively, though it might just be my motherly heart being overly sensitive, the time is really high quality.
We’re fully engaged. We’re seeking to understand each other’s orientation in the world. We’re solving problems and testing options constantly. We’re having fun.
I’m lucky that I get to work in an innovation lab where this kind of behaviour is common. I also crave more of this for the world of people currently “steering the wheel.”
I wonder if a global meetup for public servants to collaborate on climate action could foster an awakening of what is possible through digital media like Minecraft.
Also, maybe I’m not the only parent seeking to level up and meet their kid’s expectations…
What Could a Conference inside Minecraft Look like?
I imagine we could create spaces and features inside Minecraft that would allow us to learn, share and act together. But I’ll admit, I haven’t really figured out exactly how to build it.
We’d likely want to be able to identify spaces to talk about certain things. Maybe structure breakout groups around little signs that have the coordinates of a discord (online chat) channel.
Maybe we could get a generous coder or two to help us mod Minecraft so that we can embed live streams of video somehow.
Or maybe there are live whiteboards our characters could interact with.
I’m really curious about what’s possible here… I don’t think there are really many limits to what we could build.
I think it would be fun to work towards something for the #OneGreenGov event on January 22nd.
Let’s Mod it for reality: add Climate Change
When I heard that someone in the Minecraft development community had built a climate change mod, I was not surprised. The world of Minecraft is, well, crafty.
Basically, when you play, if you cut down trees or burn things, the weather turns crappy and forests burn. Brilliant, I think.
Shall we?
I’m not totally convinced this idea will catch. I mean, if we have trouble getting adults who are supposed to be responsible for really important things to simply use the digital tools properly at their finger tips, Minecraft seems quite the stretch.
Then again, the standard Microsoft suite ain’t exactly fun. Or relevant to our children. (Note that Microsoft now owns Minecraft.)
If I hear from at least five people who want to try and craft something like this, I might start looking for server space…
H
