We’re planning on releasing this game for free – with the ability to purchase expansion decks as we continue to build out our game world. Free?!? I happen to love Free! Anyhow, since we’ve seemingly caught the free bug, we’ve decided to also give away our medical mnemonics app for the iPhone away for free, too. (that smacking sound you’re hearing is the sound of our accountant facepalming – repeatedly). Anyhow, we’ll keep on keeping on with the Apothecary Healer / Lord of Pestilence profile updates on this blog and stay tuned for more news about the upcoming digital version of the game. In the mean time, to further whet your appetites, here’s a trailer of the awesome ‘Shadow Era’ from Wulven. Why not check it out, too?! After it’s also Free to play! (smack! smack! smack!)

I recently travelled to foggy Boston to attend the always excellent Games for Health Conference.  We’ve had a presence there before with the HOPE research initiative, but this time, Ben Sawyer, the visionary behind the conference, wanted us to talk a little bit about the Healing Blade.  I still owe Ben a beer for saving my hide by furnishing me with a Macbook mini-DisplayPort adapter with literally minutes to go before the talk.  Also there was the intrepid Ben Heck, of the Ben Heck Show.  ’The Two Bens’ took to center stage to present a concept that I absolutely loved, called ‘GameShare’ where the functions of a single controller could be mapped to two controllers, allowing for coop-play of sorts for ANY game.  More Gameshare goodness after the break.

The moment I saw the video, all I could think of was, how is this not already available, and if not, why not?!  The best part of this video, aside from the awesomeness of Ben Sawyer clearly using gaming as a way to build shared experiences with his kids, which I as a father can relate to, was seeing Ben (Heck’s) shop again.  Holy run-on sentence, Batman.  Anyhow, here’s the link to the episode!

HealthGamesCamp brings together multi-disciplinary teams for collaborative learning and co-creation.
The entire event is structured as a multi-level game out of which a variety of games or game prototypes are produced.
Both technical and non-technical attendees are involved throughout the weekend.
Some of the games will be non-digital—either board games, party games, script-based games, or alternative reality game and some games will be digital—both web-based and mobile.

Strong work, Dr. Kong! Congrats from the rest of the NCL crew!! Click here for more info about the event and a video from the man himself )

You are literally trying to keep up with the fluid losses from the intractable diarrhea that the disease brings on. NPR’s coverage of the cholera outbreak can be found here, and the wiki article is really quite excellent too.

Sometimes just learning about diseases and how to manage them isn’t enough. Sometimes folks need to come together and brainstorm new ideas, however trivial they may be. We’d like to create a forum for that here at NCL. Over the next two weeks, if you have an idea that might improve some aspect of managing a cholera outbreak, (containment, treatment delivery, public health strategy, fundraising, etc) we’d like to hear it. Post it, with pics if needed, onto the NCL FB group wall and get your friends to vote on it with likes.  The best idea, upon review by our panel of physicians, taking into account like popularity, will get a cheque for $250. We’ll also match $250 and send it to the MSF relief effort, along with your idea to see if it might be implemented, giving you full credit. We’ll also submit your idea to Kickstarter and try our darndest to get it funded in total.

Look for our thoughts on how one might deliver ORS (oral rehydration solution) quickly and effectively in an upcoming post.  We won’t be competing for the money, but we’ll submit our idea just to get your juices flowing.  Can you help make a difference? In the grand scheme of things, $500 isn’t all that much, but in the wake of such suffering, perhaps one of you or your colleagues might come up with an idea that might save lives. Help us get the word out by sharing this shortened URL: http://bit.ly/a5Jh5j – thanks so much and good hunting!

A friend of a friend (Eric Chow stand up and take a bow) linked the following article to me via fb.  Skeptical at first, I decided to give it a gander.  Awesome fusion of realworld immunology with the allure of old world mafia, circa 1930?  Check.  Tight, dynamic writing? Check.  Before I knew it, I was done with the article, wanting more.

And as the fates would have it, the article had been published by none other than ‘The Scientist” magazine, which had done a story about NCL only some weeks back.  Tracking down the author should be easy, right?  Not so much.  Our modern day Oracle at the Delphi, Google, lead me to a number of stories, but no contact details.  Thankfully, I was able to contact the writer who had worked with us on the ‘Playing Doctor’ piece who agreed to let this ‘Jef’ know that we were hoping to speak with him.  I say him in jest as it was only after a bit of searching that if became apparent on a Twitter profile that Jef was in fact short for ‘Jennifer’.

Our two pronged attack (an inmail via LinkedIn and reaching out to a colleague) seemed to do the trick.  July 16th, the world of Soma brightened, and contact was made. Stay persistant, kids, is the moral of this story.  After settling down and having numerous discussions on vision, metaphorical learning, the budget constraints of a startup and how the eff to post on wiki (an ongoing learning process), the position of HealingBlade Lead Creative/Science Fusion Ecrivan was born.  Oh happy day!

I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Welcome aboard, Jef, if that is your real name.

One can’t but help feel powerless. When patients are dying from imminently treatable conditions such as cholera, it’s enough to make anyone shake their heads in despair.  It may be small, but we here at NCL feel compelled to help and would like to engage your help in doing so.  $5 buys a weeks worth of antibiotics or 2 sachets of oral rehydration solution. We’ll donate $5 for each comment posted on our voting panel listed here , and wanted to thank those that have already commented.  Seem like a cynical ploy to obtain votes for our SXSW panel?  Nah, we’re more interested in the discussion, hence our tying our pledge to comments only.  After all, we do label ourselves a social enterprise – so this just made sense.

For those of you that have already posted – thank you! We will honor your posts with our $5 donations, and keep you appraised of the giving process here on our blog. On August 28th, we’ll run our final tally, and write a check to Doctors Without Borders.

So far there are 11 comments = $55 worth of antibiotics and ORS packets. Can we hit $1k? Nerdcore army, that’s up to you.