Audio research and product design in partnership with MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation — Early morning, about a week into lockdown, I joined a call with teams connecting from Munich, London, Boston, San Francisco, and me in DC. Zoom wasn’t yet a verb, Tiktok hadn’t taken over. Daily television resorted to syndication, news stations had gone mobile. …

Storytelling and facilitation helped make RPG and game design effective for remote learning and classroom delivery. Also, how students slayed space dragons and became unicorns. — Polarizing: it can be seen as disruptive, cheap, gimmicky; some might champion gamification, geek out over it. Many have studied it. As a vehicle for behavior change, it’s effective when done thoughtfully. Early foursquare relied on badges and mayorship to make local exploration and social competition relevant and exciting. Duolingo…

August of 2005, I was oft found on the floor of my dorm late into the night coding MySpace profile for friends. Meanwhile, back home in Cape Canaveral, NASA was launching the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which would enter orbit a year later, inevitably helping to establish landing sites for following…