#and now I’m spending some quality time with the luminary

[incomingawn]

After 170+ hours, I finally met Mohg 🥰

[love-of-fandoms]

The Florist of Zaun: Chapter One

Chapter One of The Florist of Zaun

Pairing: Marcus + Reader

Word Count: 1436 words

You smiled widely as you entered the cave it had all started in. It had been closed off from the outside, the water supply now coming through pipes along the sides and mixed with luciferin and phospha alkenes-some compounds in the flower you were able to extract in liquid form and have Rio absorb through her skin.

A happy trill came from the mutation. She had gotten bigger since you and Viktor had met her as children, and her skin now glowed a vibrant purple. She bounded up to you immediately, rubbing her face against your shoulder affectionately before snuffling at your shirt and pants.

You giggled, pulling out what Rio was looking for out of your pocket: a dendronium luminaris, a flower of your own creation that had a greater concentration of the nutrients Rio needed. Most of these flowers were usually ground up for Rio’s many vats of food lining the walls, but the mutation enjoyed being hand fed. Perhaps she was lonely when you were gone, you knew the Scientist-or Singed as people had begun to call him since the explosion-visited her often but it was mostly for samples, not to spend quality time with his creation (he found the concept silly).

“Is this what you want?” you asked softly, and Rio let out another trill, gently taking the flower with her dual-tongues, humming happily as she glowed brighter for a moment before dulling again. “There you go, girl,”

The door swung open.

“Now, Marcus, in here is something quite special-” it was Silco, you and Singed’s employer, sounded like he was showing someone around. “Ah, hello dear,” he greeted when he saw you and Rio, single green eye rolling as he gestured to his guest, already revealing exactly how he felt about whoever it was. “This is Marcus, Piltover’s new Sheriff-” you immediately nudged Rio to get into the pool at the sound of who this man was, moving to place your body in between the Topsider and your friend. Now you could see him clearly, and the introduction seemed obsolete. His fancy mask enforcers wore when in the Lanes was around his neck, and he sported what seemed like a brand-new uniform, the colors vibrant and metal shining. Pinned to his chest was the emblem of the Piltover Enforcers, showing off his status as sheriff.

“The fuck did you bring him here for?!” you snarled, and Rio let out a quaint roar in agreement. She had begun to pick up on emotions, and though she could never harm anyone or even look intimidating, she liked to mirror. Apparently she was intimidating enough to this ‘Marcus’, as he flinched and took a step back.

“I brought him here so he knows that nobody from Topside is to come near this place,” an almost all-black eye with a spark of fire in the middle turned to stare Marcus down. The man rolled his eyes but nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, nobody comes near the monster you’re keeping in the basement,” he agreed, and had it not been for the biting tone, his voice would’ve been nice to listen to. As it was, your eyes narrowed into slits.

“Her name is Rio, and she’s not a monster,” you growled, and Marcus glanced at you for a short moment before rolling his eyes, turning on his heel and beginning to walk away.

“If that’s all Silco, I’ve got actual work to do,”

“I’m sure,” you were privy to his green eye rolling again as he followed Marcus out, nodding to you in farewell. You gave him a little wave as the door shut behind him.

“Who was that?” Marcus asked Silco as the pair walked through the yet-to-be-cleared carnage from the explosion last year, Silco escorting the dear Sheriff so he wouldn’t get lost on his way out.

“They told you, Rio,” Silco had an almost imperceptible smile on his face as he messed with the Sheriff-an almost too-easy task to do. Marcus scoffed, irritation already growing.

“Cut the bullshit, I meant the person,” he snapped, and Silco hummed, feigning surprise.

“Oh, our botanist? They handle Rio’s care,” he said, and Marcus’ brows raised.

“A botanist? Like plants and shit?” he scoffed. “How does that work when nothing grows in this filth?” Silco just smirked, shaking his head.

“Oh, Marcus, you still think nothing thrives here?” he thought of the greenhouse space he had recently purchased for your work and the plants that were thriving there already. “What a pity,” and with that, he turned back to the decrepit factory, leaving Marcus with that food for thought-if he’d bite.

Around a week later, you had work to do at the greenhouse. At the moment you were working on determining if oleander was worth more looking into. Silco had tasked you with finding good poisons to use, and so far oleander seemed promising. Every part of the plant was poisonous, and so far you had been able to extract oils from the petals to make a powerful skin irritant. You had determined this one would be best used as a self-defense aid, however what exactly that looked like escaped you.

