Flow Is the Antidote for Ego

In today's world, we're always striving for more, more, more. More money, bigger companies, more market share, faster times, longer distances, heavier weights, etc. It's all testosterone, adrenaline, and a lot of ego. It's not all bad, as great things do come from it. But where does it end? How long can the effort be sustained? Often, it ends with injuries, burnout, broken relationships, or simply an aging body or mind that can't compete anymore.

Educational Game Rating and Standards Body

I recently interviewed André Thomas, founder and CEO of Triseum, an educational game company. He’s also the founder and director of LIVE Lab in the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University, as well as a professor of game design, game development, and interactive graphics techniques at Texas A&M.

In this interview, conducted for my column at Learning Solutions Magazine, we discussed several topics related to the development and distribution of educational video games. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit it all into one article, and many of the questions had to be cut from the final piece. However, the discussion about creating a game rating and standards body was too important to leave on the virtual cutting room floor, so I’m publishing it here.

Sign Up for My New New Newsletter!

I'm starting a new weekly email newsletter in which I'll write summaries of and my thoughts on the best stuff I've read in the past week. I'll mostly write about nonfiction books, but sometimes I'll include my musings on excellent works of fiction, long-form articles, or even podcasts, YouTube videos, or documentaries. In short, I'll include whatever I find to be so valuable, educational, and life changing that I think everyone should read it immediately too.

SXSW 2018 Panel Picker Submissions

Here's Jenn's and my geeky and fun SXSW Panel Picker submission for a project we call Bird Feeder 3000.

Bird Feeder 3000: 3D Print a VR/AI/IoT Bird Feeder
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/75106

Watch the video, create a SXSW account if you haven't already, and then upvote us! Votes from the public help us get selected to speak at SXSW 2018. The voting period is from Monday, August 7, 2017 to Friday, August 25, 2017. Feel free to pass it along too.

We both submitted to be speakers at SXSW Edu as well. The voting period for SXSW Edu is the same as above. Here are our SXSW Edu submission links.

Pandora's Headset: The Ethics of VR in Education
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/75305

Letters to a Young AI: Be an Ethical Educator
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/75047

Thanks a ton!

More Metafocus Articles

Here are links to my most recent articles at Learning Solutions Magazine:

Is Virtual Reality Safe for Kids?

Seven Ethical Dilemmas of VR in Education

Don't Break the Spell: Creating Presence in Virtual Reality

Skills Needed to Create a Serious VR Game with a Game Engine

Serious Games: Three Questions About Unit Economics

Let me know what you think!

Enough Is Enough

I am doing enough. I am enough. It doesn't matter whether others see and agree with that. I see it and know it, and that is enough. I meditated just now (Wednesday evening, July 26, 2017) and realized the anxiety that has vexed my health for so long comes largely from not feeling like I'm doing enough, that I could be doing more, that I'm personally not enough. So not true.

You Say You Want a(n Educational) Revolution

The April Metafocus column explores the limitations of VR in the classroom, parodying a lesson plan for a virtual field trip to a farm. It's more lighthearted than my other Metafocus pieces. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.

Metafocus: You Say You Want a(n Educational) Revolution

Interview with Maria Johnson of UT Dallas Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training Department

My latest Metafocus column is an interview with Maria Johnson of the UT Dallas Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training Department. They're doing cool work using VR for cognitive development, with a focus on children with autism, ADHD, and other social learning differences.

Metafocus: Interview with Maria Johnson of UT Dallas Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training Department

Enjoy!

Serendipity > FOMO: How to Plan for SXSW

Last week, a friend asked me how I approach my SXSW planning. There's so much to see and do, it's like all of college crammed into 10 days (or 14 days, if you do SXSWedu too, like I do). Sessions, speakers, networking, networking events, mentoring, hands on maker sessions, multiple trade show floors, music, film, art, video games, national display houses, parties, dancing late at night, pitch events, VC meetups, eco meetups, tech meetups of every type imaginable, educational scavenger hunts, book signings... attendees can't experience more than 1-2% of all the amazing stuff that badges provide access to. Planning your days can be daunting. Moreover, the website isn't great and the app is buggy, ironically enough, and you can't get your hands on the event catalog until registration the day before. However SXSW itself is such a life-changing and world-changing conference that it's well worth putting up with any sub-par SXSW technologies.

Revisionist Me

In the 2000s, I built several businesses--all within the mortgage and real estate industries--and bought several commercial rental properties in Colorado. I was worth millions... on paper at least. In 2007-2008, the American mortgage and real estate markets tanked. In 2009, I filed a personal Chapter 7 bankruptcy, lost everything, and applied to grad school. Those are the basic facts of the story of my late-20s to mid-30s. How I've told this story has evolved quite a bit, becoming a story of its own.

Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read at Least Twice

I teach a course in entrepreneurship fundamentals, and I also work with many small businesses and startups as a management consultant and executive coach. I frequently recommend must-read business books to my students and clients. These entrepreneurs desperately need to absorb the books' lessons given the chronic and common problems they're each facing in their own businesses. 

The list below is the best of the best. I'm including the list here so I can easily refer my students and clients to one list instead of haphazardly referring books as I remember them. If hundreds of my students and clients will benefit from this list, other entrepreneurs may benefit as well.

Everything I Know Is Wrong

Everything I know is wrong. 

Why is it wrong? Because everything humans now know will likely be proven wrong, mostly wrong, or at very least woefully incomplete and misguided. Fast forward 50, 500, or 5000 years, assuming we humans don't render ourselves extinct by then, what will historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists of that era see

The Law of Zero Sum Learning

When we are young, if we put our heart and soul into becoming excellent at something, that comes with a cost of not learning something else. At age 15, 20, or 25, if we become a star athlete, we simply do not have the hours available in our day, week, month, or year to also become a star musician. If we master the guitar, violin, and six other instruments, we probably are not simultaneously attending med school. If we become a surgeon by age 30, we probably didn't also write the world's next great novel or win gold in the Olympics.

Learning the Five Leverages

As a young man, I decided that if I were to make a difference in the world, and I don't mean a small difference, but put a real dent in the world in some positive way, then I'd need leverage. The world is too big and its momentum too strong for one person to create much lasting change without leverage.

I also realized that five kinds of leverage have much more power than any other in today's world: communication, technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and politics.

Opportunity Funnel for the Soul

Hope is a virtue... to have it, we must work at it.
- Mary Berry quoting her father, Wendell Berry

Entrepreneurship is hard. It sometimes destroys lives and livelihoods. This is precisely its greatest value, the best argument for doing it.

I'm not saying that failure builds character or any such trite nonsense, though it probably does do plenty of that. What I mean is a little more nuanced.

I, Art-Whole

I just got home from an all day yoga/breathing/raw food/meditation/dance retreat, led by the wonderful Maya Papaya. A wonderful experience from start to finish, especially because of all the kind, creative people present. I hope I stay friends with at least some of them, if not all. And the food! Oh, the food. I need to learn to cook like Maya. Who knew raw, vegan meals could be so complex and delicious?

At the beginning, we all shared a word or seed that we were working on internally (mine was balance), and near the end we all shared insights we received from the event, assuming we had something worthy of sharing. Some pretty awesome moments came out of this sharing, but one thing struck me as somewhat...off.

Sparky's Life Lesson #587

A couple weeks ago, my best friend, Peter, and I had some items to discuss regarding our gluten-free cleanse business, so we headed down to the Lustre Pearl, a rad Austin bar that's feels like a cross between a British pub and a barbecue in your cool friend's big backyard.

We found a table out back on the patio, since it was a nice evening. We were done within a half hour, but didn't quite feel like going home, so we stuck around to chat and enjoy the night air.

Unremarkable Me

I’m not remarkable. Not lately anyway, and certainly not at Acton. I’m not the top student in grades, top third at best. My team didn’t win the sales challenge nor any of the Operations course simulations. I won’t likely be the teachers’ selection for Student of the Year or whatever they call it. My business wasn’t selected by my classmates for the opportunity pitch project. Perhaps my most lasting impression on the program itself will be my recommendation of Po Bronson's What Should I Do with My Life, which was added to the Life of Meaning course reading list, or, more dubiously, my all-time top scores in several of the Pre-Mat simulation games. Big whoop.

How to Win at Connect Four

Today I and five other Acton MBA classmates volunteered to spend time hanging out with old folks in a rehab nursing home (i.e. old people who are sick or recently had major surgery). Specifically, we helped in the Alzheimer’s and dementia ward.

I’m really behind on my homework this weekend and was up way too late studying last night. The “smart” thing to do would have been to sleep in a bit and tackle my homework all day. Plus, I’m usually more moved by environmental causes than social causes. That snooze button looked soooo inviting. I went anyway, because I knew at a gut level that this was important too, possibly more important than any single homework assignment ever could be. Important to me, to the residents, and to my classmates. I went, and I was right.

False Idol

If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference.
-Buckminster Fuller

I had an interesting day. I lost one hero, got to chat with another, and rethought my whole life story.