Alternate-Reality Gaming

(via Wiki) Jane McGonigal is a noted game designer and games researcher, specializing in pervasive gaming and alternate reality games. She worked with alternate reality game design company 42 Entertainment from 2004 to 2006, on projects including I Love Bees (2004) as Community Lead/Puzzle Designer, and Last Call Poker (2005) as Live Events Lead. Additionally, she has collaborated on commissioned games for the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In recent years, McGonigal has grown especially interested in the way that massively multiplayer online gaming generates collective intelligence, and interested in the way that the collective intelligences thus generated can be utilized as a means of improving the world, either by improving the quality of human life or by working towards the solution of social ills. She has expressed a desire that gaming should be moving 'towards Nobel Prizes.' These ideas informed her collaboration in World Without Oil (2007), a simulation designed to brainstorm (and potentially avert) the challenges of a post-peak oil future. Most recently, she has served as the director for The Lost Rin, an alternate reality game sponsored by McDonald's and designed as a tie-in to the 2008 Summer Olympics. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in August 2006, and currently teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a Research Affiliate to the Institute for the Future.

Jane McGonigal's talk at the 2008 New Yorker Conference, 'Stories from the Near Future' was inspiring and educational. http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal

Useful links:
www.avantgame.com
www.iftf.org

The Power Of Imaginative Mind

Sir Ken Robinson's remarks on April 10, 2008, at the Apple Education Leadership Summit, was brilliant. Robinson is the author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative.

Useful links:
www.edutopia.org
www.sirkenrobinson.com

Work/Life Integration Project

Stewart Friedman, founding director of Wharton's Leadership Program + the Work/Life Integration Project describes the four domains of people's lives -- work, home, community and self -- and what individuals can do to integrate these domains and improve their leadership skills at any stage in their careers @ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1970.cfm

Useful link:
www.totalleadership.org

Brilliant!

Interactive Marketing

Ad:tech is the #1 source for interactive marketing. Rajesh Jain has written an interesting note on the complex landscape of online advertising @ http://emergic.org

Useful link:
www.ad-tech.com

Random Thoughts

There is no such thing as the perfect business idea. There are good ideas that reward effort. There are ideas that attract interest and inspire support. There are beautiful ideas that change our perception of what is possible and what is desirable. People invest hope, time, and money in attempting to make beautiful ideas real.

- Max Mckeown

Earthmine

Founded in 2006 by John Ristevski and Anthony Fassero, the start-up is hoping to take mapping to a new level -- the street level + the business model is B2B: subscription service with customers like construction firms, architects, emergency services, and partners that will develop applications for consumers. http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/05/interview-earthmine-3D-map.html

Useful links:
www.earthmine.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BscB1771nZs

Brilliant!

Coffee Society

Describing coffee flavors are subjective, yet interesting. I think a deeper understanding comes only with frequent practice of coffee tasting.

Useful links:
www.coffeeinstitute.org
www.ico.org
http://danielhumphries.typepad.com
http://meetthepresspot.blogspot.com

Beryl Cook

(via Wiki) Beryl Cook who was best known for comical paintings of people has died aged 81.

Useful links:
www.berylcook.org
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7424366.stm

Her paintings were unique for one reason: ordinariness.