DISQUS

Good grief, I'll have to tweet this as "Think you're having a bad day?"

What a crazy experience. Can I vouch for you in some way? Send you some cash?

Wishing u the best

Thanks for this. I found it via digg while engaging this scammer in a long conversation, with all the characteristics listed by other commenters... "official warranty provider to windows xp worldwide" etc. I was offered a £50 scam, so not as pricey as some but cheaper than others. Couldn't record the call, sorry, but kept him occupied for 33 mins as some kind of public service and in the vain hope that BT might be able to trace such a call.

Thanks for the review, Chris. One of the reasons the games engage me is how, in debriefing, people are so often surprised to hear how other people have experienced them. On the face it, these games can seem silly and certainly simple... and then we start to realise that one humans play them, they become complex.

And then there's the temptation to move from seeing them as simple, to weaving more and more complicated explanations for what happened as if there is a perfect description of what's going on. When there isn't. And that's my beef with those blobby diagrams - they render what is rich and complex as merely complicated. As such, they are often profoundly misleading!

Re 5: Are you sure I wasn't looking? :)

Jake: Congratulations, that sounds exciting. Good luck with the new venture

Hi Kevin: Thanks for linking. I agree, business systems that may once have made sense may now risk sclerosis when what's needed is flexibility.

There's another point about Improv that's worth making: improv does actually work within constraints. Any improv exercise poses a set of rules and the "game" is to find the room for manoeuvre within those rules.

Sometimes that small move within the rules is to meet the burdensome target but really challenge it out loud. I'm generalising here but what sometimes happens is this: the rule is "meet such-and-such a target". But a second rule is made up in our heads "And don't ever challenge this rule". That second made-up rule gets followed but isn't actually tested by protesting. It becomes much more powerful and dangerous than the first one. Sometimes someone has to care enough to take the risk of broaching it...

Sorry, that's a rambling generalisation and more of a note to myself for Reboot, but now I've gone to the bother of typing it, I may as well hit Post.

Thanks for the space to sound off...

I feel less censorious of BzzAgent. They seem to be quite transparent in the way they operate. If you look at their blog their critics are in full voice.


I think this is one way in which they are hosting a conversation.



It's easy to condemn something for not being new, but a lot of useful innovation is incremental; Kuhnian shifts are not ten a penny.



I question the idea that the presence of BzzAgent's CEO on the WOMMA board means its should be distrusted. I think our trust in it should be based on what is says, does, and stands up for - rather than relying on guesses about the motivations of its participants.



My hunch about BzzAgent is that most of its agents will create buzz for stuff they actually like, and not for stuff they don't. There may be a few nutters involved but on the whole I'd prefer marketing dollars to go into methods relying on the quality of the product more than the sizzle of the admen.