Several current MoU employees and alumni had the good fortune to study under Randy Pausch at Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Pausch has become widely known over the last year for his “final lecture” delivered on Sept. 18, 2007. This was a very affecting - to say the least - presentation in which he urged his students to treasure and protect their sense of childlike wonder. He also spoke of his love for his wife and kids and the curiosity that essentially drove him forward in life. Dr. Pausch gave the presentation because he had recently been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He died this past Friday.

We became familiar with Randy before there was a book or a segment on Oprah. A couple of our colleagues, former students both, had heard of his final lecture through the CMU community and encouraged us to watch it streamed live from Pittsburgh. We had no idea it would become such a sensation - credited with helping people move on from divorce, choose life over suicide, or escape from abusive relationships - but it’s hardly surprising.

It so happens that Randy was one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on what The New York Times called in his obituary “computer worlds that students could use to create games. [His students] were learning sophisticated computer skills. His annual virtual reality contest was highly anticipated, and work on virtual reality by some of his students won them the chance to experience weightlessness on an aircraft. They then used virtual reality techniques to mimic weightlessness.”

The technical and creative skills that Randy taught are at the heart of our virtual worlds industry. What a pleasure it is to work in a business defined by thinkers motivated by wonder, curiosity, whimsy, and imagination. I personally treasure my sense of childlike wonder and think that losing it to cynicism, emotional exhaustion, “sophistication,” or anything along those lines would almost be worse than death itself.

But let’s not take ourselves too seriously, because life is short. After learning that his lecture was being compared to “Tuesdays with Morrie,” a popular book about wisdom its author gleaned from a dying college professor, Randy told USA Today he “didn’t know there was a dying-professor section at the bookstore.”

So, I must apologize for not posting this sooner… things have been a bit crazier for me than I’ve anticipated over the past couple of weeks!

I wanted to post a BIG thank you to Phaylen Fairchild, Evie Fairchild, Kit Maitland, Stampshady Grimm & all the other hard-working folks at New Media Cinema for their participation in the first of what I hope will be many mini machinima festivals - MMFs? Need to come up with a better name than that! But back from that little digression, we had a really nice turn out on and audience participation was so fun… I really appreciated it when they would give me a hard time for starting the wrong segment!

Of course I was so frizzy frazzied that I didn’t get any screenshots, but I snagged the gorgeous picture from Evie and defaced it horribly, just to celebrate our Divathon. Phaylen made me do it! Thanks to everyone that showed up, as well! I really had a blast and I hope you all did too. I know I’m very much looking forward to their next project, Ctr-Alt-Delete. From their blog, “This hyper-tech new series from the team that brought you DiVAS follows the high octane adventures of Jonas Darcy, a man whose consciousness was exiled to virtual reality and his code wizard sidekick, Noir.” Can’t come soon enough!

I’m also looking forward to our next MMF installment - I’ll announce what it will be before too long, and I swear I’ll come up with a better name for these things! Hoping that all of you are enjoying your lovely summer, winter or whatever it is where you are!

This article from io9 is an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of Alternate Reality Gaming campaigns and how they work (or don’t). Many of the points they make are things I think I agree with, specifically about relying too much on puzzles and schwag and not enough on compelling storytelling.

Here’s some key quotes:

Lost is running an ARG at Comic-Con this week where the fictional Dharma corporation tries to recruit new employees, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles had a tie-in ARG that was quite artful in which employees of the Enitech Corporation discover a camera that takes pictures of the future and predicts the rise of the machines.

One reason I liked the Sarah Connor Chronicles ARG so much was that it actually functioned as its own, compelling story. It was almost like the Heroes webisodes – stories set in the same universe as their parent story, but shorter and with a lower budget. The Dark Knight ARG, on the other hand, felt like it really was just advertising with a few perfunctory interactive bits thrown in.

Well I’m glad the author dug our work and I can’t complain about having our project called “artful.” He makes some good points and I’m glad this discussion is going on now. ARGs are walking the fine line between art, entertainment, and advertising, so it’s important to start pushing these questions out there.

Read more HERE.

Join the conversation here .  I’m with Tim Kring, creator of Heroes today and Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures who made Batman the Dark Knight.  I’ll have them weigh in .

I started a tradition back then, when we were 6 months old.  I used to record a call with someone interesting for the length of my drive to work.  This one with Mark Wallace, which dove into Taxation of Virtual Transactions and Second Life’s population and economics, was awesome. BTW, back then Mark was writing the blog 3Pointd.com .  He’s now the CEO of a very ambitious and cool company releasing something revolutionary soon.

I ended up only doing 7 of these Roadcasts.  Here they are.

This is close to my heart because my son Theo turned 4 this week. His grandpa bought him a Playmobil Castle, which only took me 4 hours to build.

Anyway, with all the interest in kid’s virtual worlds recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a kid imagines as they’re playing with toys and dioramas. Maybe something like this if they’re lucky. It’s such an epic that there’s also a “The Making of Barbarian”, which is also done in stop motion animation with Playmobil figures. Genius.