Returning from "Scotland"

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Summer is nearing an end—our Fall semester starts again in less than 3 weeks!!!! Being so Sarah, Ray and myself just returned from vacation. Ken is off for another week. Interestingly enough he's in Nova Scotia where I just returned from. Ray just returned from the "original" Scottish coast! So in essence the three of us visited Scotland of sorts.

I was far from connectivity except upon return on the ferry that travels from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick. There of course I immediately took photos with my iphone and uploaded to Facebook to share! It was difficult at first to leave work behind but in the end it was very good to vacate all work, all stress, all to do lists. And it is always good to view one's life through unexplored contexts and pare down to the essentials.

It was almost as difficult to pick up work upon my return. Hundreds of emails needed responses, plans needed refocusing, and my brain needing to be shook to jog lose what ties had been left undone. It was enough to make me want to take the next ferry back!

However there was the EMC full of life, full of students! Burlington 3D had grown in scope, Cystic Fibrosis had a new game character, VT Virtual Museum is in final concept production. The Masie iphone and IBM teams were hard at work. There was Lauren Nishikawa in her new role as Junior Creative Project Manager. Rafi presented a proposal for fundraising for the Empowering Play project, Amanda had an excellent marketing plan proposal. 

Likewise I could see the impact of the EMC. For those of you who haven’t caught this, what began as Champlain student Raymond Ortgiesen blog post was picked up first by “Gamasutra” (the publication for Game Developers) and then by “healthGAMERS”. The discussion is on the term “serious games”. A number of our students wrote into the forum—Heather Conover, Derek Harde, Max Nichols, Bryan Hare, and Glen Cooney. Wonderful to hear their thoughts on the topic now that they have been working in that venue for two years!

Regardless of my thoughts on the topic, what I appreciate and find rewarding is the engaged level of debate by our Champlain students in a public, professional venue: 

Is the Term Serious Game Misleading? | healthGAMERS
By Melanie M. Lazarus, MPH 
This week's Standout Member Blog is Raymond Ortgiesen's Blog, views from a junior game design student at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. His featured post is entitled “Some Thoughts About Serious Games.

Gamasutra link: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaymondOrtgiesen/20090727/2595/Some_Thoughts_About_Serious_Games.php

As Govanna Peebles, the VT State Archeologist expressed to me, hard not to want to work here. So it is good to return!

On Leadership and Vision

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Reflecting on today, I would define leadership as a mix of three essentials: vision, communication, and decision-making. Vision is based upon wisdom—borne of actively listening, keenly observing, and reliably projecting into the future (often bred by experience). Communication is more difficult as it depends on hearing, balancing, and clearly elaborating. Decision-making is tougher. Often it can be looked at as saying yes or no but in reality it is taking responsibility for results. This in turn is dependent on believing strongly in the group that is being led—never micro-managing! Thus true leadership recognizes that the leader is really the servant. Ego has no part of true leadership. A very strong sense of identity, personal motivation, patience, and true strength IS required.

One of the people I admire for their wisdom on leadership is John Abele, the founder of Boston Scientific. I highly recommend his blog http://www.kingbridgecentre.com/wordpress/  for insight into leadership and collaboration. He is one who has consistently enabled innovation—the nearly impossible to happen, enriching our lives, despite major obstacles in the path.

Summer—a Time for Knowledge Sharing

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There can be long stretches when life is too frantic there is no time to write. There are other times like today, when so much is happening that one has to record at least the main points. Today is such a day. It was fully a "meeting day" today and tomorrow promises to be much the same. Meetings can be soooo frustrating as there seems to be stacks of work that NEEDS to be done and meetings threaten to upend. The important piece about a good meeting, as I've learned from experience, is that is it can raise the bar. Voices of many can cut the work load by slicing through to the "best" solution. Properly delegated much can then be accomplished OR many can be reached. Today was such a day at the EMC. 

At the very end of the day, Brian and Jeremy presented to Ken and myself on their plan for the Masie iPhone application. Their challenge is to become proficient at developing the code behind the application so that at the October conference they can create an app in 3 days with  a community of advisors and two other Champlain students: a designer and an artist. This summer they are working to learn but they also are working creating on an innovate app to profile pre-conference.

Today Sarah, Ken, Ray and myself were involved in two interviews one for newspaper, the other for community radio. One interview focused on the Cystic Fibrosis project now in completion of the concept and testing of the games by patients. They are quite wonderful to play. It was good to share where they started, what they are, and likewise how we've come to appreciate that community.

The other was an interview was on the Violence Against Women game project. Let's hope it can raise awareness and bring new support to the project. The good news is that in the last few weeks, thank in part to the a generous donation by Population Media Center, we've raised $30,000 to bring the project out from under hiatus!!!!We will need much more to complete the project so we've begun a campaign - we're calling it the "It's a little thing" campaign in reference to the email that began it. To each donor, no matter the size of the gift they can give, we will bring them in on the creation process, presenting to them art assets, scripts, test results, etc. so they can follow and become part of our team.  

