Mar
02

Conversations at American University: The Double Facepalm

I had a great time last week talking with my buddy Dr. Craig Hayden in his Public Diplomacy class at American University in DC. Craig and I are sometimes-partners-in-crime at the MountainRunner Institute (along with His AWESOMEness, Matt Armstrong, and “Georgia Peach” Shawn Powers). We have a lot of interesting discussions about public diplomacy, strategic communication, and the nature of information and influence in today’s post-digital world.

Craig asked me to bring my perspective on those discussions to his class. We managed to film parts of the conversation, so I’m going to be chopping them up into bite-sized morsels of BADASS AWESOME for you, my loving public, to digest. In the first of these videos (all of which will be hosted here on my YouTube channel as well), Craig asks why I chose the metaphor of the “double facepalm” in last week’s introductory blog post about my experiences in public diplomacy and government. (Larger, HD versions of the video are available via the YouTube link.)

I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU to all the AU students I met during this discussion. It’s really heartening to me to see so many potential citizen diplomat rockstars in this soul-sucking town. Great talking with you, and I hope we can continue the conversation outside the classroom.

Speaking of which: I know a lot of you are blogging as part of Craig’s class and on your own. Please be sure to call yourselves out in the comments section of these video posts. I’d really like to promote some of the student-led commentary I’ve seen since the in-class discussion. We build our audiences socially, so I’d love to feature some of your opinions and content on Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com.

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Feb
25

Links of the Week: February 25, 2011 Edition

Skipped out on doing these for a couple weeks as I head my head down in the trenches producing pages for a brand new writing project I’m cooking up. Sometimes, you have to quit consuming to create. This week, we’re back!

The Future of Work

I’ve specifically tried to not link to or quote anything from the big social media men on campus like Brogan or Godin. It’s simple linkbait for one thing, and more importantly, a lot of their content lately has been less than interesting. This post from Chris Brogan, however, is a spot-on bit of writing. Others have been writing about how we’re changing the definition of “work” in the 21st century, but Brogan has a good summary of the high points in this conversation here. I think more of us should be sticking this post in front of our bosses and every worker over the age of 25 in this country.

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Developing this week is a Rolling Stone story about LTG William Caldwell‘s orders to an Afghanistan IO/PSYOP cell to influence the perceptions of visiting U.S. legislators. There is a HUGE kerfluffle happening in DC over this, and it’s the latest ding against military psychological (or information support) operations. On the front lines, Joint forces – and particularly the Army, historical home of the PSYOP regiment – have been trying to make sense of convoluted legislation and backwards policy governing the employment of information warfare in combat. There are clear lanes between strategic communicators, and one is that IO/PSYOP pros are only allowed to deploy their craft against foreign populations. To do so against Americans would be an illegal propagandizing effect, which seems to have been committed by LTG Caldwell.

That said, the modern information environment is such that easy distinctions between what’s propaganda and what’s neutral information are fast becoming irrelevant. Worse, America’s national security apparatus has essentially thrown in the towel on addressing this issue, afraid to engage the White House and Congress on the very real need to reform our en toto strategic influence and communication capability. Until such a thing happens, mistakes like Caldwell’s will continue to provide justifications to know-nothings in the Pentagon and on the Hill to further eviscerate our badly-needed interagency strategic communications and influence budget.

FUBAR: Army Inquiry Taints Its Next Chief

For those not familiar with the U.S. Army‘s non-warfighting components, this should be an interesting read. The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, or TRADOC, should be designing the doctrine of the future and developing or modifying training programs across the force to support soldiers’ learning needs against future threats. Instead, TRADOC is INFESTED with old, ineffectual men trapped in the Cold War who are convinced the U.S. will be going to conventional war again any day now. I think Ackerman is way too lenient in this Danger Room post. Having worked at Fort Leavenworth myself for a TRADOC element, I can say with authority that the Army’s future leaders are FUCKED if we keep guys like Dempsey in charge of things. Buddies of mine who have recently graduated Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth have told me that things are getting somewhat better: counterinsurgency training is finally attaining primacy. But if I were Secretary Gates, I wouldn’t have nominated Dempsey for Chief of Staff of the Army with such a horrid track record for backsliding behind him at TRADOC.

