Hi, I’m David!

I’m a pervasive gaming consultant. I intend to write a blog post thoroughly defining “pervasive gaming” soon, but for now all you need to know is that pervasive games take the game world out of simulated environments (as in videogames), and stick them into the “real world.” That means websites, blogs, e-mail, phone calls, snail mail, city streets, actors, skywriting, and potentially bungee jumping. Pervasive gaming represents a great opportunity for all sorts of people: content developers have a novel space for engaging their audience in extremely compelling ways; activists and marketers have a means to grab the collective attention of an increasingly cynical public; and plain ol’ freaks and geeks have a crazy new world to explore. Currently I’m working on online projects with Canadian start-up Wero Creative, and locally situated projects with an as-yet unnamed Australian company.

In 2006, I founded TorGame, an organization in Toronto dedicated to developing innovative games that celebrate public space and build community. Our first game was a smash hit that garnered coverage in all the major national papers, radio, TV, etc.

When I’m not wearing the pervasing-gaming hat, I’m wearing the web-consultant hat. I have numerous publications on topics ranging from media sharing over mobile phones, to LiveJournal friending patterns. In addition to knowing quite a bit about internet culture and best practices, I also code a mean PHP. Recently, I spent half a year at Fantsuam Foundation in rural Nigeria, helping local staff to build their ICT skills.

Once in a while, I make some sort of wacky digital installation.

I also enjoy spinning flaming poi. I’ve only set my hair on fire once.

My publications. Let me show you them.

Kate Raynes-Goldie, David Fono. (In press). Wiki Use in Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges. To appear in T. Davies & B. Novack (Eds.), Online Deliberation: Design, Research, Practice. Chicago, IL: CSLI.

Ron Baecker, David Fono, Peter Wolf. (2007). Towards a Video Collaboratory. In R. Goldman, R. Pea, B. Barron, & S. Derry (Eds.), Video Research in the Learning Sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

David Fono and Kate Raynes-Goldie. (2006). Hyperfriendship and Beyond: Friends and Social Norms on LiveJournal. In M. Consalvo & C. Haythornthwaite (Eds.), AoIR Internet Research Annual Volume 4. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

David Fono and Scott Counts. (2006). Sandboxes: Supporting Social Play Through Collaborative Multimedia Composition. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Banff, AB: ACM Press. Best Note Award.

David Fono and Ron Baecker. (2006). Structuring and Supporting Persistent Chat Conversations. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Banff, AB: ACM Press.

David Fono and Roel Vertegaal. (2005). EyeWindows: Evaluation of Eye-Controlled Zooming Windows for Focus Selection. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing. Portland, OR: ACM Press.

Tracy Jenkins, Jesse McGeachie, David Fono and Roel Vertegaal. (2005). EyeView: Focus+Context Views for Large Group Videoconferences. In Extended Abstracts of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing. Portland, OR: ACM Press.