Zamzee’s First Day at School

October 5, 2011

Zamzee went back to school in September, unrolling their first school pilot program to over 600 students at Cupertino’s Kennedy Middle School (above). We left our lunchboxes and pencils, but we brought something better: the opportunity for 200 6th, 7th and 8th graders to get a Zamzee for themselves, plus the element of free invites for friends that we hoped would help Zamzee “go viral”.

Zamzee is a platform for fun that’s powered by young people’s movement. Wear the nifty 3-axis accelerometer to record how much you’re moving around, and upload your Pointz to the computer to track your progress, compete with friends, and complete challenges. Zamzee was researched and developed by HopeLab, then spun-off and run as an independent social enterprise at zamzee.com.

But do middle schoolers actually want it? After preparing a slideshow to introduce Zamzee to the students, and a competitive “move-off” to show them how it’s done, we were still not sure whether Zamzee would fly in a school gymnasium.

But these remarkable middle schoolers did not disappoint: they eagerly volunteered for the move-off—dancing, running, and even doing flips to see who could earn the most Activity Pointz. They listened avidly and asked specific questions (“Is it waterproof?” “Does it have a warranty?” “Will it work for spinning on ice skates?”). They even jumped out of their seats, making us feel like rock stars being surged by a crowd. In short, Zamzee soared.

In the two weeks since then, our 200 Kennedy Middle School users have put in over 27,000 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity, racked up over 161,000 Activity Pointz and inviting 247 of their friends to join them. In fact, we’re so impressed that we plan on taking Zamzee on the road to more schools soon. We hope Zamzee continues to get straight A’s from the users who matter: real live young people!

To find out more about Zamzee, check out our About page or visit zamzee.com.

Rose Garrett is content manager at Zamzee. She’s the one that writes the words that make using Zamzee fun and easy. She also makes sure that lots of good stuff is happening on zamzee.com. Rose has worked as a writer and editor in news, education and social enterprise. She’s super good at ping-pong.

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Photo of the Month | SEPTEMBER | Behind-the-scenes of Team Zamzee

September 30, 2011

I had the immense privilege of shooting Zamzee Co’s team photo in September. Of the one photo that was selected of each person, there were plenty that had to be passed over and I just couldn’t let them collect dust in my photo archive. The photos are here, but I’ll be sharing about the process and some things I learned about creativity, vision, and execution in a follow-up post. In the meanwhile, click “Read More” to enjoy the behind-the-scenes photos of this wacky group of hard-working, talented, passionate people!

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Burning Man = 3,177 Zamz

September 26, 2011

I recently returned from the Burning Man Festival, a huge arts and cultural gathering that takes place each year in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. While there I made an effort to carry my Zamzee with me, both to see how it survived the notoriously difficult conditions (dust storms, 100 degree days, rowdy mock protest marches) and to take a record of how much I moved.

For those of you unfamiliar with Zamzee, it’s a new product researched and developed by HopeLab that will be launching publicly in the fourth quarter of this year. Zamzee is now run as an independent social enterprise, partnering with HopeLab in ongoing research. The  Zamzee meter, a three-axis accelerometer,  records your movement, which powers your online account at zamzee.com.

The activity graph above is from the research version of the Zamzee site, where activity points are referred to as “Zamz.” The graph is a record of my movement from Tuesday August 30  to Monday September 5, which was our pack-down day, and though a lot of work, I wasn’t wearing my Zamzee unfortunately. But you can see how much I got around in the second half of the festival.  On Sunday morning I rode the nearly 10 miles to the far northern reaches of the festival site, and throughout the week I was regularly criss-crossing the desert in search of art and fun and friends.

To my chagrin the double-points day, which happen randomly, fell on my least active day of the festival, Wednesday, when I focused on rest and relaxation. No matter – Zamzee survived the conditions brilliantly and has given me a fantastic snap-shot of my unusually active week.

The commercial version of Zamzee, which is designed specifically for young teens, will be available in the coming months – you can sign up for email alerts at www.zamzee.com to be one of the first to know.

My Zamzee.com Avatar with dog (not allowed at Burning Man).

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