Kirk to Clapper on Muslim Brotherhood: WTF?

I used to have a modicum of respect for James Clapper, former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and recently appointed Director of National Intelligence. However, he has made a number of embarrassing gaffes answering questions in public lately, so many so that I’m beginning to think the guy really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I echo Congress’ WTF on this one. If ANYONE should know ALL the nuances of the Muslim Brotherhood – to include its doctrinal promise to subvert America using its own legal system – it’s the top intel guy in the country. FAIL.

Pentagon’s Clandestine Killers Get New Chief

Here’s some good news: the only uniformed officer of the American military for whom I would lay down in traffic is taking over Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the military command that coordinates the activities of Delta Force, Navy SEALS, and other elite American special ops teams. Major General Joseph Votel was nominated by Secretary Gates for his third star last week and command of JSOC. I worked for Votel on the IED Task Force back when he was a wee colonel and I was a wet-behind-the-ears contractor. He’s the type of leader we need more of in our government: fearless, risk tolerant, intensely dedicated to his people, and a true patriot. I’m really proud that he’s achieved such success.

Many STAR TREK Bridges, No Bathrooms

Count on my new favorite pop culture blog, BADASS DIGEST, to find the OCD Star Trek fan’s guide to every bridge design in the history of the series.

Image courtesy Ex Astris Scientia

Happy 50th Birthday, Bruce Timm! [Art]

To round off this week’s batch of catch-up links, here’s Comic Alliance‘s tribute to Bruce Timm, one of the AWESOMEst animators and comic artists EVAR. Timm was one of the design brains behind the landmark Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990s, which went on to spawn a host of AWESOME television featuring DC characters (Superman, Justice League Unlimited, etc). Aside from his inimitable artistic style that defined said generation of DC characters, Timm’s an amazing storyteller and producer. He has since left television behind but not the DCU: Timm continues to adapt popular DC storylines and characters into direct-to-DVD features. Comic Alliance has a full gallery of their favorite Bruce Timm art at the link.

This AWESOMEST image EVAR brought to you by Comics Alliance and DC Women Kicking Ass.

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Feb
24

SXSW: The Adventure Begins

I finally bit the bullet this year and bought a full conference pass to South by Southwest, Austin’s long-AWESOME music, film, and tech festival. Having suffered through years of Twitter and Facebook friends broadcasting the varying degrees of AWESOMEness emanating from one of my favorite towns in Texas, I’m taking the @Du4.llc plunge.

While I do have a few specific goals for my trip, a large part of it remains unplanned. I intend to broadcast my experiences often, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to develop a publication strategy for a single event. Granted, it’s a media-heavy event, so separating out fun content from crappy stuff could be dicey. So here’s a quick breakdown of how you can find the different Du4 media that I’ll be pumping out from AWESOMEville.

Where I’m Gonna Be: Plancast

Here’s a new social stream with which I’m experimenting: Plancast. The idea is similar to a calendar except you organize your plans socially around what your friends are doing. You can also link into several existing tags for types of events, like I’m doing for SXSW. I’ve been invited to and RSVP’d to a staggering number of parties and events at SXSW, so keeping track of everything via my email inbox has just become too tedious and confusing. I’m hoping to use Plancast to organize my plans (duh) for Austin and share them with folks via my Plancast stream so if you do want to link up with me, it’ll be easier to sync schedules.

However, let us all remember the special operator’s maxim: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

Twitter: @Du4

I’ll be broadcasting my hour-to-hour activities at SXSW via Twitter. The #SXSW hashtag will probably be overloaded with people tweeting on it, so follow me for direct updates. I’ll also be retweeting cool content I find on Twitter throughout SXSW. I’d also encourage anyone who’s doing remote listening of the event using tools like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Radian6, or whatever, please hit me up with any emerging hashtags you see coming out of SXSW so I can find ‘em “on the ground.”

