Changemakers - Kylee Ingram

Kylee Ingram is the creator behind ‘Team Tap’ – a revolutionary social game that can be played at any event or festival in the world.  Players tap one another's phones and every tap raises money for charity, creates friendships and deepens loyalty to the team, event and sponsor. This week we profile Kylee in Changemakers – a weekly column which examines inspiring people and their careers in the Not for Profit sector.

She is also behind the game, Habitat, now in development with BBC Worldwide, where users undertake actions to keep an endangered animal alive.

Kylee pioneered CrowdTV – an innovative format facilitating crowd-sourced documentary-making was launched with the support of the University of Technology, and commercially funded.

What are you currently working on in your organisation?
I am working on two of my passion projects right now that have both taken off. One is Habitat a tamagotchi style game where kids adopt an animal who is endangered by climate change, the kids are then encouraged to change their real life behaviours to keep the animal alive. The other project is Team Tap an app that is a new digital fundraising tool that can be used at any match or event in the world. They are both incredibly exciting projects for me. We have set ourselves the goal of raising 1 million dollars for charities over the next year.

What drew you to the Not for Profit sector?
I worked in sports television for a number of years. It was a pretty wild life style traveling the world filming the world surf tour and the soccer world cup. But there was a point where I thought while this is wonderful I really am making wallpaper for people on a Saturday morning. I wanted to harness the power of media for social and environmental good. So I went back to university, studied my masters in sustainable development and set up Australian Documentaries. Ten years later we have worked with so many of Australia’s top charities and NGOs creating commercials, documentaries and video both for broadcast and new media.

What do you like best about working in your current organisation?
Every day I am inspired by what we are doing. We are working on cutting edge projects. We are still storytellers but we now have all of these interactive tools we can use beyond television. I am really interested in exploring the intersection of interactive media and the real world. We are trying to develop experiences that I hope will lead to action and in some cases behaviour change.

It is a lot different from what passive television audiences expect so it is a really exciting new space. For example let’s look at the great things about games – players are not scared of risk or failure, they work collaboratively and the challenges posed are on an epic scale. These are things great serious gamers like Jane McGonigal are looking into. So how can we use some of these benefits of gaming and take them out to create change in the real world?

Team Tap is definitely at the forefront of this push. We have used the app at a number of football games and festivals. You can see people using their phone to connect with other people, working together to raise money for charity. We are able to tap into their competitive sides to give them a great gaming experience and at the end of it all there are also some great real world outcomes.

Favourite saying …
I have a couple:
No regrets – it gets me up to exercise every morning.
The harder you work the luckier you get – helps me push through the times when everything seems a little hard.