GDC

The Game Developers Conference brings the best the game industry has to offer to San Francisco.

And Every year people come from around the planet to experience the mind blowing games and technology that are just on the cutting edge. 

An all access pass goes for $2200, for 5 days of conference.

YOUCH! 

Luckily I go For Free, and You Can too! 

As a CA, or Conference Associate, I work the entire week helping 

gaming executives and other high profile people get to their seminars and events,

meanwhile in my free time I get to go to the most exclusive gaming sessions on the planet.

I love it! : ) 

The first year I was put on the waiting list, and recieved an email a week or two before the conference saying they had a spot, but I had to respond before 12:00AM in order to secure the spot... The Kicker, the email was in my inbox at 11:00 PM, and I just "happened" to check my email at 11:50PM.... WOW so lucky... and the rest is a blissful gaming history.

Hope to See you at GDC 2009

and if not

Hope to see you at GDC 2010!

The Sweetest Sound a Person Can Hear.

What's something you could say to someone that could immediately make them open up?

Something that would make them happy, and feel better their whole day?

Is it I love you? Is it Your an important person?

It's even simpler than that, and yet it elludes so many of us...

The Sweetest Sound a Person Can Hear is their Name.

Thats right, and then if you need to give a bit extra work to this, It's

going to be worth its weight in gold. 

Here are some tricks to remembering names

-Say their name 2-3 times during your conversation

-Write their name on a piece of paper after talking to them

-Take a moment to mentally connect their face with their name

I'm going to challenge you to remember the name of everyone you meet for 1 week.

and if that's too easy, then try and remember 3 things about their personality, hobbies, political beliefs or anything else they are interested in.

-----

go and make yourself important

Never Criticize Again, and make 2x the Friends

Al Capone, one of the most cutthroat drug dealers throughout history

said he was only doing society a service... what can we learn from this?

People will rarely ever blame themselves for anything...

Therefore your best bet is going to be through encouragement...

The more you can go with the grain the better results your going to get.

So instead of criticizing someone for smoking, encourage them to quit so they could save money

or have better skin; this is the mentality that will skyrocket you towards success with people.

And can you think of something of importance in your life that doesn't involve people?

I can't think of many... Many great things that is. 

: )

Would you like Fries with that?

In today's consumer oriented society

a company with poor customer service wont last very long.

Yet, there is so much of it out there.

Take for instance AT&T, after my fifth attempt at closing my

account with them, I was redirected through 8 countries

and sent through nearly 10 different people... It was like

playing where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, except for 

my prize was being able to talk to Zed and Jane and plenty of

other clueless and incapable employees. 

What's going on here? Is AT&T trying to make their customer

service extremely unintelligible and god awful?

Notice I was calling to cancel... not renew or upgrade my services.

But Alas, companies like this should be cast into the fiery pits of 

mount doom, and geuss what that translates to in the year 2009?

Blogging... yes yes, it's true, now you know how bad their service is, 

and it can only spread further. 

The internet is the best way to get back at a poor company,

next time your making a company

consider the attitude... Would you like fries with that?

It's also just a funny thing to say when someone asks you to do something

try it!

Mark Your Territory! OR ELSE

What's your territory>? Is it your house? Is it your room? 

Essentially Your territory is going to be the space you feel most comfortable in. 

Now let's get on to marking it, 

Start by placing things of value in your space, it could be comfortable pillows, cool art

anything that lifts you up and re-affirms the parts of you that you want to keep. 

OK, then PROTECT YOUR SPACE

this is the biggest one, if someone comes into your space and does something you

do not vibe with, try this, "wait, why don't you stop... I think its best if you leave now, You see I just don't like it when people do _____ (negative behavior) in my space, Just leave and we can pick this up at another time."

Done and done, 

Nurture the inner Creature

SETH GODIN

If you go check out Seth Godin's blog right now, you're going to see a bit about parallel processing and serial processing. (link below)

What Seth is riffing on is that if you want to increase productivity make it possible for many people to be working on a project at the same time. Rather than needing the oversight of one person, which would cause A Bottleneck> 

Bottlenecks happen in your daily life when you're waiting in line for the one coffeehouse bathroom,

Thank the wonders of parallel processing,

....for the invention of Bathroom Stalls. 