But back to today and this week the team presents work to date to the UNFPA tomorrow. We will share the video presentation with you through our web site Empowering Play  For over a year now, I've been writing about how incredible our students our, their creativity and their talent. In this video, it shines through clearly!

Last but not least, Thursday the team working on our Virtual Museum web presence project with VT. State Archeologist Giovanna Peebles share their concepts to the board of advisors for the project. Wish them luck—their idea(s) move way beyond the boxes of artifacts stored, way beyond museum exhibits, and into global knowledge sharing. And isn't that waht this is ALL about—global knowledge sharing?

Ok big breath, smile - as my friend Pat says -it's all good.

Summer is here!

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It was such a jammed packed school year that we are finally catchin gour breath at the EMC. Not to say that we still don't have a lot going on but there is more time to spend on each project and to get out and play!

Many of us just coompleted the Governor's Institute of Vermont in Information Technology. Eight faculty members, ten Champlain college students as Resident Advisors((RAs)one of whom also took on a teaching load!),and 40 teens from through out Vermont! It was an awesome experience with us learning as much as we taught.

Other projects going on at the EMC are with the Vermont State Archeologist Giovanna Peebles on a "virtual museum", finalizing the Cystic Fibrosis game (now in testing, and IBM project in virtual worlds, mapping of Burlington in Google Earth with the college and soon the City of Burlington, and iPhone app with Elliott Masie for his Fall Learning 2009 conference.

What is going into hiatus - or maybe not is the UN game project to end violence against women. Funding from the UN ended July 1 but will resume in January. Especially cool is that the project became part of the Secretary General's UNite Campaign so will now be available for country funding under that banner. So last night we all celebrated with an old-fashioned grill complete with sparklers, a firepit, volleyball and of course DDR!

Till the UN funds come through again, we are in a people-to-people fundraising campaign of our own to keep the creativity and progress going in the meantime. Check out these links to learn more or get involved:
Project Website: http://emergentmediacenter.com/unvaw/
VAW Blog: http://emc-gamestakeonvaw.blogspot.com/

Here's our video to explain the project recently post to YouTube (thank you Ray and team!):

Time to Celebrate

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Wow it is hard to believe but a year ago Sarah and Ray were newly hired at the EMC. We were not in the Champlain Mill. We did not know Michel. We were not working with Peter Bingham on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to create games for patients with CF. We were not working with the marvelous crew at Population Media Center and Aminata and Leyla at the UNFPA on the game to address Violence Against Women. Heather Kelley was not with us. And Megan Frenzen was not at Champlain! South Africa was a distant place with people we did not know. Ken was not working with us. We had not worked with Paul, Tom, and Paul at IBM. There was no Teletrust or "Disaster Master". We were searching for funds to work on the Info Lit games and did not know Andy! 

Wow! We have a to celebrate—the efforts of hard working Champlain faculty, staff and administrators. The incredible creativity and work of 114 Champlain students! The commitment of all our partners, who now are our friends. And celebrate we shall! Please join us  Thursday, April 30, 2009 5:00 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) for a party in the Mill—games, art creation, pizza, and I hear a disco ball. I am especially looking forward to sharing the video magic of our video blog crew! Come join us!

The sad piece is that Champlain graduation is May 9th and we will miss those students we will be losing!!!! Come celebrate what they have brought to us all!

Night caller

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Pardon me if this post is due to flights of fancy resulting from a mere four hours of sleep (ah weather and air flight!)...or perhaps to thoughts tossing in my head like bright fall leaves in a windstorm:  Red Burns—her life discoveries critically shaping "computational media"; our soon-to-be graduating seniors—we will miss these key individuals who in growing have shaped the EMC and us alongside them; a summer suddenly blossoming with new, future focused projects; and the puzzle pieces of learning being positioned for a new Masters based within the EMC. All these ramblings swirl around the question of wisdom and wealth: how we come to possess it and where does it lead? 

Then propelled out of the darkening forest under the power of a 4 foot wingspan, wise Athena alights upon a pine that keeps guard over my backyard pond! Or is she perhaps the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, purveyor of wealth and generosity? 

Is she not one and the same—wisdom and wealth? Or does this owl symbolize our graduates on their journeys (is it coincidental that Spring owls are most easily sighted and in Spring graduates fully fly the nest)? Or as a dusk-to-night visitor, is the owl a metaphor for the sorting of our dreams, of our selves? Whoo? Or as a night caller is she a portent of where our technological dreams may lead us? What the day lit future will reveal? 

Thoreau writes in Walden

 "I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and underdeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have."