sky, Author at Sky's Blog

My Big “Summer Vacation”

30 August, 2016 by sky 21 Comments

As a kid, I had the summer off from school. There were, of course, many things to do during the summer, and I always had some kind of adventure. The question most asked on my first day back in school was “What did you do during the summer break?”

Well, the summer of 2016 was pretty remarkable. The day before SFCM graduation, May 19th, I had a minor surgical procedure to investigate and treat some red spots in my bladder. They had been there for a couple of months, but didn’t seem to be a problem. A day or so later, we knew these were not just innocent red spots, but were accompanied by a rare invasive and aggressive bladder cancer. [Read more…]

Last day at ye ole’ SFCM PSD

14 May, 2016 by sky Leave a Comment

We have wrapped the last day of the 2015-2016 TAC PSD at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. What happened? Here are a few highlights of this journey. (Hear my “student” music online—start at red7.zone)

Became well-acquainted with fellow-travelers in the PSD program. They are all good composers, and going on this journey with them was an honor for me, as I came in the least prepared of them all.
“Held my own” in terms of being able to write tolerable music for the assignments. Well maybe with the exception of one or two pieces where I started out pretty well and went downhill.
Learned that I have a lot more to learn about “music theory” — which isn’t really a theory at all.
Learned a boatload about using instruments I had never written for, even in my dreams. Strings, brass, and even a little about percussion.
Learned I can’t hear high frequencies well enough to be a mixerman. (The Mixerman story is a blast—read it.)

Playing Games (DesignWare)

23 March, 2016 by sky Leave a Comment

I just discovered, due to some exploration by Clark Quinn, that most of our DesignWare educational games from the 1980s are available on The Internet Archive in playable form. During the 1980s many educational software companies got their start. Among them my company, DesignWare, plus The Learning Company, Davidson, and Spinnaker Software. DesignWare developed about a dozen titles, two of which were published by Spinnaker. A number of these became huge hits.

Clark was one of the original team who wrote our games. Because we made a habit of sending our development team members to trade shows, Clark had the experience of encountering the team from the newly-formed Spinnaker Software. At the time, DesignWare was a development house and not heavily involved in marketing our individual titles — we served as a “corporate author” for other publishers. The venture we signed with Spinnaker was our first foray into “consumer” educational titles. They published our Story Machine and Facemaker titles. Probably our best known title was Spellicopter.

Many thanks to Clark and our developers for all those good times and good games. Lesley Czechowicz managed the development group and our production operations. Sharmon Hilfinger and then Peter Rosenthal headed sales and marketing.

Disruption is only visible in the rearview mirror

28 January, 2016 by sky 1 Comment

I was writing about disruptors in journalism and began reflecting the other day on whether it’s possible to spot disruption before it happens. I was thinking that in 1970 we could and should have predicted that computers would eventually disrupt our lives. And also caught myself thinking well “how would we know the degree to which they’d be disruptive?” In those days I thought I’d end up with a job in research at IBM, or Kodak, or SRI, or be a university professor (which I was at the time) and just keep doing that, and computers would play an increasingly important role in my life and the world. But, you know, I was pushing the disruptive edge too, without really thinking about it that much. Disruption wasn’t a word we thought about. Or used. [Read more…]

Self-promotion and disruption

25 January, 2016 by sky Leave a Comment

Tom Foremski was just named by LinkedIn to their “top 10 media writers of the year” list. He wrote about the awkwardness of self-promotion in LinkedIn Pulse a few days ago.

Tom’s journey from writer at Financial Times to blogger, to publisher is an interesting one. There are some parallels I’d like to call out.

[Tom’s photo here is by JD Lasica taken during Traveling Geeks 2009] [short interview]

[Read more…]