You had been strolling idly towards the greenhouse, enjoying the way you could actually feel the sun on your skin in this area of the undercity, before you stopped dead in your tracks, eyes narrowing at the figure waiting by the door.

His mask was on, but his shining badge gave him away. Marcus was leaning on some crates piled outside the door, seemingly waiting for something. From the way he straightened when your eyes caught his, you had a pretty good guess at what he was waiting for: you.

“What do you want, Piltie?” you demanded, and Marcus immediately rolled his eyes in response to your tone.

“Wanted to see the greenhouse,” he shrugged as if it were obvious. “That a problem?” he challenged, and you just stared at him for a moment in shock. “Well?” you sighed, shaking your head.

“I have too much sensitive equipment and too many dangerous substances and plants in my greenhouse to let a Piltover Enforcer-”you spat out the words. “-in. I’m sure you have plenty of gardens and greenhouses on your side of the bridge to gawk at,” you went to open the door and ignore him, but he followed you in. The moment you heard his footsteps cross the threshold you whipped around, furious.

“What the actual fuck? Get out!” you waved your hands at him in a shooing motion, but he just looked around the dark foyer. The entrance to the greenhouse was on ground level, and consisted of a small room with beat up couches and armchairs lining the walls. Hanging from the ceiling were various planters housing the plants that didn’t enjoy the light so much, and directly across from the entry door was a steep, almost decrepit staircase leading to the actual greenhouse.

“Show me the greenhouse and I’ll leave,” Marcus tried to negotiate, but you fiercely shook your head.

“Why do you even wanna see it?” you questioned, crossing your arms over your chest and tilting your chin up so you could look him in his eyes, which darted from side to side searching for an answer even he was unclear about.

“Maybe I wanted to see if Silco was lying,” he said with raised brows, taking off his mask and letting it rest around his neck. “Nothing grows in this hell,”

You studied him for a moment, debating taking the bait. You prided yourself on your green thumb, on the plants you had made thrive even before you had a greenhouse with filtered air, and for him to insinuate that your garden, your greenhouse was anything but thriving was an insult. At the same time, you were smart enough to see his little jab for what it was: bait.

“Hm…” you hummed thoughtfully, eyes lazily following his sideburns down his square jaw before shaking yourself and pointing at the door. “Too much to do, maybe next week,” Marcus scoffed, looking between you and the door as if you were joking.

“Come on-”

“Nope, maybe you can see my plants next week,” you opened the entry door, gesturing for him to go. “After you apologize for being an ass about it,” he stared at your saccharine smile for a moment, stunned, before tugging his mask on and stomping out the door.

“See you next week, Trencher,” he bade you once he was out, turning to face you, only for you to slam the door behind him, not bothering to acknowledge him any further.

Next Chapter

[softcoregamer]

DRAGON QUEST XI S: ECHOES OF AN ELUSIVE AGE - DEFINITIVE EDITION

I've never played a Dragon Quest game before, so all I had to go on with this game was the pretty looking graphics and charming character art by the Dragonball guy, which- combined with having a hankering for a JRPG, a genre I haven't played since probably the Digital Devil Saga games (minus an abandoned most-of-the-way-done playthrough of SMT3 and a partial of one of the Megadimension Neptunias) was enough to sell me on it. I'm having a tough time determining if it was worth it.

(spoilers)

