Reality Panic

With all the travel this year, I was able to do a good amount of book reading (27 total - way up from last year’s 15).

Here’s what I’ve read over the past twelve months (sorted in the order they were read):

• The 4-Hour Workweek - Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
• The Cult of the Amateur - How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture
• The Stuff of Thought - Language as a Window into Human Nature
• Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
• Understanding Nonprofit Financial Statements
• The Opposable Mind - How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
• The Open Brand - When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World
• Grand Theft Childhood - The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do
• The Future of Ideas - The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
• The Back of the Napkin - Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
• Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
• Halting State
• Expose 6 - Finest digital art in the known universe
• Game Widow
• Designing for the Social Web
• Influencer - The Power to Change Anything
• Free Culture - How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity
• The Decision to Volunteer - Why People Give Their Time and How You Can Engage Them
• Crucial Confrontations - Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations and Bad Behavior
• Leading Without Power - Finding Hope in Serving Community
• Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6
• Media Training 101 - A Guide to Meeting the Press
• Media Work - Digital Media and Society Series
• The Medici Effect - Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts & Cultures
• The Hummer and the Mini - Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape
• CrazyBusy - Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! - Strategies for Handling Your Fast-Paced Life
• The Six Secrets of Change - What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive

Most of them were good reads. Though, Cult of the Amateur was offensively crap (I was swearing at the book every other page), and CrazyBusy and Hummer/Mini were pretty empty.

On the truly great side, Medici Effect was a real eye opener to understanding diversity in the context of innovation. Here Comes Everybody had wisdom on every page, and really made me stop to think deeply after each chapter. Influencer is, simply put, a powerful book. And, was happy to catch up on my Lessig readings with both Free Culture and Future of Ideas dense with smartness.

Finally, I was able to sneak a fiction book onto the list, Halting State, which I read while on vacation in Paris this summer. It was recommended by Kim, and I enjoyed it (the cover art is especially captivating).

Aside from trying to catch up on some game playing over the holidays, I’m finally digging into the 900+ page Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - truly inspiring/fascinating so far…

Probably my busiest travel year so far (as I somewhat predicted in my 2007 travel summary), 2008 saw me jetting across the globe from start to finish (”luckily” a December trip to Hong Kong was canceled). Each year I say I need to travel less, but the nature of my work continues to demand more and more travel - or more specifically, more face-to-face time with IGDA members, the board, partners, etc, etc.

Anyway, here’s the listing of cities (and related events/reports+photos) I was in over the past twelve months:

• Toronto, ON (GameON:Finance + IGDA-Toronto)
• San Francisco, CA (Game Developers Conference)
• State College, PA / Philadelphia, PA / Mount Royal, NJ (Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames + IGDA-Philly + IGDA office visit)
• Philadelphia, PA / Mount Royal, NJ (IGDA board retreat)
• Pittsburgh, PA (SIGGRAPH 2009 planning retreat)
• San Francisco, CA (Entertainment Software Human Resources Association conference)
• Paris, France (Paris GDC + IGDA-Paris + vacation)
• Brighton, UK (Develop Conference)
• Los Angeles (Sandbox Symposium + SIGGRAPH)
• San Diego (ASAE Annual Meeting)
• Seattle, WA (Penny Arcade Expo)
• Singapore (Games Convention Asia)
• Burlington, VT (Emergent Media Center grand opening)
• Toronto, ON (Ontario Game Summit + GameON:Finance 2.0)
• San Francisco, CA (IGDA Leadership Forum + IGDA board retreat)
• Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit)

In terms of events, PAX was probably the most awe inspiring. The sheer passion and level of geekness on display was both purely awesome, and hugely depressing (as I already lamented, my own yearnings to be more of a carefree geek, but not having the time)…

In terms of places/trips, Paris and Singapore were both highlights. They are amazing and I hope to make it back to both in the near future…

Also, Pennsylvania wins the the award for the region I had no clue I’d be spending so much time in. Kinda odd how that worked out… And, was happy to make it out to three different IGDA chapter meetings (Toronto, Philly, Paris) to see firsthand how other local communities are run.