As part of the Advancing Attribution track at C3E 2017, we will conduct a short tabletop game to give participants a sample of the challenges in attribution and to get them into the proper mindset. This tabletop is not standalone and occurs in the context of a multi-day workshop. The game will be executed within the first third of the workshop and will be preceded by an overview of the challenges, some speaker tracks, and a brainstorming session. After the game, we will guide a variety of discussion and elicitation activities as we move into coming up with project ideas. 

The game is a collaborative, multi-person version of “Clue.” The participants in the workshop track will be separated into three collaborating teams with each team representing a different functional group in industry or government. Each group will be provided with fictional news articles or intelligence reports that contain clues. Each team will need to extract those clues and build a model of what is happening. Imagine the old TV detective shows where they have a map with pins and string and try to figure out “whodunit.” The challenge is that each team will have different pieces of information (some inaccurate) and will need to share with others some set of that data to be able to come up with a larger model. Each team will be allowed to assign up to 2 liaisons to facilitate that communication as they are not allowed to directly share their reports. 

At the end of the session, we will ask the groups to answer questions using their model. In Addition, we’ll discuss what we’ve learned in preparation for the ongoing activities and transition into creating proposals for future work. 

Attribution is difficult. Through this exercise, the players will experience the challenges of analyzing and validating attribution across many axes, including data reliability, data sharing, and shareability. The goal of the gaming attribution activity is to stimulate participants’ ideas for the track work over the next couple of days.