Fooling around with themes
I have started to fool around with themes again. Not sure how I would like to style the site. Simple and easy to read. You might see more changes.
Gaming Backlog 2010
I recently moved back to Seattle and have been looking for a job, which leads to a lot of downtime, which has allowed me to catchup on my gaming backlog. To make matters worse Toys ‘R Us recently did their yearly “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” deal, which only added to my gaming backlog. So lets begin on what I have been playing.
Madden 2011
I admit it, I love Madden and sports games. I buy them each year. I find them relaxing compared to some other games out there. But this years Madden was a little different with the simplified play selection interface which leads to a much quicker game. The game plays like your typical Madden game, which an improved running game, but passing can be a pain at the higher difficulties.
Halo: Reach
I was able to pick Halo: Reach up a couple weeks after it came out, but I wasn’t able to play it due to moving and not having access to my Xbox 360. But now that I am all settled I decided to fire it up. Having a number of friends working at Bungie, I feel I need to play their games to support them, but they also make great games. Halo: Reach is nothing but polish. From the menus to the flow, the art, the music, the multiplayer. Everything just has the signs of a very well thought out game in every aspect. I am currently a couple missions into the game, and been very impressed. The only problem I have ran into is some silly partner AI and sometimes I get lost and don’t know where to go next, but find my way by just exploring for a couple minutes.
Dead Rising 2
Loading. I loved the original Dead Rising. It was fun just to wander around the mall and pick up hockey sticks and other random weapons, but sadly the sequel has some major problems. First you don’t play the game for what seems like the first 30 minutes. Just cinematic and press button, loading, cinematic and press button, loading, drive motorbike for three minutes, loading, cinematic… you get the idea. I can understand their desire to provide a more impactful story, but let me go kill some zombies! FAST!! The loading is just a flaw. With games like Red Dead Redemption allowing such open worlds with little to no loading, it is disappointing that Dead Rising 2 needs to load all the freaking time.
Super Meat Boy
I love it that the game that has been taking up most of my time is a simple jumping puzzle game. I can’t help myself how fun this game is. The campiness, the graphics, the simplicity, just makes me want to play it more. With all the huge budget games coming out, it is a simple game made by two people that has my attention. I might be in a minority, but I think that minority is growing, rapidly.
Wiki This! Tips On Deploying a Successful Wiki
Wikis have been around for a number of years, but it is becoming more important for business to provide a simple yet powerful web solution to share information between departments and teams within a company. None of this is new, but many have tried to deploy a wiki within an office with little success for a number of reason. Perhaps the team doesn’t want change? Rollout timing is never good? Feature set doesn’t fit needs? Fear of ramp up? Well there isn’t a perfect wiki or a perfect answer to many of the concerns above, but the best thing you can do is to deploy a solution and grow it with your team with some specific caveats.
1. User Experience is #1
There are tons and tons of Wikis out there, all of them do something great, but every single one has faults. Deciding on which wiki to use can be difficult, but the first thing you need to look at is the user experience and the ease of use. How difficult will it be for a user to enter information in and how difficult is it for a user to find and use that information? The answer to these should be as easy as humanly possible.
I tend to get a lot of people overwhelmed by showing them a wiki with a good WYSIWYG editor. So many buttons, but really all you need to start is bold, italics, numbers/bullets, alignment, linking, and image embed. These are the basic that 99% of most documents would use. Using these should be SUPER EASY! Easy as if they were writing the document in Word.
Also all WYSIWYG editors aren’t the same. Some are unduly complicated and still force the user to perform some tasks as HTML, which is unacceptable.
2. Search is King
So you have all this amazing information in your wiki, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless you have a robust search. While getting information into the wiki is important, robust and easy search is the feature that will allow it to gain traction within your company. Your search should allow the user to sort and filter in various ways, and it should be simple. Find all documents by Collin posted in the last seven days. This should be an easy task to perform, and if your wiki doesn’t allow you to do this, then it fails.
3. Easy to Link to Internal & External Documents
This goes along with the WYSIWYG editor being powerful yet easy. One place where wikis breakdown is a poor search which leads to duplicate pages. One way to reduce this is to make linking to other pages within the wiki extremely simple. In the ideal world you can just highlight the text you want to link, click a button which leads to search, and then you can just select a page. Making it easy for someone to find and link to a relevant document makes your documentation more robust as well as cuts down on redundant information.
4. Allow Easy Exporting
As your wiki grows and documents change or updated, you sometimes will need to review them out of the office. Having ways to easily generate a Word Document or Adobe PDF come in very handy for reviews. This feature should be built into the wiki and should be performed by a single click (or two). Using Print to PDF is not a great option as formatting may change.
5. Define a Template for Certain Documents
If you have documents that will be written up a number of times, then it would be a good idea to define a template that anyone can use. Having a base format has a number of benefits including, easier to read, consistency in where specific information location, and naming conventions. This can sometimes be a sticky subject as everyone writes in their own fashion, but once you setup some documents as the key or have the ability to create new documents based on a template allowing users to just enter information, it will catch on.
6. Task someone to be the Librarian
As awesome as some of the better wikis on the market these days you still have pages being placed in the wrong places, incorrect links, or duplicate document. You will need someone to manage not necessarily adding the content, but watching it mature over time. Someone that can be an expert on the software used as well as maintain a clean information system, such as naming conventions and labels.
These are just five simple rules that can help your wiki gain popularity within your office. If you have some comments on what has worked for you I’d love to hear it. Please post in the comments with your suggestions and feedback.
Canon 60D Arrived!
I bite the bullet and ordered the Canon 60D yesterday from the nice people at Adorama. One of the nice things about living in Boston was it arrived this morning from New Jersey. Score!
