What do a flock of starlings, a colony of warrior ants, and a hundred-person flash mob all have in common? Swarm intelligence, the behavior of decentralized systems, is a concept that we can apply to human systems to unlock their potential. Swarming methodologies teach a group of individuals what to do, where to go, and how to operate as a team.
Pongolyn explores swarm intelligence through augmented reality gaming, where she coordinates hundreds of agents under cover of secrecy to walk, bike, drive, climb, snowshoe, boat, fly, hack, and engineer their way to remote locations in order to score points for the game. In this talk, she shows how to apply social engineering strategies to groups of individuals with the goal of achieving a collective intelligence that is greater than the sum of its parts.