Twitter is also my go-to service for preferred commo. If you need to get ahold me right away, @reply or DM me and I’ll get back to you fast. Even better, if you’re attending SXSW, be sure to hit me up so I can follow you around too!

Locations: Foursquare and Gowalla

I’m a dual geolocation user: Foursquare for the badges, Gowalla for the items. There will be a TON of SXSW specific checkin rewards for 2011, so I’m going to have a ball checking in and sampling all the AWESOME places and things to do during the week. I have both accounts connected to my Twitter stream, so just follow me on Twitter to see where I am and what exclusive badges and achievements I unlock as I roll through Austin. I will probably post some pics and tips for various places too. Where Plancast is a proposed schedule of where I am planning to be, Foursquare and Gowalla will show where I actually end up.

Pro tip: you can click on the link in each checkin tweet I make to bring you to my Foursquare or Gowalla page and see everywhere I’ve been.

Photos: Posterous and Instagram

I’ve been noodling with how to use a Posterous page for a while now. For those who don’t know, Posterous is a dead simple, email-based blogging system. You have a couple simple commands that you set up via your preferred email account, and then you just publish content to your Posterous stream via email or SMS. It works best when you’re on the go and want to share something or capture something quickly form your mobile device and get it online and visible. You’ll also receive every comment on your posts via email and be able to reply back via email.

For SXSW, I’ve developed a brand new Posterous page where I can instantly upload content. I’ve found this is the simplest way to upload HD photos from my iPhone to a website where people can view them without a corresponding account. You just click on that link and BOOM: AWESOME shit direct from Du4. Because I can gin up other content and get it quickly published as well, I may use this Posterous page for snap, on-the-street blogging or “scrapbooking.”

(Aside: I got the idea for said use of Posterous from “vigilante pundit” and comedian Baratunde Thurston, who uses his Posterous as “an internet scratch pad.” I love that description of the service, and you can see from Baratunde’s updates exactly how well such usage of Posterous suits him.)

Baratunde Thurston at ROFLCon II

Baratunde Thurston (image via Wikipedia)

(Aside 2: I’ve also got a Pulsememe stream I’ve been using via Posterous to share stories and other content I view through the Pulse iPad app. Pulse is a cool reader-like app that I use now for ALL of my daily reading; Google Reader is dead to me after playing with this. Pulse connects to a separate Posterous URL where I share any interesting articles, links, and other stuff that comes across my ADD-addled eyes via the Pulse app. I also pull my Links of the Week directly from this Pulsememe stream.)

For those of you on Instagram, you can follow my feed (my username is du4) there for any photos I upload and touch up using Instagram’s color tools. Instagram does not have a web-based version of its users’ streams so you can only view it from your smartphone.

Longer-form Reporting: Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com

If SXSW is social media nerd heaven, then I wouldn’t be a crown prince in the nerd host of angels without a blog. So every couple of days, I’ll throw together something more thoughtful than a mere tweet or photo upload can convey here at http://mustbeawesome.com. You can also expect some video blogging, interviews with rad people I meet, and other video clownishness posted here.

Stay Mobile, Stay Flexible, Stay Alive

SXSW is going to be a good opportunity for me to really put the gas pedal down on developing and sharing content online. I may get part way through the experience and realize that I don’t need all the streams I’ve talked about above. I figure this will be a supercool learning experience though. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment here or anywhere on one of the social streams I’ve described above. If there’s something I’m missing, I wanna know about it!

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Feb
23

Public Diplomacy for AWESOME People… the Du4 Way!

I am extremely honored that Dr. Craig Hayden has invited me to speak to his public diplomacy class at American University Thursday evening this week. I met Craig through shared colleagues at the MountainRunner Institute, and we have since collaborated on a number of things. He’s a great dude, loves beer, and I thought it would be cool to throw up a landing post for me, him, his class, and anyone else who gets PO’d by the sure-to-incense incendiary fire that will come burbling out of my Macallan-addled lips Thursday night.

