Midnight Madness PDF

MIDNIGHT
MADNESS
AUGUST 8
AUGUST 8, 2015
www.midnight-madness.org
LINKED BY AIR
MIDNIGHT MADNESS
Where were you on
October 5th, 2013? Any
of the 300 players of
Midnight Madness Total
Eclipse can tell you they
spent the night assembling a glowing keyboard
that called to passing
ships on Pier 25, knocking
rhythms on tombstones
in Marble Cemetery, and
beating the clock to open
a giant glowing safe in
the basement.
Thirty unstoppable teams
from ten financial institutions in the tri-state area
raced to be the first to
successfully navigate
by starlight and to ponder the atomic weight of
M+Ms. Perseverance,
collaboration, and a
competitive spirit were
required and they brought
it in spades. Players
inspired each other to
carry on and inspired
funders to support their
efforts. Together, we
gave new hope to New
Yorkers living below the
poverty line.
Left:
Solving the Beat Sheet breakdown
puzzle on the ground.
Above:
The 2013 starting line in the parking
lot of a shuttered Lower East Side
Pathmark.
1
On August 8th the city will once again become
arena. Good Shepherd Services Executive
Director Sister Paulette LoMonaco, Good
Shepherd board member Elisha Wiesel, and the
evil geniuses of Game Control will once again
challenge poverty, sleep and linear thinking —
Midnight Madness 2015. The bravest intellects
across the financial landscape will compete.
Will you join them?
Left:
Many teams collaborating
to build a musical synthesizer
in the Close Encounters
puzzle. A boat off the shore
responded once the correct
alien melody was played.
Facing page top:
Positioning gears to fix a
hidden mechanism in the
Safecracker puzzle.
Facing page lower left:
Teams accumulated stress
eggs for hints.
Facing page lower right:
The Subway Posters puzzle
in a Sanitation Department
underpass.
2
“Despite being bone tired, I was already
thinking on the drive home 'I can see
why people do this multiple times.' It makes
so much more sense at the end than it did in
the beginning. Many kudos to GC for maintaining the core integrity and spirit of the
game even with the corporate demographic,
involvement of professional event organizers,
and fundraising goals. It was a really good,
crazy, mind boggling time. Seeing Sister
Paulette so happy at the end was icing
on the cake.”
— Team Efficient Frontier
“I am writing this just before I pass out and
sleep because I just wanted to say that MM
was one of the most enjoyable evenings I have
ever spent! The whole experience from the
mental challenges, the physical challenges
and the camaraderie to the cityscape back
drop and the amazing organization. It was
all just stunning. If this ever happens again—
and I fervently hope that it does—then please
count me in.”
— Hedge Fund CEO playing on Team 0xFFFF00
“We were clearly among our people—puzzle
hunters have this young, nerdy, college student
look to them whether they be Googlers in San
Francisco or Wall Street robotraders in NYC.”
— The Burninators
“After all was said and done, and we’d returned
to our desks and everyday existences, we
all went through an odd bit of withdrawal. My
team has already reconnected twice in just
the few weeks since the Madness officially
ended, to reminisce (or commiserate) about
how impossible most of the puzzles were, cheer
each other on again for cracking some of them,
and most importantly, to start strategizing even
now about how we will approach the game
next year. I found my way to NYC over
a decade ago and fell irrevocably in love with
the city. I admit to now being stricken with a
full-blown case of Midnight Madness as well.”
— Team Citi Kats
3
THE GAME
The game is a series of
cleverly camouflaged,
incredibly ingenious
and devilishly difficult
puzzles — the answers to
which indicate the location of the next puzzle,
and so on, until the finish
line. This year’s teams
will compete all night,
hunting for, solving, and
executing puzzles embedded in the urban landscape of New York City.
THE PAYERS &
THE PLAYERS
The Payers are generous
philanthropists like you,
who feel that all kids in
New York City deserve a
chance. The Players are
financial market professionals who are not only
incredibly smart, but
passionate about spending some of those IQ
points for a good cause.
These folks are committed to muscling through
the thorniest of problems
without any sleep while
thriving on the adventure — this time, outside
of the office.
GAME CONTROL
Midnight Madness is
made possible by the
tireless volunteer efforts
of our friends, family and
fanatics of the game from
decades past.
THE CREATORS
Mat Laibowitz, PhD and
Dan Michaelson are the
creative minds behind
the massively successful
Midnight Madness urban
experience, which ran in
NYC from 1996 – 2007.
Mat is an inventor, artist,
experiential content
creator, product designer
and the founder of
Futuruption, whose mission is to design, develop,
and deploy engaging
experiences in the forms
of augmented environments, reactive architecture, interactive installations, and unique
products.
Dan is one of the founders of Linked by Air, a
graphic design partnership where design and
technology are intertwined inventive processes, often focused on
the production of public
space, both in the world
and online.
THE EVENT PLANNER
Lindsi Shine is CEO of
INsider, a private concierge and event planning agency based in
New York City that she
founded ten years ago.
INsider is dedicated to
simplifying and enriching its members’ lives
both personally and
professionally. Whether
it be a last-minute dinner
reservation at the hottest restaurant in town,
waiting for the cable guy,
booking an exclusive
venue for an event, or
taking over an entire city
for one night, Lindsi and
the INsider team make
it happen.
THE RULES
1. Do not tamper with the clues.
2. No private motorized transport.
3. Follow instructions from Game Control, which may
be issued occasionally for safety or game flow.
4
“The first place team, which arrived at the
finishing line at 10:20 am, was [Goldman’s]
Global Securities Services division. Team
co-captain Igor Modlin said his team’s victory
lay in the skill sets of their division. “We are in
a customer-facing business–our job is to help
clients solve complex problems. The key is we
work well together.”
— Quartz Magazine
“The 2012 event was a hit, raising $1.4 million
through 195 players on 20 teams. The intricate
puzzles spread across 17 locations ranged from
the majestic to the offbeat. This year's Midnight
Madness… will be even bigger with teams
drawn from several financial institutions.”
— The Wall Street Journal
Above:
Orienteering with a highly detailed
but ambiguous Layers Map of Doyers
Street (the Bloody Angle).
In the 2013
game:
8 PM
Starting
Time
12:21 PM
Winning
Finish Time
300
Players
47
Volunteers
3
Zones
21
Puzzles
315
Hint Eggs
$3 million
Raised
“Just another Saturday night in New York?
Not for the 300 bankers, hedge fund
managers, lawyers and software engineers
solving puzzles on sidewalks and traipsing all over Manhattan for more than 16
hours as part of an infuriating, exhilarating,
mind-numbing, night-bleeding-into-morning
competition called Midnight Madness. An elaborate scavenger hunt put on by Goldman Sachs,
the event raised $2.9 million for charity…”
— The New York Times
Next page:
Even the donut carts were hacked.
Green zone
Blue zone
Red zone
“Exhausted, many saw the open arms of Sister
Paulette LoMonaco, the head of Good Shepherd
Services, who was ready with hugs and bagels.
‘The connection with ‘Midnight Madness’ is that
every day we are working to solve the puzzle of
extreme poverty,’ Sister Paulette said.”
— Bloomberg
5
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