Deus Ex Machinatio

Meet Me in Austin!

My bags are packed, my electronics are charging, and tomorrow I'm a-gettin' on a plane heading to SXSWi! The excitement is killing me! Also inducing me to use an unseemly number of exclamation points!!! 

If you'll be in Austin, too, please do let me know so I don't miss you. I suspect the best way to reach me is via @ or DM on Twitter. (I'm Andrhia.) And of course I would be delighted to have a nice, rowdy cheering section for my talk on Saturday morning, ARGs and Women: Moving Beyond the Hot Brunette. Please do come and cheer me on.

See you soon!

And Now For Something Super!

So yeah, that soup thing is pretty crazy, right? Just to spite Campbell's, I totally ate a 320-calorie frozen meal for lunch today. 

This is the kind of post that was on my mind when I was talking about personal and professional personas a few weeks ago. I've traditionally shied away from talking to much about ideology, unless it's related to my work. But this is something that is important to me, even though it doesn't have much to do with games, and certainly is only a tangent from my career as a storyteller. 

Which brings me to today's topic: My Super First Day! I'm gearing up for another round, folks! If you're an MSFD alumnus, you're free to build onto your Super Second Day, work with others on a big collaborative Rashomon piece, or start fresh with a new character. 

If you haven't participated in MSFD before, it's dead easy! Just scribble out the story of your Super First Day and email it in by... oh, let's call it Feb. 7 at 6pm EST. 

Read the MSFD FAQ for our guidelines and other important info. Get cracking, supers!

Personal, Professional

I'm about to do something a little frightening. Bear with me.

A few days ago, my three-year-old daughter came to me crying. She had to go potty, but there was a monster in the bathroom. She was terrified. Specifically: Cookie Monster was in there, and I had to keep her safe from him. She did not buy my explanation that she would be safe from Cookie Monster because she was not a cookie, so I investigated. 

It was her blue washcloth hanging on the towel bar.

So! Did you see that? That terrifying act I just performed? That was a personal anecdote about my family, and possibly the first one I've ever written here that wasn't specifically about games or stories and how my children interact with them. That wasn't relevant, if you see. But was it a good idea? Do the readers who come here care one way or the other about the goings-on in my personal life? Or was sharing that one tiny story an act that was deeply unprofessional?

I keep thinking about these questions. I can't decide, so I'm taking it to you and asking you what you think. Should I keep a church-and-state kind of division between my personal and professional lives? But then where does Twitter fall? Or Facebook, where my Twitter posts are linked? What about LinkedIn, which also grabs my Twitter feed? 

Given that the work I do is profoundly personal, does it even make any sense to talk about a division between my personal and professional lives? I used to think so, but I'm less and less sure as more colleagues have become close friends, and as the edges of my internet footprint begin to overlap by a wider margin every day. My life isn't one of clear boundaries and defining lines. It's made in a single, whole piece. Everything is personal to me, and everything is professional as well. 

For a long time I kept two separate blogs. One of them was this one. If you were to visit the archives, you'd see it's heavy in opining, analysis, and idle speculation. My other blog was strictly personal, and mostly about kids, cooking and housework -- a mommyblog, if you will. But due to a confluence of time pressure, technical issues, offloading to Twitter, and sheer slackitude, the entire year of 2009 went by without an update over there. 

I wonder now if that separation has outlived its usefulness anyway. Or does this strictly-professional internet presence do me good? Would I lose professional standing if more people knew about my dirty dishes? (Do I want to work with people who would find a more complete picture of me off-putting?) I know other writers I respect and admire have done well with blending personal and professional. I speak of course of Elizabeth Bear and John Scalzi, Neil Gaiman, Jay Lake. 

So this is just one big solicitation for opinions, I guess. How do you manage the distinctions between personal and professional, if any? What do you do? How does it work, and what would you recommend?

See You in Austin!

I am thrilled, boggled, amazed, and other combinations of excited-plus-surprised to say that I'm in the first batch of speakers for SXSW this year, announced today. My topic is ARGs and Women: Moving Beyond the Hot Brunette, and I find the more I think about this subject, the more I have to say about it. 

This will also be my first time at SXSW, so I feel like I need some mentoring. Anyone have any SXSW-related advice for me?

Booyah: My Review

Have you seen the buzz around Booyah? I was intrigued by a particular Tweet from Jane McGonigal. A social reality game! Earn achievements for doing the stuff you want to do with your life! Awesome.

And then I downloaded the app to give it a whirl. Unfortunately, it's not the app I thought it would be, which means I still want the app I thought it was going to be. Booyah start with a cute little robot-looking avatar which you can customize with various colors and patterns. And then it pops you into a screen where you can browse categories of achievements to unlock, or the robot can give you ideas for "Booyah moments" to go after.

The problem, though, is that the process of recording those achievements wasn't what I had assumed. You don't just check a box saying "I did this today!" Instead, the social network component is all but forced on you. So if I want Booyah to help me record and celebrate that I went to the gym every day this week, or that I tried a new dish at dinner, or that I finished Chapter 5 of my novel-in-progress... I'm supposed to Tweet it, or put it on my Facebook status, and broadcast it to all of my friends. Why the heck should I spam my friends every time I go to the gym or hit my writing quota? Why can't I be quietly proud of myself, eh, Booyah?

I briefly flirted with the idea of setting up a separate Facebook account to keep private, for Booyah. And then I recovered my sanity.