I have a love-hate relationship with public diplomacy. Coming from a background in the Department of Defense, I did not understand the peculiar delineation between PD and other forms of government communication and influence until my own graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Upon discovering the very simple definition that PD involves a government’s communications directly to foreign governments’ citizens (and thus bypassing that foreign government), I became instantly enamored of the idea. After all, in DOD, when you “communicate” with a foreign population, you’re usually dropping a bunch of comic strips from the sky written so badly that the recipients think all Americans really are retarded.

My work generally involved finding ways to improve the U.S. government’s communication capability, be it PD, public affairs, IO/PSYOP, or other means. One of my mentors, the late Jeffrey B. Jones, called all of these disciplines strategic communication, a term that has since entered the DOD lexicon and gone on to confuse and infuriate virtually everyone else in government. If DOD does one thing well, it defines its doctrine exhaustively, and an integrated communication and influence doctrine is something our government has needed for a long time. I became a fan of Jeff’s definition from the get-go, and I proceeded to execute my work under such a fashion.

This is how it feels like working in public diplomacy EVERY DAY.

How does this affect public diplomacy? Well, aside from all the other problems in the U.S. national security apparatus, PD practitioners have been almost historically kicked in the ass by said interagency apparatus. Since the U.S. Information Agency – the premier public diplomacy institution of the Cold War – was folded up into the State Department by the Clinton Administration, PD has been regarded as a largely unnecessary, unneeded career field.

However, some of the brightest information warriors I have ever met have come from PD backgrounds. Some still serve the State Department. But they are a dying breed, and State is not adapting fast enough to the 21st century to train, educate, and deploy PD officers of the future. Many communication and diplomacy experts have even called for the dissolution of the public diplomacy career field, arguing that others do it better in today’s day and age.

I come down on this issue very simply: communication is influence. Period. Call it public diplomacy. Call it public affairs. Call it public relations. Call it fuck all, I don’t care. It’s all the same shit and these penny-ante fights government gets into over who owns influence planning and execution are mere dick measuring exercises to protect budgets and retain standing within our own ranks. If any of us PD “professionals” had a whit about us, we would (re)read Unrestricted Warfare by Senior Col Qiao Liang and Senior Col Wang Xiangsui and understand that global communication, global influence, requires the strategic, national integration of ALL government branches and agencies and their communications initiatives. It requires, to borrow an analogy, for America to conduct herself as a composer would an orchestra, creating multitudes of musical movements that all combine into one big, beautiful symphony.

If you’re a student in Craig’s class, drop me a line in the comments. Send questions, concerns, or even challenges, and I promise to answer them to the best of my ability in class on Thursday.

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Feb
22

AWESOME Things To Watch in 2011

After enjoying JWT‘s roundup of radness from their 2011 predictive trendspotting BIZINT department, I inferred a couple of times that they my have missed some things to watch in the coming year. I struggled with whether or not I was going to do a 2011 predictions post of my own (especially with all of the other great [and TERRIBLE] ones out there). As I intimated in the JWT post though, it’s tough to maintain your street cred as an armchair futurist if you don’t make some play calls – good or bad. It’s not like I can go on TV and just fry motherfuckers with my brain like Jamais Cascio:

Image courtesy of orderofchaos.soup.io

Here then is the Must. Be. AWESOME!!! 2011 Predictive Tapdance:

The Elephant in the Room: Islam

For all the loveliness that “hope” and “change” brought us in 2009, 2010 saw a whole lot of retrenching when it came to comprehending and engaging Islam. Look for the debate about what constitutes Islam, Islamism, what various groups of modern Muslims want in today’s world, and popular revolutions in the Middle East to ratchet up. Also keep an eye on what the Muslim Brotherhood does in the wake of Mubarak’s resignation: they will telegraph a lot of the conflict about modern Islam.

