Delayed in France...some things I've learned

For the last week I have been stuck in France due to a travel calamity that descended upon Europe out of the air from a distant volcano in Iceland. While the first phrase to come to our conversations here in France was “bomb Iceland”, this whole experience has been fodder for reflection.

What can we learn from this volcano?

Lesson 1: A strong reminder to anticipate problems.

Some time ago this volcano started to belch and come back to life after many years of dormancy. Why didn’t this trigger visible and concrete concerns from the airlines going back that far? After all, they’ve lost $2 billion in the last week and some are literally shutting their doors. Planning for the unexpected may have helped some weather this mess better. And who should have planned for this situation? Each and every airline and every airport. After all, they’ve been through a travel mess like this in recent times (9/11). Imagining every possible threat is part of the process of running a business, and a big threat to airlines in general I would say is the decision making of the airspace authority. What are all of the variables that could cause the airspace to be closed? Weather, crashes, terrorism, and atmospheric disturbances (i.e. erupting volcano upstream plus flight disruptions documented in many other volcano-ish situations). In the US, disruptions from huge blizzards are factored in to every airline business operation in the country.

On my shoulders as a traveler, and in life, I have the same responsibilities in risk assessment and worst-case scenario planning. I left my son with the grandparents in Chicago during my trip which now is an extra eight days (hopefully no more). We left our family with all sorts of worst-case scenario planning and documentation and also knew that they would be able to keep him safe and sound if our flight was delayed (although we did not expect a delay to be measured in days), so in this way I tried to anticipate as much as possible.

What else can we learn from this volcano?

Lesson 2: Use imagination and experience to better anticipate problems.

Imagination is an important part of doing anything in the world. This is not about being guided by paranoia or fear built upon anecdotal evidence, but using tacit knowledge to make decisions that will help avoid calamity. This tacit knowledge is something that describes knowing things that you do not know in detail but are things you know due to having experience in positive and negative outcomes in the past to better guide decision making to keep business as sound as possible. In other words, predicting problems comes from experience, and these airlines are not new to experiencing problems and setbacks, and they should have been ready. If I had personally anticipated a complete shutdown, I would not have traveled far from home, putting lots of extra stress on my family and my employer (and me). But now I have this experience as a valuable tool for me in the future.

Lesson 3: Take action.

Taking swift action to override those who have shut the system down seemed to be helpful. A few brave airlines basically proved the decision maker’s arguments for safety concerns were perhaps a bit much. When things go awry in life and in the world, nobody else will advocate for you as strong as you can advocate for yourself, and this seems to have helped turn the tide on the airspace authority. Take control of your problems.

Lesson 4: Make a list of the volcanoes in your business and in life.

What other volcanoes are out there?

Financial industry.
Game development projects.
Film productions.
Recording sessions.
Visual effects projects.

And just about any human activity in personal life and in business.

Finally…

My overall summary is, for me, look for the volcanoes in all areas in my life. Anticipate through imagination and review of experience. Take action. It won’t all prevent mistakes or errors or accidents, but it will sure keep you much safer from the ash when it comes raining down.

Recently, scientists have discovered, quite to the contrary of their initial assumptions, that 80% of the area devastated by Mt. Saint Helens in 1980 now hosts plant life (and some animals and insects). My point is that in that devastation, people paid attention to it and have studied it, and it gave the world a whole new way to monitor and detect opportunities for potent eruptions elsewhere. We learned a heck of a lot from that volcano. The volcano in Iceland will do the same of course. How in the world then can we ignore these learning experiences?

Greed and blind hope come to mind. We want to go to Europe on an adventure of a lifetime. We want to “beat the market” with our creation of bizarre “financial instruments” and automated trading systems. We want to keep the airlines running status quo because there’s “no way” airspace can shut down for a week in Europe. We want to ignore problems in business because we believe in hope because the “projected” P&L “feels” a lot better than where it is truly headed.

Well, I wanted to go to Europe, and I suppose some part of me ignored the news out of Iceland. Gotta keep the blinders off so I’ll be more aware of potential ash forecasts in the future.

Global Game Jam 2010 at Flashpoint Academy a success!