Worse, half the achievements available in Booyah aren't even under your immediate power to achieve. If you get a certain number of Likes or comments on one of your Booyah updates, that can earn you even more achievements. This is irritating at best, and counterproductive at worst. If I'm going for a particular achievement -- say, getting five friends to comment on a fitness Booyah -- and I don't hit it, then I'm going to be disappointed. And maybe even discouraged. And then I just might give up. You just can't control other people, and it's ridiculous to make that a component of a validation system intended to make you feel good about yourself.

Now, the overall concept is still spectacular: Earn achievements for stuff you do in real life. I still want that app. Booyah, if you happen to read this, here's what you can do to turn me from a grouchy crank on the internet into an evangelist:

1. Don't give me a uniform set of achievements to go after. Let me pick and choose, so I don't have to even look at the ones I don't care about (like getting people to Like my gym workouts). 
2. Let me define my own achievements, and let me browse achievements defined by my friends or the Booyah community as a whole.
3. Let me keep my Booyah moments all to myself (unless I'm specifically in the mood for sharing.)
4. And let me choose a small group of friends to share Booyah with when I do feel like sharing; one cell who are my writing friends, another who are my gym buddies, and so on.

It really is a great concept; it's just that the implementation hasn't gone in the right direction for me. What I'm envisioning is probably a combination between 43 Things and earning Girl Scout or Boy Scout merit badges. For now, I'll keep waiting for the achievement app of my dreams. And who knows? Maybe when Booyah grows up a little more, it'll be exactly that. 

Updated to add: A friend has rightly pointed out that some of my criticism is unjust -- it's possible to keep your posts private, just in your Booyah journal, and share only some things with Twitter or with Facebook. Still, the whole philosophic focus of the game is around that sharing concept, and fully 2/3 of the available achievements are getting your updates Liked or commented upon. As a gamer, I'm a completist; but as a social person, I hate spamming my friends with stuff I don't think they'll find very interesting (like when I've gone to the gym). So the combination of achievements based on the reactions of my friends plus my drive to earn all available achievements makes Booyah particularly ill-suited to me. And probably others like me.

Shhhh... can you keep a secret?

Remember that day, one year ago, when you first woke up with your new superpower? Was it awesome or terrible? Did you save the world or did you turn to a life of infamy? 

This is an exercise in massively collaborative storytelling. What I want you to do is write a blog post about that magical technoscientific first day and how it’s affected you ever since. Don’t worry about consistency; this is all about a little semi-spontaneous fun. ^_^ 

Your deadline: It’s a squeaker, think we can get it up before Comic-Con is over? I’m thinking let’s all go live at 7pm Eastern time on Saturday night – that’s July 25. 

Meanwhile I’ll put up a goofy site somewhere that aggregates all of our posts for the sake of posterity. When you have your post up, email me and I’ll make sure you get the link love.

This is going to be so much fun.

Updated: If you have a blog to post your story in, that's fantastic. If you don't, I'm working on a site to collect contributions so everybody can participate. No need to email me your blog URL right now -- just email me the URL of your super first day on Saturday night. Shhh, keep it a secret until then! I'm so excited by all your enthusiasm. Thanks so much for your willingness to play along with me! 

Binary Thinking

Y'all should hop on over to see what Christ Dena has to say about the pervasive binary thinking we're seeing online with increasing frequency of late. 

It's an excellent point. I know everything I've ever done, no matter how good or how bad, is an aggregate of much smaller successes and failures. But the problem is even bigger than just assessing creative work; it's endemic to political discourse, too, to the detriment of... well... pretty much everybody. 

Anyway, click on over and give Christy some love. She's earned it.

Yatta!

If my finger is right on the pulse of this here web-o-nets, there's an awful lot of low morale and high stress going around right now. So I thought I'd do my part to spread a little good cheer around the internets Japanese-style, just in time for the weekend.

   

Oh, you're welcome.

Madame Zee and the Shorty Awards

I would never in a million years have expected this, but my own Madame Zee is up for a Shorty Award in the #entertainment category! The Shorty Awards are, as they describe it, honoring "the world's top Twitterers." As of this writing, Madame ranked in the 13th place with eight votes. 

Madame has no hope of bringing the award home, of course -- heavens, the top-ranked contender has more nominations than Madame even has followers at all. But it is delightful that anybody could think of her this way. 

And maybe -- maybe -- if a few of you have it in your hearts to nominate her, perhaps she can make it into the top 10, if only briefly? 

Of course, while you've got your nominating engine started, why not give a second to honor Jay Bushman for his fantastic Twitter story, The Good Captain? 

Good karma all around, duckling. Very fortuitous indeed. 

Update: Quick and easy voting guide... Click through for exact instructions on what to Tweet to nominate Madame Zee and Jay Bushman. Please note nominations from private accounts don't count.

How Many Licks DOES It Take? A Challenge!

Let's let the owl explain:

And thus was the challenge issued. You can't let a statement like that go unanswered, can you? I set out with my daughter to do a trial run, but her result -- 614 licks -- is merely one lonely, unscientific anecdote. (I didn't manage to actually count at all. Oops!)

There have been a few valiant efforts to find the truth of this matter, but none have achieved anything like a conclusive sample size, and have omitted factors that might be key to finding your PTPLE (Personal Tootsie Pop Licking Estimate), such as tongue width and Tootsie Pop flavor. Even if I were to lobby every friend I have to conduct this experiment, few would follow through, and I would wind up with paltry tens of data points, if that.

But we live in an era of phenomenal crowdsourcing and collaboration. There is no reason we can't all get together to create a conclusive formula establishing the PTPLE. And so, one and all, I invite you to conduct your own one-person Tootsie Pop experiments and record the results in our Google Spreadsheet.

Soon, thanks to all of you, the world will finally know... how many licks DOES it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?