More Mashups, More Memes

I don’t care what anybody says: mashups and memes will continue to provide ample entertainment to We People of the Internetz. Look for advertisers to begin capitalizing on meme-trending and mashup-producing. Performance indicators: the next acquisition/website startup from the I Can Has Cheezburger collective AND Wieden & Kennedy after hiring the creator of this AWESOME video–

Cloud Seeding

As gaming continues to seep into the popular consciousness through applications like competitive geolocation (i.e. Foursquare and Gowalla) and passive social gaming (i.e. Farmville), look for more creative approaches to “seeding” the cloud with various types of content. Be it for advertising or grassroots mobilization purposes, effective influence and content promotion campaigns of the future will unfold via a variety of platforms. StickyBits and other QR code scanning apps are good indicators of tactical implementations of a cloud seeding strategy.

Hacktivism Triumphant

If WikiLeaks has taught us anything, masses of anonymous hackers can make or break online footprints. With Anonymous’ mobilization against Amazon and other deniers of service against WikiLeaks, it is apparent that all-out online cyberwar can and will occur at a rate of minutes and hours. Government will continue to play catch-up to the independent entities playing havoc with cybersecurity. DDoS attacks will become typical tools of the trade, and countermeasures against such attacks will demonstrate a new “arms race” in evolving security and attack technology. We will also see cyberwars play out in days between entities if not hours and minutes, the extent of which will run the gamut from mere inconvenience to full-on revolution (there’s a reason why Mubarak shut off the Internet, yo). It is possible that a wild 4channer will crack U.S. cyber defenses in 2011 and perhaps provide a 9/11-like impetus for government to begin getting serious with policy and legislation to operate in the digital age.

Nobody Cares About Public Diplomacy

Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech demonstrated that the U.S. government will continue to centralize public diplomacy initiatives in the White House, leaving State Department assets twisting in the wind as hollow emperors in the field. U.S. legislators will increase the depths to which they could give a shit less in 2011 about PD because PD does not create jobs for Americans. Meanwhile, 20th century institutions of public diplomacy like Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the Broadcasting Board of Governors will continue to wither and die in the digital age as on-the-minute social reporting and citizen journalism make them further irrelevant. Funding for PD initiatives will continue to stagnate while implementers will find more creative methods of achieving strategic PD goals, mostly via the private sector tech sector and citizen diplomacy organizations. China and some European countries will continue to lead with non-obvious but concerted national efforts in global influence, the effects of which will remain undiscovered by their targets (i.e., US) for years.

Passive Social Gaming EXPLODES

Related to my concept of “cloud seeding,” 2011 will see an explosion of social games in the vein of Farmville. Already, 2011 has seen Zynga publish a suster game to its masses-tranquilizing hit called Cityville. Transmedia, alternate reality gaming, and other episodic social gaming entities will experiment further with audience acquisition, retention, and profit conversion this year. Advertisers will cash in on these mechanisms en masse, driving ad-tired audiences from game to game and forcing ad strategists to begin thinking in different ways about social advertising. We will also see a continued harmonization of transmedia and ARGs cross-platform, online and offline, for social gaming experiences that will, for example, weave in and out of Facebook, Twitter, iPad and other mobile apps, and in-person performance art. More and more people will join longer term games socially as new genres are introduced on social networks. Performance indicator: keep your eyes peeled on LinkedIn for a business-based social game that trains executives in a number of administrivial and professional functions.

Location-based Services Get Profitable

Also related to “cloud seeding,” location-based app services such as Foursquare and Gowalla will rapidly get profitable this year. While many detractors continue to ridicule the small audience size these services carry, their growth will continue by orders of magnitude in 2011, so much so that advertisers and marketers for brick-and-mortar businesses will pay oodles of dough to access their users. Look for more unique rewards for users who check in to local places and events as well as the beginning of an actual value system based on fictional goods (i.e. Gowalla’s items).

