Ellis Paul concert

 Posted by (Visited 23206 times)  Music
Sep 302006
 

Last night we went to see Ellis Paul at the AcousticMusicSanDiego series. Antje Duvekot was the opening act, and she also joined Ellis on stage for much of the last set.

Ellis Paul is, bar none, one of the best songwriters in American music today. So naturally, the concert was excellent. You walked away feeling disappointed that so many great songs went unperformed — “Paris in a Day,” “Did Galileo Pray?” “Speed of Trees,” “Angel in Manhattan,” and so on… but so many great songs did get performed that you quickly realized there simply wasn’t enough time in one concert to do his catalog justice.

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Community relations, management, design, and governance

 Posted by (Visited 15892 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Sep 292006
 

These four words mean different things, and frequently call for different talents and skillsets used by different people. And yet, they seem to get used interchangeably, and lumped into one person’s job. We should stop that.

“Management” means control. Yes, there’s degrees and degrees of control, there’s soft touches, and so on. But management, fundamentally, is about directing a group of people towards a stated goal. In the case of online services of all sorts, it means “keep them as customers.”

“Relations” means conversation. It’s about the relationship. Yes, there are “relationships” when you manage someone, and the enlightened manager knows her people. But the stated goal of a relationship is the other person — it’s about getting to know them for their own sake. It’s not about getting them to do what you want.

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Seed fails to germinate

 Posted by (Visited 7711 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Sep 282006
 

The experimental and quite different MMO Seed is closing its doors.

This is a real shame, as Seed had an aesthetic that was quite different from anything else currently out there. With a cel-shaded comic book look, and a game system heavily premised on non-combat roles and ongoing procedural narratives per character, Seed was definitely outside of the mainstream, but was shooting for mainstream-level production values.

Another one for the timeline, I suppose. 🙁

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