Tip of the Quill: A Journal

Category Archives: Academia

Resources for New Creators + Makers working in comics.

One of the projects I’ve been working on at the Annenberg Innovation Lab is a study of The New Creators + Makers, where my team of students and I have been looking historically at the career trajectories of creative types, what commonalities exist across multiple creative industries (career stages, challenges, opportunities, etc.), and how new […]

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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 […]

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On storytelling with smart homes and the Internet of Things.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about storytelling with smart homes and the Internet of Things – what the MIT Media Lab‘s David Rose calls enchanted objects. My Lighthouse in the Woods experiment at the Annenberg Innovation Lab was a first step in this direction, using the Oculus Rift to experiment in storytelling using smart […]

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On the Future of Comics.

On October 23rd, I had the great pleasure of co-hosting Geek Speaks: The Future of Comics with Henry Jenkins. I was thrilled to not only reunite Henry with the one and only Scott McCloud for a one-on-one discussion on McCloud’s Reinventing Comics almost 15 years later, but to then get to chair a panel of […]

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FUTURECOMICS with Joe LeFavi, me, and Henry Jenkins.

Yesterday afternoon my friend Joe LeFavi and I were invited to present futurecomics1, a conversation about what’s next in the art and business of comics, in Henry Jenkins' “Comics and Graphic Storytelling” course at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. It was the last course of the year, so Henry thought it’d be […]

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On jrCEOs.

A few weeks ago, my friend Noam Dromi asked me if the Annenberg Innovation Lab could host a group of schoolkids that he was mentoring via his jrCEOs project. Specifically, he asked if I would be willing to play host, showing off the new techno-toys that we’ve been tinkering with in the lab. The thinking […]

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On Koblin and Echelman’s “Unnumbered Sparks”.

One of the most interesting new friends I’ve gotten to make during my time at USC so far has got to be Aaron Koblin, this year’s innovator-in-residence at the Annenberg Innovation Lab and the Creative Director of the Data Arts Team at Google. Aaron’s just unveiled his latest work, a collaboration with textile sculptor Janet […]

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On the possibilities of an “all-mobile environment”.

A few weeks ago, the Annenberg Innovation Lab held our Spring 2014 Think & Do event. Much like the “New Screens: Re-Envisioning Home Entertainment” Think & Do we held back in the fall, this one focused on one of the four core areas of the lab’s Edison Project. This time around, the focus was on […]

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Bang bang hammer hammer (2014 edition).

Rabbit rabbit! Happy New Year, everyone! It’s been a few months since I’ve posted an update about what all I’ve been up to. The short answer is, a lot. As for a long answer… Life at USC has been wonderfully, delightfully hectic this past semester. As I said back in September: I believe that there […]

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Hello world. (Again.)

It feels decidedly odd to be writing here again. Delightful, yes. Wonderful, sure. But also very strange. It’s been almost exactly a year since I last posted something here, and it’s been three years since I stopped blogging more or less regularly. When I joined Microsoft, I couldn’t talk about what I was doing there […]

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