People Begin To Realize All This Social Stuff Really IS Creating Socialism 2.0

Marx said it would take capitalism to run its course and fall out of favor before true socialism could take hold of the world. Macro-philosophers and economists will slowly begin to see that that is happening on a mass scale in 2011. Group buying services like Groupon and Living Social, crowdfunded charity programs, realtime crowdsourced news reporting, and near-realtime media curation will continue to prove that power really is all about the people. Democratization of content and price will, therefore, produce The New Socialism or Socialism 2.0. This will freak out conservatives and create performance indicators on conservative news networks that decry not only a socialist presidency but a socialist economy beginning to develop. Look for influencers that combat these conservative perceptions as the emerging leaders of the Socialist 2.0 movement (which in and of itself will never be referred to as an organized, network movement with a solid objective… it will just happen). Parallel to this, fortunes will begin to change hands as sales for various product areas crash: for example, the comics industry will continue to lose sales in print as consumers demand more digital, interactive content.

We Need a New Narrative

No more Harry Potter. No more Lord of the Rings. No more Star Wars. What’s the next big franchise? 2011 will see experimental repurposing of old ideas into new franchises. My money is on Thor and Captain America to be the starting point for a huge Avengers movie franchise in 2011 and 2012 (with reams of associated multimedia content) while Green Lantern and Transformers: Dark of the Moon tank.

What Do You Think?

Got some predictions of your own? Think I’m off-base about some of these things to watch? Let me know in the comments.

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Feb
21

Please Consider Joining Us for the Sister Cities Annual Conference Next Week

Arlington County, Virginia seal

Image via Wikipedia

Next week, March 3-5, Sister Cities International brings its 55th annual conference to Arlington, Virginia. As a member of the board of directors for both SCI and Arlington’s own Sister City Association, I’ve been helping to put together an AWESOME conference experience for everyone. SCI has a great schedule lined up this year, from briefings by the State Department to best practices roundtables. You can get a fuller look at the schedule and register here: http://www.sistercitiesconference.org/.

Additionally, the Arlington Sister City Association will be throwing a reception Friday March 4th at 6:30pm to celebrate its sister city relationships around the world. Arlington’s sister cities include Reims, France; Aachen, Germany; San Miguel, El Salvador; Coyoacan, Mexico; and friendship city Cochabamba, Bolivia. We will be celebrating the official signing of a sister city relationship between Arlington and longtime friendship city Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine as well. As part of our reception, attendees will see dancing and music from some of these groups and get to experience ethnic foods from each of these unique cultures. Tickets to the reception are only $40 or free with the purchase of a full conference registration from the SCI website above. We’re also giving away free memberships to ASCA for a year with the purchase of any of these tickets.

If you’re interested in volunteering, SCI and ASCA could use a few AWESOME citizen diplomats. We have open shifts for ushers, greeters, desk managers, and badge checkers all days of the conference. These are all-ages volunteer opportunities; we’ve got something for everybody. You also get free access to some of the conference sessions and some other cool bennies, so give it a think.

We at ASCA are also still searching for 2011 sponsors. Sponsorships help us not only conduct cultural celebrations like this reception, but also specific trips for students, artists, and musicians between Arlington and its sister cities. We welcome corporate and individual sponsorships with a variety of different benefits including logo and brand placement amongst our community, access to speakers at the SCI conference, and free tickets to conference events (dependent on sponsorship level).

If you would like to contribute, learn more, volunteer, or just buy a reception ticket, shoot me a note at du4 at mustbeawesome dot com.

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Feb
21

Back to the AWESOME

I specifically waited for Telltale Games‘ episodic Back to the Future game to come to the iPad. I had heard great things about the PC and Mac desktop experiences, but when the studio announced that they would also adapt this continuation of one of my favorite movies to the iPad, I knew I had to experience that. What I got, unfortunately, was a game port rife with bugs and glitches.

The Story

I do, however, want to emphasize the AWESOME of this game. BTTF: The Game picks up the BTTF mythos where they left off. It’s now 1986, and Marty McFly is worried about Doc’s disappearance after the end of Back to the Future III. The city is selling off the contents of Doc’s lab, much to Marty’s chagrin. All of a sudden, the DeLorean (once thought destroyed) reappears with an audio note from Doc telling Marty that he’s in trouble. What follows is an earnest thematic sequel to the BTTF franchise where you play as Marty trying to discover where Doc has disappeared to and how to rescue him.