Next time your waiting in line at a stadium, just be glad there's 20 stalls, not 1.

But if this is such a great idea, why don't we apply it to our daily life... 

Could it be possible, Process more than one task at a time...? ie: Multitask>

Sadly, the answer is NO. 

Unfortunately for us, the human brain can only function efficiently on one task at a time... If your a doubter, please let me know why at my Facebook (link below)

But every time you start a task and then get interrupted or multitask, it can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes to just regain your focus....

That means every single interruption you get... costs you 20-40 minutes to regain focus. 

average that with 10 interuptions a day at 20 min, thats 2 hours frustratingly spent trying to regain focus. Thats over 700 hours wasted a year. Now how much is your time worth? some people work for $10, some for $5000, let's say your time is worth a good $50, thats $35,000, you lost because of myspace this year.... Ouch!

---------

More on focus to come

:)  

MLM

Multi Level Marketing

also known as MLM

Is it good or bad? 

Robert Kiyosaki (rich dad poor dad) seems to think its okay

Also the FTC (federal trade commission) says it's not illegal per se

Under one condition: 

One cannot receive a commission for a startup fee. 

MLM is a system where a business automates is selling by giving the 

consumers an incentive to sell. Because the consumers of the product receive the product

they can recoup or even possibly make more money on their investment by referring new customers who buy the product. 

MLM .... hmmm its interesting, because most companies dont offer this incentive. 

Think about if mcdonalds gave you half the profit of the next guy you brought into their franchise. Or what about your college, what if you received 50% of the tuition for bringing in your little brother?

Tons of people give praise to their favorite college, or their favorite brands. But do they ever get anything in return?

The only problem I could see is if someone we're solely relying on the commission to come from the MLM. IF that's all your getting is a business to sell, I wouldn't do it. But if you believe in the product, then I think its a great way to recoup your investment. 

Binary Space Partition

BSP stands for a square matrix of ones and zeroes explaining space. 

by using two numbers a whole 3d world is born.

The video game.

-------------

El Binary Space Partition

a way to see space

Welcome to age of non-privacy

I know alot of people who were worried when they heard about the wire tapping that the Bush administration was using, but I want to pose another important point... the internet.

You don't even need to wire tap these days. In fact the other day I had someone read my blog, (i seriously thought there weren't any readers, : )) and because of that we're going to end our relationship... 

google never forgets

Not to say that it's a bad thing, actually quite on the contrary I think we are both heading in similar but different directions and after a very smooth and easy conversation we both decided it would be better to be friends. 

Although this does point to a very important question...

If your reading my blog, why don't you become a fan?

: )

Lack of Time, Money and other Society Programming

Do you ever feel like there's not enough time in a day?

Your right there isn't... but Why?

There isn't because we have too much, too much being demanded of ourselves, 

too much being bombarded on our doors, too much. In the world of interruption marketing 

there is little time to breathe or think.

Lack of time, lack of money and lack of energy. These three will get you if you don't choose to live by uncommon means. 

Timothy Ferris suggests a media fast

for one week, don't even read a paper, let alone touch the internet. 

sit in silence, and take some time for nothing. 

you might be suprised what inner demons come up to haunt you. 

The scary thing is they have always been there... your just clearing away enough of the noise to start hearing what you've got going on in your head. 

Why is there this sinking feeling?

I have this sinking feeling when I was with her 

and it wouldn't really go away. It's strange how things that we Think will make us feel better, often never do.... its only the things we feel that will be better. 

That intuition sure knows.

Recession Proof?

The Gaming industry has held it's head high among the growing concerns of the recession. And Why? Everything else seems to be taking a hit, and yet video games are still growing. Is there something to be said about the most immersive entertainment, combining sight and sound and many different arts into one entertaining experience>?

Some people think that entertainment isn't important, or very lucrative. 

For instance most people look for psychology, or biology degrees. It takes a very brave, or crazy, artist to major in something like poetry. 

Yet maybe the game industry is throwing that old standard on it's face.

Long live the artists!

Title

I think that it's strange there's a bird chirping really loud outside my window at 9:43 pm. In the dark it takes a special bird to keep making it's magical noises. Just like a human, it takes someone very special to be able to keep trying, singing, painting, drawing, playing... even when the lights go out. 

What does it take for you to become someone unshakable?