I left my job at Mozilla back in March. After a year of re-orgs, late nights, and layoffs, I reached a point where the emotional impact of my job was unsustainable. Leaving a company, team, and project that I loved very much was a difficult experience – it feels weird to talk about “grieving” a workplace, but I do. Mozilla was one of the first jobs that I had where I felt deeply supported by
Read moreI’m watching The Good Place, and at this stage of my life, I’m relating an awful lot to Chidi Anagonye, the overthinking protagonist who often is portrayed as having difficulties making a choice: even the seemingly mundane option of which muffin to choose presents an opportunity for a crisis. I’m on Season 3, but I’m really hoping for a flashback where we get to see how Chidi ended up as a professor of ethics, because
Read moreThis is a new series of mine exploring collaboration as a function of communication principles and community norms. In Part One, I explored some initial framing that I’ve developed internally about the process of communication. In this post, I’ll briefly talk about the initial considerations that come to mind with communicating across individuals with social technologies in mind. While the process of generating and translating a thought or feeling occurs internally, the act of sharing
Read moreThis is the skeleton of my current thoughts exploring the collaboration processes by which we translate thought into societal action, and opportunities to improve these processes via technology. It is but a moment in time that captures my current thinking on the subject; subject to significant change and constantly evolving, but shared in some small part with you today. Community and communication share a root (com – together). When we think of collaboration, it is
Read moreThe concept of ‘time’ as a resource has come up in several conversations that I’ve been a part of recently, and a recent discussion led me to think more deeply about time’s role in communication. Last year, I gave a talk at SkillsMatter exploring social technologies and online communication. You can break down technological communication services across a couple of different axes, but today I’m going to write a bit more about (a)synchronicity. In particular,
Read moreContent notice: this post discusses death and resolving a loved ones estate Estimates show that 90 percent of Americans are online. We increasingly turn to online services to handle critical parts of our lives, but few platforms provide a way for user information to be safely managed or deleted after a user passes away. In many instances, estate executors or family members are required to provide death certificates, court orders, or even sue companies for
Read moreI’m going to start with the disclaimer: this process involves a number of wonky settings on your computer and isn’t something that runs smoothly “out of the box” with a single click, nor is it an officially supported feature of either Hubs or Zoom. However, if you’re interested in upping your video meetings by appearing as an avatar in a virtual world, and you like messing around with applications and settings, read on. Background I’ve
Read moreThe social app that I find myself unexpectedly spending more time in these days (other than Hubs) isn’t a game that I was familiar with prior to a couple of weeks ago. Despite being an avid Nintendo fan since I got my first console at the age of seven, I had never had the delight of playing Animal Crossing until the latest release. Now, it’s hard to imagine my daily routine without it. Part of
Read moreThe conference world has been thrown for a loop with the wide-reaching recommendations for COVID-19 discouraging or prohibiting large gatherings. As the games and VR industry raced towards March, the month where both GDC and SXSW were scheduled to overlap, cancellations have meant that almost everyone has had a change in plans Naturally, VR Twitter began to weigh the pros and cons of “GDC in VR”, hoping to embrace the growing medium for a chance
Read moreI was invited to give a lightning talk at the W3C Inclusive Design for Immersive Technology workshop about what we’re doing with scene authoring through Spoke for Hubs. As with many of my talks, I think they make better blog posts, and I’m excited to share this one with you today. About Hubs & Spoke For those of you who aren’t familiar with the work we’re doing a Mozilla on social mixed reality, Hubs is
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