One of the things that I love about Back to the Future is the on-the-fly screwiness of everything. Doc and Marty are never adequately prepared for the adventures they get into, so they have to improvise as they go along: using a 2015 hoverboard to sneak up on Biff’s car, rigging a pair of walkie talkies with giant batteries in the Old West, etc. This theme gets pricelessly reflected in BTTF: The Game. Marty – a character that, let’s be honest, is kind of a dumbass when it comes to science – has to cobble his way through the game’s plot, and this leads to really fun gameplay that involves engaging zaniness. It’s no surprise that this game feels like a Back to the Future sequel: Bob Gale, who wrote all three movies, acts as a story consultant to Telltale’s developer crew.

Episode 1 begins with a curious twist on a classic BTTF scene.

You can tell that the Telltale crew are rabid fans of BTTF, from the spot-on use of Alan Silvestri‘s original movie score to A.J. LoCascio’s eerie dead ringer impersonation of Michael J. Fox (complete with a “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!” moment in Episode 1). It’s that kind of fan-favorite attention to detail that makes BTTF: The Game such a rich and fun story experience. And before you ask, yes, we do get to the bottom of how all these paradoxes are possible after BTTF3‘s seeming end to everybody’s favorite time machine.

The Tech Specs

All of these positives make it such a shame that the iPad port clunks along. Framerates are choppy and skippy right from the opening menus. Video integration is just as bad: character dialogue often skips like a scratched CD between scene and level changes. What’s worse is the dizzying degree to which some of the character and art rendering doesn’t measure up to the iPad’s HD resolution. Characters’ clothes in particular look jagged around the edges. For a $6.99 app, Telltale could have spent MUCH moe time ensuring a bug-free port from the desktop version of the game.

The DeLorean Time Machine in

Image via Wikipedia

The Value

Is BTTF: The Game worth it? If you are a fan of the Back to the Future franchise, absolutely. The obvious technical limitations of the iPad app are far outweighed by the fun and engaging story. Each episode will be released as a $6.99 app, so you’ll be looking at around $35 for the entire “season.” It’s about $10 less to buy the entire season online for desktop play AND a better gameplay experience, so your mileage may vary. IPad apps for subsequent episodes will be released quite a while after the desktop versions (Episode 2 is out now). I for one have to believe that Telltale will see the mass of criticism over the iPad port for Episode 1 and endeavor to fix many of those problems for its Episode 2 port. I really enjoy the interactivity of the iPad version of the game; it’s much more of an interactive movie than a hardcore shoot-em-up or driving game, so the story is allowed to breathe more.

If you’re not a huge fan of BTTF, I’d wait for the entire series of episodes to be released. It’s possible Telltale will release a “game pack” of the entire season at a discount, either through the iPad app store or online.

Either way, this was a tremendously fun game for me, and I really enjoyed revisiting the BTTF characters. It’s a damn sight more entertaining and cooler than that awful cartoon they did in the ’90s.

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Feb
18

Shoot for the Fence

So I’m here at Top Golf USA, a really rad range where golfers can not only practice their driving game but also compete by aiming for several color coded targets at varying distances on the course. I’ve been coming here with friends and clients for years, and it’s been a great place to develop my very amateur golf skills. Also, there is beer, good chow, and lovely nubile waitresses in short shorts.

I’ve gotten to the point where my short game is pretty good. I can rack up points on the Top Golf leaderboard by hitting the closer targets (red and yellow pits are only a few yards away). So I typically spend my game aiming for those targets – maybe the mid-range green – between beers, when I’m not practicing with a particular club.

However, today, I played an entire game swinging nothing but my 5 wood and hit the straightest, most perfect drives since I started golfing. Ten of these shots (you get 20 balls per game) scored hits in the furthest target areas in the 200 yard range. As a result, I also scored my highest Top Golf game ever: you receive more points for the targets that are further away, and you can double those points with successive scores. I’ve NEVER hit that good in my life. And you know what I did differently to make those shots?

I shot for the fence.

