SSWC and the art of hacking a dance floor

I recently went to Sweden Social Web Camp (SSWC), a weekend event where some of Sweden’s top internet lovers get together to talk about the web. Over 400 people go to the island Tjärö in the archipelago of Blekinge to generate ideas, discuss problems and solutions and to just have a good time. My co-worker Oskar from Psykologifabriken and I had a session about personal development and how to do it when you have a busy schedule.

Luckily for us there was a huge interest for psychology among the participants. Every day ended with a dance party and since both me and Oskar love to dance we decided to try a little psychological dance experiment.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Nike fuelband, a sort of glorified pedometer which tracks all your movements and turn them into “fuels”. Fuels is Nike’s own way of measuring physical activity, and 1500 fuels is roughly the same as 3500 steps or 400 calories. On the second club night at SSWC Oskar and I arranged a dance off together with the film producer Petter Karlsson from FKDV . Using our fuelsbands me and Oskar competed against each other to see who could reach 1500 fuels the fastest. Petter arranged so that all the other people on the dance floor could follow our race to 1500 fuels.

After 28 minutes on the dance floor I was declared the winner. Not only did this competition make me dance my ass off, it also created an awesome atmosphere on the dance floor. Since the other dancers could see our score they were able to cheer us on and motivate us to dance even harder.

Together with our sister company Psykologifabriken we’re trying to create smart and motivating ways which can help people reach their full potential. The experiment with the SSWC dance off was a fun way to translate some psychology to a new domain. Looking at the data you could say that the club could be a substitute for the gym.

/Niklas