May 2009 Archives

This week I've been preparing for the Games, Learning, Society 5 conference coming up in a few weeks -- which, embarrassingly, means going through all the flyers, papers, and postcards that I picked up last year.  So this week's reading is GLS + links.

Beyond the jump: academics, academic papers, and transmedia.

This was the second year that I've run a game design workshop at the I-CON SF & Fantasy convention.  It was the second year, as well, that very few people showed up but that those who did seemed to enjoy themselves.  I've gone back and forth on the design of the workshop itself, but both years ended up with a similar setup due to the constraints of a convention.

I think that it's worth doing a bit of a post-mortem on the workshop, the workshop within the con, and just generally posting this for comment.  I'd love to improve this for other events!

Beyond the jump: Summary, Constraints of a convention, and possible revisions.

I set myself some criteria for random web readings about two months ago, as I was rebuilding this blog: if I write it up on the blog, I can read this. That's a pretty good way to go, if the time spent reading doesn't use all the time available for writing.

Which I have let happen.

So I'm going to make sure that I post those readings regularly, even if they're still queued up for reading and writing.  Starting now!

• The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving - several experts' take on the Chinese government's efforts to manage the written language.  I'm intrigued by efforts to standardize (and maintain) languages because it seems like such an important, significant, and fundamentally futile activity. Documentation, yes.  Archival, yes.  Management - doomed from the moment ink hits paper.
• Google Chrome Tech Doc - I'd probably have read this regardless of its presentation, because every now and then Google turns the world on its ear and I'd like to see the thinking as it does so.  However, they had Scott McCloud illustrate this doc, and ... it helps.  I was skeptical by page 3, thinking that sometimes he was just coming up with cute illustrations that added nothing (making me wish the space had been given to more text).  By page 8 I'd been swung around.  The important text is there, and some of the concepts get just that little push into clarity with a bit of visual support.  Now I'm wondering what the process was for creating that document-- did he interview people there, or just work from docs and photos?  How many of the people illustrated are now using his drawings as their avatars?