I joined fellow Transmedia L.A. member Kate McCallum on the “Reducing the Digital Friction with Transmedia” panel for the Digital Asset Management conference in late February. We had a great time, mostly because Kate pulled tougher an awesome panel.

Title slide from SXSW 2012 panel

Two weeks later I was Austin-bound for my third SXSW, where I joined Esther Lim and J. Craig Williams on a panel Esther put together called “The Rise of Co-created Storyworld Communities.” Unsurprisingly, I had a great time catching up with my media tribe.

I had two more weeks of travel before landing back home in Los Angeles in time to speak at the NALIP 2012 Conference last week. I joined Hardie Tankerlsey and Jesus Trevino on the “Social Life of Convergence” panel, which David James moderated. David did a wonderful job of guiding us through a lively discussion ranging from copyright infringement to participatory entertainment to the future of digital media.

Next up is the FMX 2012 conference in May, where I’ll be speaking about participatory entertainment and co-creating value with audiences. My panel, “Ignore, Impede, Invite: How to Co-create Value with Audiences,” kicks off the transmedia track, and I’m humbled to share the track with luminaries like Femke Wolting (Submarine Channel), Nuno Bernardo (beActive Entertainment), Dr. Henry Jenkins (USC), and Alex McDowell (5D Institute), and Shekhar Kapur.

And after FMX? Well, I’ve been working on “Veil Wars,” an immersive experience (read: LARP) that I’ll roll out at Wyrd Con in June. “Veil Wars” is the official launch of a new project I’ve been quietly working on for a while called The Yamabushi.

What is The Yamabushi? The short answer is a fantasy world inspired loosely by medieval Japan and Japanese mythology. I’ll be exploring this world online and sharing my findings in various forms (audio, fiction, art, etc.).

The long answer is, well, long and still in the works.

But if medieval Japan, Japanese mythology, fantasy worlds, or swords and sorcery sound like fun to you, subscribe to “The Path,” the official (and free!) newsletter for The Yamabushi. You’ll be the first to know when the world opens and learn how you can walk the path of the yamabushi.

Finally, there’s the StoryWorld conference coming up in October here in Los Angeles. I’m serving my second term on the Advisory Council, and I can tell that you the program is looking even more impressive than last year. Hope you’ll be able to join us for StoryWorld 2.o!

Whew. After writing this post, I know why I’m feeling so physically drained but mentally excited! It’s been an awesome start for 2012, and I’m looking forward to lots more awesome over the rest of the year!

If you’re at SXSW on Sunday, and you want to hear more, please stop by our panel (3:30PM – 4:30PM Austin Convention Center, Austin Suite).

Our panel is titled, “The Rise of Co-Created Storyworld Communities,” and we’ll be joined by an IP attorney, J. Craig Williams.

I’ll discuss what a shared story world is and how to build one; Esther will share how to attract and keep a community of collaborators; and Craig will provide an experienced voice about the legal landscape for shared story worlds.

Our goal is to keep things very practical, so we’re dispensing with a lot of the theoretical discussions. Expect lots of “how” v. “what” or “why.”

Please share the word about this, and for anyone heading to Austin next month, I hope you’ll have time to swing by our panel!

Createasphere’s Digital Asset Management Conference
February 22-23, 2012 | The Beverly Hilton | Los Angeles, CA

Exploring the management of digital assets, media assets, marketing resources, content & information lifecycle, and storage, security & preservation.

Take part in two days of focused sessions for professional creatives, marketers, digital librarians, IT specialists, and executives. A robust exhibition of solution providers offers the best opportunity to examine specific products and talk with industry suppliers and experts. Networking mixers and VIP events round out this must attend event covering entertainment, new media, retail, museums, non-profits, and government.

My Panel: Reducing the Digital Friction with Transmedia
Transmedia insiders are striving to break down previously impermeable silos between platforms to develop and produce high-quality experiences with cross-platform properties while still delivering a meaningful message. These panelists will discuss the challenges they face in working across departments and media partners and how they see integration further breaking down these silos.

Discount Code: Use the registration code DAM20 to get a 20% discount.

This is a long overdue post about my adventures at Wyrd Con 2 in 2011.

If any of this sounds interesting, be sure to contact Lauren Scime (lauren at witchfactory dot com) about running a LARP, organizing a workshop, or speaking on a panel at Tri Wryd this June!

