Teaching Where are your Keys?
When I first discovered "Where are your Keys?", there was very little information available online. Evan Gardner had written a couple blog comments where he talked about the game, but there was no "Where are your Keys?" website, the Universal Speed Curriculum hadn't been published yet, and Willem had not put the considerable effort he now has into making videos.
Still, I was keen to learn how to play the game, so I contacted Willem and Evan and we eventually settled on flying them to New Mexico to hold a workshop at my farm, Sunflower River.
Meeting in person to learn to play the game was a significant accelerator. 20 people attended the workshop we planned, making for a high-energy and engaging event. It kicked off my regular play sessions, and certainly contributed to my renewed interest in Lojban.
When I began building this website, lo do ckiku ma zvati, I was contacted by a person named Paul living in the UK interested in learning to play "Where are your Keys?"
The Lojban community is small enough that I don't have another local person to learn the language with. Most of the people I've spent time talking to about Lojban don't even live in my time zone.
I don't myself travel often, though my social network is large enough that I often am able to find someone who is. In this case, I have a friend, Ellen, who is currently completing a Master of Arts in Medieval Studies the College of York. Ellen lives in the same city I do in the United States. This gave me a tenuous physical connection between Paul and myself, for purposes of teaching "Where are your Keys?"
Ellen was not planning on making any trips back to the United States before her degree was complete, but her partner Franz was planning on visiting her. This created a physical pathway between myself and Paul. I would teach Franz to play WAYK, who would then travel to the UK and teach Paul.
I arranged some time to sit with Franz to play a session of "Where are your Keys?" I spent an unusually large amount of time focusing on teaching the game. Learning to teach "Where are your Keys?" is a normal part of learning the game, but with the single session we had available to us, I made an explicit rather than implicit emphasis on it.
Paul and his wife arranged to travel to York while Franz was visiting Ellen, and the four of them sat down to play a game of "Where are your Keys?" Speaking with Franz once he returned to the States, the adventure was a success!
The fact that I could sit with Franz for a couple hours so that he could then transmit that same knowledge to Paul a week later speaks well to how easy it is to learn the basics of the game.
As well, the material available on the Where are your Keys? website was exceedingly helpful in this case, as anything we glossed over due to time constraints was available as reference material to both Franz and Paul.
I believe that Franz and Paul were the first people to play "Where are your Keys?" anywhere in the UK, and it was my first experiment with teaching the game to someone for the express purpose of them teaching it to someone else. I'm glad to have been a part of this adventure, and look forward to future opportunities to meet fellow players for interesting games.