Culture
Making a Game Out of Town Hall Meetings
By awarding points for civic participation, MindMixer has helped cities across the country increase citizen engagement.
For a generation raised on games, anything can be made compelling, assuming points will be awarded. To that end, the site MindMixer has for the last year been dedicated to making a game out of that most dreaded of civic experiences: the town hall meeting.
The idea behind MindMixer, says CEO and co-founder Nick Bowden, was an attempt to get people to re-engage at that basic level. "I think people's perceptions of town hall meetings is you only go if you want to complain about something," Bowden says.