I took a couple shots with it around the house getting used to the controls as well as testing my timer I bought on Ebay for $20. Everything works great. I’ll post some more photos tonight. From just the couple hours messing with the camera today it appears to be well worth the $300 difference from the Canon T2i with the same lens. The 18-135 lens is a huge upgrade over the 18-55 kit lens included with the T2i. The 18-135 is smoother then the kit lens, but does make a little noise when zooming and soft focus when recording video. I can’t complain though. The new audio controls are a nice upgrade as well over the T2i. You can set the gain.
Well off to take some photos. I’ll post some more tonight.
Dreaming of a New Camera. Canon 60D.
Canon announced a new camera last week, the widely rumored Canon 60D. This fits right in between the highly successful prosumer Canon 7D and the consumer Canon T2i. It has all the weather proofing and build quality of the big brother 7D, but is priced within range of the T2i with the same lens. I am seriously considering picking up the 60D when it goes on sale later this month. I have been looking at a DSLR camera for quite some time and I think the 60D would fit all my needs. Excellent photos, interchangeable lenses, and 1080p video recording. I have been working with my Panasonic FZ28 for a couple years now. The zoom is great, but the lack of control in low lighting really hurts photos I take while I’m at concerts. I typically have to use the flash, which really ruins the look. Also just having more control over the shutter speed, ISO, and light metering would be awesome.
Well back to collecting cans to pay for this bad boy.
PAX Prime 2010
I have returned from Seattle tired but super happy that I was able to attend PAX Prime this year. Going back to Seattle is extra special for myself as that is where I grew up, so being able to see family, friends, and geek out over a long weekend is awesome.
I was fortunate to be able to join two panels at PAX Prime this year both on community. Both were great fun. I have to thank James Stevenson of Insomniac Games and Alli Thrasher of Harmonix for letting me jump in last minute. Being on the panel and hearing how people and your counterparts view your work was really rewarding. All the shoutouts for #HireCollin were extra nice as well. I hope to have video soon of both panels, you can actually listen to The Various Roads to Becoming a Community Manager panels right now over at The Writer’s Bloc.
As for games, there were lots of them. My highlights include Duke Nukem Forever, Mortal Kombat, Dead Space 2, and NBA Jam. My pocket book is already starting to hurt.
Company Videos. Selling Yourself Through Humor.
I am a huge fan of self produced company videos. Providing a view from inside is always compelling and the consumer is expecting this type of material to be standard. Many companies spend a great deal of money on these videos and while some are well produced and do the job, I am a fan of the more off the cuff style videos. The videos that display the personality of the company as well as provide good insight on the products or services the company provides. I personally become more attached to a product, company, or personality if I can easily relate with them, which is why humor is so important in these types of videos.
While researching business cards, I found Moo, an international print house specializing in custom printing with a great sense of humor. While searching I stumbled across some videos promoting their paper stocks and their processes. These short, both under two minutes, videos provided me with compelling information why I should order cards from Moo, but also provided an entertaining display of humor via smart dialogue, catchy music, and slick motion graphics.
As you can see from the videos, they are filled with great information on the product, but also provide some insight on the personalities and humor of the company and staff. You don’t see many videos become viral that don’t have some level of humor in them. Either it be the Old Spice Campaign or 99% of the Super Bowl ads. Making people laugh is good. They aren’t laughing at you or your product.
New Category. Social Media
I have some time on my hands these days while I search for a new job, so I’ll be writing about some of my opinions on Social Media. Lots of exciting things going on and it changes everyday. Stay tuned.
Looking for Work. PAX Prime.
Sadly I have to announce that my time at Irrational Games have come to an end. I am grateful for the opportunity that Ken Levine gave me to help define and build the community from nothing. I am extremely proud of what we built as a studio in the time I was Community Manager from relaunching the Irrational Games Brand, to the achievements on IrrationalGames.com, or to the wild success of Irrational Behavior and Irrational Interviews. As a fan now I am extremely excited for BioShock Infinite and implore you to become a fan of their community if not for my sake, then for the sake of all my amazing co-workers working on the project.
As for me, I am excited for my next opportunity. I am looking for work as a Community Management aimed at the end consumer. If you know of an open position or would like to talk about community get a hold me of me. Shinyidol@gmail.com or @shinyidol on Twitter. I will be attending PAX Prime next week, so if you happen to be there come and track me down and say hello!
Check out my Linkedin Profile as well!
Sunday Night. TV’s Best Night.
Sunday has turned into my prime night for television. So many good series are cropping up as well as others returning strong. Leverage continues to be a modern take on the A-Team, which is just fun to watch. The characters are fun, the heists are entertaining, and it takes place in Boston, where I am currently living, but to the well trained eye you can see that Leverage is actually filmed in Portland, Oregon a city close to my heart.
After Leverage, I had Sherlock for a couple weeks. Sadly it only lasted three episodes, even though they were 90 minutes long each. Oh BBC how you tease me.
Next is AMC’s new drama Rubicon, about a national security think tank. It is very slow, but very rewarding. A very nice compliment to watching Leverage earlier in the evening. The tone of Rubicon is serious with twisted relationships after the death of a co-worker and the mysteries that soon come to surface. The cast is strong with James Badge Dale recently on the HBO miniseries The Pacific, not to mention it has Sledge Hammer. Even with the painfully slow pace at times, it is still well worth watching.
And to close the night I have Entourage. I have been watching this show for years and I love the inside peak in Hollywood. While fictional, I get a kick out of it.
Before you get on me, I haven’t started watching Mad Men or True Blood, so back off.
Back to TV Land.