Tip of the Quill: A Journal
The last six months.

…And just like that, six months have gone by. Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. In the past six months, I’ve:

  • Co-taught the Annenberg Innovation Lab’s 2015 CRUNCH Student Design Challenge (an intense crash course in entrepreneurialism) with Erin Reilly, Francesca Marie Smith and Ian Donahue
  • Guest-lectured on transmedia storytelling for Lipscomb University in January
  • Guest-lectured on transmedia storytelling and branding in Henry Jenkins and Burghardt Tenderich’s Transmedia Branding course at USC in February
  • Attended the E2 Conference at USC in February
  • Presented a panel on “Storytelling with The New Screens” with Alisa Katz and Francesca Marie Smith at SXSW in March
  • Hosted a panel on “Hollywood Does Cutting Edge” at Digital Hollywood in April
  • Co-ran the “Cyberpunk 2.0: Worldbuilding and Storytelling” workshop at the Cyberpunk: Past and Future USC Visions & Voices event with Jeff Watson
  • Was a keynote speaker at the Media Mutations 7 conference in Bologna, Italy in May
  • Presented a three-day workshop on transmedia storytelling at Danube University Krems in May
  • Hosted the “Storytelling with the Internet of Things” workshop with ioTheatre at the Annenberg Innovation Lab in June
  • Attended E3 in June

And those are just the big, professional events! In “somewhat smaller” professional things, I’ve been doing a bunch of work through the Annenberg Innovation Lab for our sponsors, including some really fun stuff involving how to leverage different types of fan engagement, doing franchise development, and storytelling with even more New Screens. The biggest thing on the personal front, in addition to enjoying the hell out of being a dad and doing my best to train my daughter for a bright future in supervillainy, was packing up the family and moving from San Pedro, California (which was at the southern end of the 110 N-S highway that bisects Los Angeles) to Pasadena, California (which is at the northern end of the 110 highway). Yes, that means that we literally drove from one end of the 110 to the other multiple times this spring, frequently in a U-Haul truck. Good times, good times.

But now it’s summer, and things are starting to ease up, right?

Right?

Well, no. Not even a little bit. Because now I’m writing my ass off, trying to finish up a couple major projects before things get really zany starting, oh, in just a few all-too-short weeks… I’ve got one really big piece of news pending that I’m not quite ready to announce yet. Soon! Very soon! (Man, I need to get back into the habit of blogging, sharing pictures and engaging on social media! Nothing like working for a big enormous company with its squads of flesh-eating lawyers to break you of oversharing…)