Ugh, my reading this past year was way down. Despite all the long flights (hmm, I think I was mostly catching up on sleep), I was nowhere close to my preferred pace of two books per month, barely managing to get in one read per month.
Here’s what I did manage to read:
Given my efforts to start up an indie game incubator and raise some venture capital, you can notice the startup/VC trend in the reading list. The classic Art of the Start is an especially good book to, uh, start with. And, Lean Startup is amazingly good, and not just about starting a company but really much more broadly about “validated learning” in an iterative process under conditions of uncertainty. Nice to see it is already catching on in game dev circles.
Maverick was oddly inspiring: a much older book on a democratic workplace in Brazil, where factory workers decide on their own hours and pay. And, Where Good Ideas Come From was especially informative and fun to read. I’m just finishing up Adapt, which plays in nice to my usual “fail to succeed” lectures, but it is much more real-world (eg, Iraq war, banking crash, etc) than management process type stuff I was expecting.
Of the bunch, Democratic Enterprise was pretty meh. Some good info, but just too densely written and super boring. Conversely, was very happy with Element after being inspired by Ken Robinson’s beautiful (and funny!) TED Talk on the need to nurture creativity. And, thanks to Susan Gold for Poke the Box, a fun little book that I now need to hand off to someone else…
OK, this year was just a ridiculous level of travel. More and more of my consulting work is abroad, and the conference speaking invites just keep coming (luckily, I will often overlap conference with client work with university lectures or IGDA chapter visits, etc). There were some really killer transits like the Finland+Sweden>>>Vancouver trip! Or, the 24hr+ trips back from Korea and India. BTW, I don’t get jetlag much anymore - things have gotten pretty binary for me: I’m either on or off.
Anyway, here’s where I went and roughly what I did (with links to notes/photos when available) over the past year:
- Orlando, FL (client work)
- Toronto, ON (GameON: Finance)
- Toronto + Waterloo, ON (GRAND committee meeting + Waterloo U. lecture)
- Burlington, VT (Champlain visit)
- San Francisco, CA (Game Developers Conference)
- Boston, MA (Penny Arcade Expo East)
- Berlin, Germany (Game Culture Circle talkshow and HTW U. lecture)
- Toronto, ON (Insight game business conference)
- Rome, Italy (ImMediaTe Cross Media Summit)
- Malta (Gamezing award ceremony)
- Heidelberg, Germany (Innovation Forum)
- Toronto, ON (entertainment law conference)
- Ottawa, ON (client work)
- Burlington, VT (Champlain senior show speech)
- Helsinki + Tampere, Finland (IGDA-Finland + Games & Innovation Research Seminar)
- Malmo, Sweden (Nordic Game Conference)
- Vancouver, BC (GRAND Annual Conference)
- Buenos Aires, Argentina (MICA)
- Paris + Lyon, France (Futur en Seine)
- Barcelona, Spain (GameLab)
- Montreal, QC (International Startup Festival)
- Quebec City, QC (super mini vacation)
- Mallorca, Spain (European Game Executives Summit)
- Bogota, Colombia (AniGames Expo)
- Montreal, QC (Story+Games Symposium)
- San Francisco, CA (Swissnex game design exhibition launch)
- Toronto, ON (client work with Colombia)
- Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit)
- Seoul + Busan, South Korea (G-Star)
- Mumbai + Pune, India (Supinfomania)
- Toronto, ON (client work)
One of the biggest challenges with international travel is language. With a trip to Korea every few years, for example, there is not a lot of pressure/guilt for not picking up the language. But, with fives outings this year that were Spanish, I was feeling inadequate. Though, my French skills do help decipher the general gist of conversations and pick through a dinner menu ;)
Wow, India is kinda bonkers. On the one hand, there is complete chaos and disarray (insane traffic being just one example) and at the same time, there is this zen-like harmony. It’s an assault on your sense and opens your mind…
I was mainly in Pune (a neighboring city of Mumbai) for the Supinfomania festival hosted by the DSK Supinfocom Game school. I spoke during the conference on failure and experimentation as the needed approach to success, and then ran a full-day workshop for students on innovation processes. Then I spent a day chilling in Mumbai itself.
My head is still spinning trying to make sense of it all. From the slums nestled between 5-star hotels, utterly insane traffic that takes you 2 hours to travel 15km, to the embryonic state of the game industry in the country with the President of India coming in to inaugurate a games and animation school! Also, everything was constantly evolving, especially the schedule… It was dizzying. And, OMG, so much food!
One of the key insights was a struggle away from British-rule induced style of education, that largely beat out any form of actual inquiry, curiosity or learning how to learn. How can you innovate and evolve in a context where people are trained to do as they are told and not to ask questions?
OK, I need to go catch up on sleep… Meanwhile, here are some photos from the trip:
Snazzy crystal shard chandelier in the lobby of the Hyatt in Pune.
The DSK Supinfocom campus.
Cool junkyard scavenged sculptures.
DSK Supinfocom also has a school of industrial design.
Sculpture as part of the animation program.
One of the student team’s “fish tank” offices for their final year game project.
Enjoying local traffic in Pune.
Local mogul DS Kulkarni (founder of the Supinfocom school in India) elaborates on his vision alongside delegates from France.
One of the many cultural performances during the lunch breaks.
Raphael Colantonio and Marco Capraro describe the founding and many near-successes of Arkane Studios.
Back lawn of Kulkarni’s hill-side mansion set for dinner reception.
The really nice pool.
Oh, and matching waterfall to go with the breakfast nook.
Waterfall from other angle, and side of house.
Head of the game school, Alexis Madinier sets the stage for what’s to come.
Students plugging away at the “marshmallow challenge” during my workshop.
Spaghetti tower going up.
The professors ended up building the tallest structure.
Packed in the back of the jeep, heading to lunch.
Cool sandstone sculpture in lobby of Marriott in Mumbai.
Famous Prithvi Theatre.
Walking the relatively calm street side stalls.
An over-the-wall shot of Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalo (he’s a super famous Bollywood actor.
Insightful billboard.
Another good billboard.
Hare Krishna temple.
Cool statue at the Hare Krishna temple.
Another temple… BTW, that’s an ancient Indian symbol, mainly representing good fortune…
Night time beach shot looking out to the Arabian Sea from the hip Aurus lounge/restaurant.