Instead of of settling for the easy path, the quick avenue to simple rewards… try shooting for the fence next time YOU try to achieve something. Whether it’s sales, leads, dollars, or golf balls, I guarantee you will have a better game if you bring the AWESOME and aim for the toughest goal.

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Feb
04

Links of the Week: February 4, 2011 Edition

Happy Febs!

Major paradigm shifts in the history of the wo...

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What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?

This is a great, concise backgrounder from io9 on the concept of The Singularity, something I’ve referred to once or twice in my posthuman posts. This formerly science fiction concept – and now more speculative possibility – involves a point in time where mankind’s technological evolution happens so fast that there will come a point where our comprehension and application of edge knowledge occurs simultaneously. It’s a tough idea to wrap your head around mainly because of the possibilities involved and each person’s perceived ideas of what The Singularity may look like when it happens. What do YOU think The Singularity will look like?

Apple policy may set up a roadblock for digital comics

So continues the latest in the drama of online comics and how creators and publishers make money off them. Dark Horse Comics, which originally planned to debut its own proprietary app for digital comics last month, was derailed by Apple’s policy that all apps in the iTunes store MUST offer payment methods via iTunes in conjunction with any other payment mechanisms said apps features. This ensures Apple gets its cut of digital purchases, which almost kills the profitability of some digitally produced comics.

Interesting

Here’s a great, fun little story from The New Yorker on the real life man behind Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World. I respond to fun, engaging characters in advertising when they’re part of great stories. Like the Old Spice Guy, The Most Interesting Man in the World is one such AWESOME character. I’ve often thought about writing a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-type crossover story involving famous, AWESOME ad characters like these. Regardless, this is a great histoire of the man behind the character and well worth the read.

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Jan
28

Links of the Week: January 28, 2011 Edition

Neil Pasricha: The 3 A’s of Awesome

I love me some TED Talks. Here’s the author of 1000 Awesome Things describing how he came up with that blog and subsequent book. As purveyor of all things AWESOME, I feel for the guy and get where he’s coming from. The downer part of this is that Neil’s presentation isn’t terribly… AWESOME. In fact, it’s kinda weak. If you’re gonna go AWESOME, bro-han, you gotta go BIG. Get some pep and CRUSH that sucker.

[Bit of an aside: I actually think that while his concept is pretty rad, the actual content leaves something to be desired. He should aim for 1000 AWESOME Things instead of 1000 Awesome Things.]

Why You Can’t Work At Work

What? More videos? Send the AWESOME, son!

Jason Fried’s frustration is shared by many, but I think a lot of that frustration comes from the tension that springing up in the modern workplace between social business and the 1.0 workplace of collaboration. People confuse meetings with collaboration and hierarchy with order.

The 5 Critical Social Media Skills You Need To Disperse

I saw Jay Baer speak at BOLO 2010 in Scottsdale last year, and he touched on these skills before codifying them (with Amber Naslund) in this post and his forthcoming book The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social. He’s right on the money with every one, from Listening to Brand Immersion to Engagement. Business MUST understand that their people will ALWAYS BE MARKETING. A.B.M. ALWAYS! BE! MARKETING! If these businesses miss the boat on empowering their people to become marketers on the brand’s behalf, then they will risk those same people talking negatively about the selfsame brand. Be human, people!

China’s Global Dominance Tour: Next Stop Muslim World

This is more than a little significant. Fast Company‘s article is short on the details, but I HIGHLY encourage people to start paying attention to what China’s up to internationally. If you combined the entire population of China with the total number of professed Muslims, you would get a number worth paying attention to.

Amazon Launches Kindle Singles, Saves Long-Form Journalism

Long-form journalism that’s not book length? Not a bad business model here. At $1-$5 a pop, this is a GREAT way for writers and reporters to make some scratch off magazine-plus length journalism that’s too short for book distribution and too long for magazine inclusion. Further, it sets up a direct-to-consumer relationship, which is good for journalists and bad for journalism companies that can no longer charge a percentage against the writer for any work he publishes. I think you’re about to see a ton of for-profit writers start generating some AWESOME work this way.

Have a Great Weekend!

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