Ken vs. the City

Xbox Live’s Major Nelson has taken the liberty of releasing a recording of the New Media panel at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). Game industry bloggers and podcasters talk about the chellenges of new media journalism and business in the gaming industry.

Very interesting stuff about reporting, blogging, advertising, community, relationship with traditional media, and more from Brian Crecente of Kotaku, Christopher Grant of Joystiq, MC Wilson of Broadcast Gamer, and Julianne Greer of The Escapist.

At the risk of sounding like a motivational speaker, here’s a little piece of wisdom I found:

You’ll never know exactly how strong your will is until you’ve accomplished something in spite of great opposition.

Likewise, you’ll never know how strong God’s will is until you see him accomplish something that all common sense says is impossible.

Goal for this week: Finish story draft

So I sort of met last week’s goal of completing one of my short stories. I’ve got the old parts and the new parts planned out action-by-action. Now I just have to stick them together.

Let’s just say I met last week’s goal in spirit. Spirit… yeah, that’s it.

If you read Ken vs The City last Monday, you would’ve seen that I set a goal: finish a story. Well, my story is finished. Sort of. The story I set out to complete had two major problems: It needed a stronger main character, and to support that character it needed a completely new beginning.

I’ve written the new beginning, and I’ve planned out action-by-action how my new character will plug in to the old ending. So even though I don’t have a complete draft, I have the whole story worked out on paper. I’ll chalk it up in the ‘win’ column.

Here are some articles I’ve written since my last roundup (in no particular order):

• Can PayPerPost Succeed? - I talked to PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy to find out the deal behind the infamous paid blogging network
• Why Snakes on a Plane (SoaP) Only Flew So Far - Because the blogosphere is a series of bubbles (and the Internet is a series of tubes)
• Viewpoint Creative… Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures - I talked with the creative agency behind the online ads for Jean Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures on PBS
• Advertising Schmadvertising - Because when it comes to advertising, content is king
• Can a Student Conquer Click Fraud? - Can college freshman Zack Coburn’s ad network solve a problem that vexes the likes of Google, Yahoo and all the rest of them?
• What’s the future like for in-game advertising? - a triple Q&A with the lead execs from Massive, IGA Worldwide, and DoubleFusion
• Why Leave DoubleClick? - Why CEO Kevin Ryan left his successful ad agency to enter the online retail biz with ShopWiki

Just another quick bit of wisdom I found.

Social problems are important to pray for. But praying for the salvation of human souls and their redemption is more important. When the latter is finished, the former will take care of itself.

Evangelism is a spiritual discipline that’s not often practiced by Christians here in New York. I think it’s because there are so many people trying to sell you things. Evangelism also takes more energy, and exposes more of your soul than prayer, Bible study, meditation, or any other discipline. When you tell people about Christ, you have to love them. It’s so much easier to just say you love people, and then never do anything about it.

As dry and allegorical as he was, I remember thinking that one of the bravest and most supportive characters in the Pilgrim’s Progress was Evangelist. There’s a real shortage of bravery here in the city. Sometimes people are friendly on the surface for no other reason than politeness. Sometimes they’ll tell you where you can go. But few will bear their souls to one another. It’s just too complicated.

Just a quick goal for this week: Finish a story

I’d have to take off my shoes and socks to count the number of stories I’ve started in the past few years that I’ve started but haven’t finished. It’s so much easier for me to report and write a news story than it is to sustain a great fiction idea long enough to finish it before I loose interest.

Too bad fiction writing isn’t like journalism. Otherwise I could just go and interview someone, and have 90% of the story done already. With fiction you are the witness. You are the expert. You kinda have to interview yourself. That’s hard, because you have to make up the answers as well as the questions.

A quick observation of myself:

I love tradition, but I hate mindless ritual. Every tradition must serve a heartfelt purpose, otherwise it’s an empty motion that simply confuses other people and makes you more calloused towards God.

What you make a ritual of should be hot, relevant, and un-boring. The purpose of a ritual is to remind you of something important about life. If it’s empty and boring, you will simply glaze over it and forget about whatever it was supposed to remind you of.

Haven Nation episode 7 is up. Kristen and I got a chance to talk with musician Doug Hulin and actor/photographer Joanna Williams about Inspiration: what it is, what it means, how to get it, that sort of thing.

This is the first topical episode we’ve done, and in place of an interview, we have a panel discussion. This was also Kristen’s first show as my co-host.

Download Episode 7 | Subscribe to the podcast

I’m still working with a single mic. It’s quite a challenge to record 4 people with one mic. I’m looking to purchase a six-channel mixer to make things a little easier. I’m also still trying to figure out how to maintain a balance between a professional-sounding style, and the more personal podcast style. On the one hand, it’s important to sound professional, but on the other hand I don’t want the show to end up sounding like something on NPR.

I’ve actually been using the invite-only version of Google Spreadsheet to keep track of industry contacts for a few months. I tried using it to keep track of projects, but I kept forgetting to update everything. Anyways, it looks like Google Spreadsheet is now available to anyone with a Google account. They’ve put a link in the upper left-hand corner of the Gmail page right after “Calendar.”

Hopefully the Writely online word processor will be coming soon.