After 48 grueling hours, the Global Game Jam at Flashpoint Academy in 2010 has come to a close! After a tense strict afternoon deadline, four games were ready to play and were presented to our panel of guest judges which included Chicago game developers from Robomodo and TapMe. Incredible effort and sweat went into these games and often times the results are best measured by what happened off camera. These were team efforts 100% of the way, and it shows in what they were able to achieve in a few short hours given the theme provided by the Global Game Jam officials (theme: "deception" and games must use one or more of the following words: "man, a plan, or a canal").

Flashpoint Academy Results:

Game: Operation Scorch
As the gunner of "Hot Lips" an AC-130 gunship with the experimental "Scorch Deluxe 3000" laser, your mission is to "laz" the ground targets
Flashpoint Academy Award for Best Use of an Alternate Controller

Game: Entity
A groundbreaking exploration into the deceitful nature of humanity
Flashpoint Academy Award for Best Art and Sound

Game: Man Who Cried Wolf
Gather as many unsuspecting people while crying wolf
Flashpoint Academy Award for Best Arcade Game

Game: Hide & Haunt
Hide & Seek in a old rundown mansion
Flashpoint Academy First Place Global Game Jam 2010 Award

Flashpoint Academy Global Game Jam 2010 first report

On Friday, January 29th, Flashpoint Academy students across multiple disciplines came together to join in a worldwide event called the "Global Game Jam 2010" held at universities and game studios around the world (well over 1000 participants are now working in 38 countries! -- these crazy people are known as "jammers"). At Flashpoint's sound stage in Chicago's Merchandise Mart we started a 48-hour marathon to build games according to parameters kept secret from our jammers until the launch of the event at Flashpoint at the start of their 48-hour adventure. Jammers at Flashpoint are working in teams of about ten students to build these games by 3 pm on Sunday local time.

This year the theme is "deception" and jammers must include one or more of the following in their games: a man, a plan or a canal. Key outcomes include providing an intense opportunity for jammers to collaborate and work together in "crunch mode" doing what they love doing...making games. This is not a school assignment and it is not a business-driven game studio console game effort. These jammers are the true artists of the future. This weekend will stay for them for the rest of their lives.

We have a few special guest "judges" for the end of the weekend where we will allow the teams an opportunity to present their games to the judges. Teams will be awarded recognition in different areas, but only one game will get trophies for top honors here.

I started the ball rolling at Flashpoint after we had a student team join in with the wonderful people at DePaul who graciously invited them to be a part of the experience there in January of 2009. We would have been there again this year but we had such high interest here that we had to set up our own location. After months of preparation and the efforts and dedication by a really enthusiastic team of staff and faculty...here we are, starting up day 2. I am honored to be directing our location, but I could not have done it without them -- and without our really amazing students who surprise me from time to time when they finally realize that they have the potential to do anything in the world they want to do.

More updates to follow.

Famed video game composer Nobuo Uematsu

Some people claimed that I was too much of a fan boy when I moderated a panel discussion in Chicago today with Nobuo Uematsu. The truth is that...I am a fan boy. His music is brilliant and he is completely down to earth and nothing but sincere. I had an opportunity to ask him questions about his creative process, his career and his excellent new work in the yet-to-be-released game, Final Fantasy XIV.

Geeks trump alpha males as algos dominate Wall St

See the article below about high-frequency traders and programmers...

I've spent some time in my career building "real-time" high-performance game code. That work was instrumental in preparing me for my move over to working on trading technologies a few years back in building tools for traders and for the supporting business and technology units within that industry. I really enjoyed that environment and daily challenge -- in that process I ended up inventing new trading screens (I invented the "Time Market Grid Interface" as published by the US Patent office in August) and coding exchange gateways and building upon a variety of risk-management tools. All of this was within the confines of the trading platform vendor business and not within the proprietary trading firm as described in this link below, so I was not in a position to get the kinds of benefits described below...The flip side to that story is that everyone's algos are competing against each other, and if you are working within a market that is effectively a zero-sum game, slow and flawed code will lose...I've experimented with custom automated trading code against simulated markets though, but am hopeful to try them out in the real world!

Go to Article

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street traders aren't what they used to be -- they're not even on Wall Street anymore.

The days of swashbuckling backslappers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have given way to an era of trading dominated by analytical technical whizzes whose computers may be running from a town in deepest New Jersey or Texas."