Austin Hill | chrisbrogan.com

Play it Forward with Akoha

September 12, 2008

Fresh off the stage from TechCrunch50, Austin Hill from Akoha has released us all from our frieNDA requirements. You’ll recall that I hinted about this a few weeks back. Well now, I guess I can talk.

Imagine a real world game (played in the open world, not your computer) where the prime goal is to do good things for others. Now, imagine that the game doesn’t stop when you perform your good deed, because in handing over the card that started the mission to the person you’ve helped, you encourage them to “play it forward” to do something good for someone else. That’s the game in a nutshell, at this stage.

Essentially: do good things for other people, share, play it forward, and earn great karma points for doing it. Make sense?

There’s an online component to the game that will show you where the cards have gone. When I told Seth Godin about it last Monday, he said, “like the dollar bill game, Where’s George?” Yes, that seems like a reasonable comparison the way I understand it.

Akoha has lots of ideas for how the game will work over time, and how it might be expanded. It’s all very participatory. There are lots of ways that you will have an opportunity to impact and change and shape the course of this game.

But for now, look how simple it is. Go do something helpful. Be a good person. Share something. Play it forward. Easy, right?

Check out Akoha.com, but also, if you see me at a conference in the coming weeks, like the New Marketing Summit, ask me about the game. I might just have your deck of Akoha cards with me, waiting to hand them out and get you into the game.

Photo credit, Austin Hill, used without permission.