I had the pleasure of slipping down to Costa Mesa, CA for part of Wyrd Con 2 on June 10th and 11th, 2011. It was my first time at a convention focused on live action role-playing (LARP), and while there was plenty of LARPing to be had, to say Wyrd Con was just an annual LARP convention is a grave disservice. Wyrd Con is much more than what you typically think of when you hear “LARP.”

In addition to a spectrum of widely varying LARPs, attendees also got to enjoy:

• panels
• workshops
• film screenings
• a dedicated space for merchandise

I was humbled to be asked to co-moderate the “Interactive Storytelling” panel with Kirsten Carthew, and I was a panelist on the “Transmedia and LARP” panel moderated by Angelique Toschi and featuring Lauren Scime, Alistair Jeffs, and Bret Shefter (all members of Transmedia L.A.).

I also checked out a few workshops on making original costume/clothing, crafting weapons for boffing combat, and even basic boffing techniques (not as sexy as it sounds but a lot more fun than you think).

The highlight for me was running the “Spirits of Kita-mura” LARP, an experience set in Runes of Gallidon (a shared world of fiction, art, and more, with its own history and mythos).

It was the first LARP I had ever designed, and my LARPing experience was (at that time) limited to traditional table-top role-playing in the form of D&D. I was nervous about a great many things.

Had I designed enjoyable/playable characters? Was the conceit of the LARP too simplistic? Had I designed the overall experience to be too complex? Would I have enough players to effect a satisfying experience for everyone? Had I crafted the short story setup and character backgrounds in a way that would encourage the best possible narrative ending?

Compounding my concerns was the fact that I purposely used Wyrd Con as a chance to try an experiment. Most LARPs are stand-alone experiences, where the story begins and ends in the LARP itself. In most cases, there are no story elements or experiences for players available before or after the LARP. This makes it somewhat easier for designers, since they are operating within concrete boundaries and are focused only on what happens within the LARP experience itself.

I wanted to see if I could have the LARP begin well before Wyrd Con and continue after the convention was over by using a persistent world setting as the backdrop for the LARP and having the story start before Wyrd Con and continue after the LARP.

So I wrote a short story set in Gallidon and published it on the Runes of Gallidon website. The story introduced some of the main characters and lead up to the opening of the LARP, attempting to make the narrative transition for players a bit more seamless.

The “Spirits of Kita-mura” LARP allowed players to collaboratively and improvisationally tell the next part of the story, which they did wonderfully. Based on the feedback, the players seemed to really enjoy themselves, which was a huge relief.

The next task is for me to take all of the content from the LARP and bring the narrative full-circle back to the Gallidon site.

This “bookend” approach proved to be the most challenging aspect to designing the LARP, as I constantly asked myself not just, “will this be fun for the players?” but also, “if I design it this way, will I be able to easily bring it back into the Gallidon world to close the narrative loop?” Indeed, it’s months later, and I still haven’t decided how to bring the story full-circle. Fictionalize the LARP (if so, how much gets included and how much “extra” story do I add)? Edit the audio and post it? Now that the LARP is behind me, I’m reconsidering some of my earlier ideas.

However, I did put together a quick video of highlights from the little bit of time I was at Wyrd Con:

And as preparation gets underway for Tri-Wyrd later this year, anyone who missed Wyrd Con 2 has another chance to check out a bunch of different LARPs, panels, and workshops, as well as meet some very cool and creative folks!

This means advertisers with Google are probably throwing money at the wrong target demographic. The result: irrelevant ads for you, wasted dollars for the advertiser. The only can’t-lose person in this mix is Google.

Curious to know if this is as bad as I think it is, I’m asking you to take literally 3 minutes or less to:

1) Visit Google to see what it thinks your age and sex are

2) Let us know via the poll below how accurate Google is

Please share this on twitter with the hashtag #GoogleDoesNotKnowMe!

And while you’re at Google’s page, you can also opt out of their cookie-enabled marketing system.

NOTE: Google stores a cookie on your machine to help it determine your profile (if you are logged into Google, it already knows who you are). Ideally, log OUT of Google before visiting the site above. And since the cookie is probably different across browsers, you might get different responses depending on which browser you use.