There is no normal to return to — we’re all emerging from this chrysalis as something new. Our ability to collaborate will determine our viability in this new world.

This morning I was on my third panel of the week focused on virtual events production, tools, platforms and methods for connecting remotely. In my work hours I’m often touring new worlds for collaboration, over 20 last week alone. …

From Physical to Virtual Interactive Events: Safety and Play in Numbers

With COVID-19 shaping the way we do business for the foreseeable future, our communications, engagement and marketing strategies are rapidly evolving. Do you have a plan in place that helps your team evolve or improvise as situations rapidly change?

Can you collaborate remotely or try a new way of creating with people?

Strategies to protect yourselves and others while collaborating:

1. Flip from physical to virtual meetings using streaming and collaboration services (Zoom, Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Skype, etc)
2. Work in virtual social and creative spaces to focus on designs and projects…

Playable Cities

A few years ago as my immersive VR/XR production work started, I wrote a volumetric XR mystery where Jack London and the ghosts of the Oakland port and pier areas came to life and shared their stories to warn us about the coming changes ahead with rising seas and climate shifts. The Port Mystery or #SeaChange, is a escape-the-future game written but not yet played — an immersive location-based AR game designed to be triggered by groups of people through interactive play in public places.

Games like this can be played anywhere, by anyone, using any number of…

When Disaster Strikes, there is no app for that — until we build it together

REALITY: Up to 15,000 homes are lost in CA this month with 50,000 potentially displaced across many counties. The worst hit areas of Paradise and Magalia are still cataloguing the missing and dead with hundreds unaccounted for. Managing response teams, organizations and the data is an ongoing challenge along with a lack of shelters for weathering the winter.

When disaster teams come together to respond to situations like this, there are no apps that tell us who is who or where to go. We have…

Six trends in Collaboration: Mixed Reality Production Design & Development

At conferences and events I recently asked a number of virtual engagement pioneers and media producers to define mixed reality (MR) for their clients and students. Definitions are diverse and funny like the people giving these insights in their videos, photos and quotes.

Six trends emerged as keys to deeper collaboration in MR: designing for social, live, integrated interactions with shared spatial engagement that creates multimodal play for wider accessibility.

Definitions of reality are always varied and fascinating. No two definitions are close to being alike. In MR consensus falls…

Creating Mobility Markets in Rionegro and Medellín, Colombia

In 2016 I worked with regions addressing complex climate concerns of congestion in cities with exponential pollution in high-traffic regions. How do you solve for dirty data in smarter cities when our behavior patterns create tremendous waste? Or to look at culture:

Make it rewarding to travel cleaner, faster, together

To make cleaner travel also easier, cost effective and faster our team at Fastrack Institute recognized the need for a personal way to travel effectively using the cleanest modes of transportation possible. Carpooling, carsharing, electric motorbikes, flying personal drones and other shared transit vehicles all play a part as we…

If you open yourself to potential you may find….

We Dream Together

Threads that tie people together are invisible until we turn them into new art. Making a camp or community integrates form and improvisation with artistic practice. The piece below is written for a Burning Man theme camp application as a process of creating culture and encapsulating the experiences we craft together in our dreams.