The story starts off very weak. Your glowing hand marks you as the chosen one, you have to collect glowing orbs to defeat the dark lord. It's like the story of a generic videogame you'd see in the background of a movie. They do throw in a little novelty to keep you on your toes- you present yourself to the king and he throws you in the dungeon, you go back to your hometown and travel back in time for some reason- but I really never warmed to the setting. It's just a collection of cliches and cute gimmicks, like the town of people who speak in haikus, the town of people who speak in rhyming couplets (you're stuck with these people for the bulk of the exposition at the start of act 2, which is a nightmare) and the town of- ugh- Italians. There's no sense of these places being places. It's just a nice pleasant fairytale kingdom of the kind that's normally mentioned in Snow White or whatever as the place the handsome prince comes from, except here you spend dozens of hours trudging through it looking for glowing tree roots and orbs. The big problem in Gallopolis is that the sultan's son isn't brave enough for god's sake. Acts 2 and 3 pick things up, and there's some neat reveals- I like that the lil red star you've been seeing in the sky right from the start was the stain of the original hero's failure to slay the villain, literally hanging over the entire setting all this time. Also the annoying act 1 scene where you get handed the name of the villain and an orb quest in an exposition dump is retroactively improved by the fact that the exposition isn't quite correct. Act 3 reintroducing time travel and actually being thoughtful about it was welcome as well, but sadly that has the effect of making you redo story points you already did since, logically, you're back in time to where you haven't done them yet. Sometimes this comes across as getting a do-over to get a more positive outcome for something that previously ended more tragically, in keeping with the way time travel is explained in-universe as essentially reloading an earlier save (and, as revealed in the end, continuing in a separate save slot). The 8th party member's act 3 quest is a standout here. In reading discussion of the game I've seen people insist on referring to this character as 8, presumably to preserve the plot twist of his existence, so I guess I'll do it too. But more often than not, act 3 quests consist of just doing the same stuff as act 2 again, in a somewhat more curt manner. This sticks in the craw after so much of act 2 already consisted of just doing the same stuff as act 1 again. The party members aren't much better, for the most part. The first three people you meet all say "ah, you're the Luminary, I was sent to help you" and there isn't much to them beyond that for a long time. Sylvando has a lot of personality, which is probably partly why he's become the game's big meme character, but it gets grating and he is insanely trite. The Dark Lord takes over the world and purges the unclean, and Sylvando's overriding concern is that he wants people to laugh and smile more. It's like he takes advantage of the fact that I need him for his boat to get my goat by acting like a fucking teletubby. Things pick way up when you meet Rab, and the 8th party member is genuinely really good. Even the early-game party members end up having their moments (Erik's backstory was pretty fun) but the game really doesn't put its best foot forward with these characters. Not that it needs to; for the first few I was just glad to be getting some help in combat. The combat is excellent in this game, when it gets going. I played with the "draconian quest" tougher enemies mode on, and I turned it off right at the act 2 end boss. The difficulty curve flowed really well this way, with act 3 enemies not feeling noticeably less tough than "draconian" act 2 enemies. The abilities and spells you get are carefully balanced so that it's very difficult to put together a perfect 4-person party, you're always missing something. This means the fact that you can change your line-up midfight isn't just a nice quality of life feature, it's a potentially vital mechanic. They tread a fine line where sometimes needing to swap people out during the battle doesn't mean the characters themselves feel useless; everyone is capable of some extremely tough stuff. And on the other end of the scale, enemy damage is heavy enough that buffing your attack and using big-damage abilities vs healing or defending can be a properly difficult choice; a heavy hit or a big heal at the right time can turn the tide of an entire battle, as can your big hitter suddenly getting put to sleep or your healer getting knocked out. Again, this is all with the caveat that I had "draconian quest" on for the first 2/3 of the game, from what I've heard combat without it is insanely easy. My big gripe with the combat is that there's very little in the way of tooltips. What's this enemy's magic resistance? Does my Sap have a better chance of landing if I up my Magical Might, or does that just increase spell damage? Does Oomphle affect Quadraslash? If I increase my agility will it go up by enough that I can take my turn ahead of these enemies? Does agility even do that? Does using abilities and spells mean I go later in the turn order vs generic attacks and defending? You just have to guess at all this; the wiki has some info on enemy stats but I don't know where they're getting it from other than datamining. There's an entire bestiary with almost no useful information which is functionally just a model viewer for all 700+ enemies. The only way to know anything is to experiment, which I guess at least adds some purpose to combat when you've filled out the bestiary for an area but still have to grid encounters- which will be required at some point, because fighting is the only way you get xp and money. There is also too much RNG. Critical hits being rare and certain attacks having a chance to cause Confusion or whatever is fine (although I'd prefer for attacks which are labelled as having a chance to inflict status effects to actually inflict the status effect way more often than they do) but why the fuck does the resurrection spell have a 50% success rate? Under what possible circumstances would I be using that spell other than needing my dead teammate back right now? Same for all the abilities on the skill tree that say "doesn't connect very often, but when it does it can cause a critical hit" OK that "CAN" is telling me that this ability which doesn't often connect won't even necessarily crit if it does. Why would I choose this ability? To handicap myself? How is this going to help me defeat the Timewyrm? All that said, when the combat is good it's really good, and whenever I lose a fight I'm thinking "I can win that next time if I do XYZ". The 2D battles are much less fun because the pace is much slower and there are no cute animations to liven it up, but it's always satisfying when the "flash" of an enemy taking damage becomes the "flash" of them disappearing, and you know you have slayed yet another blob. Non-combat gameplay is a mixed bag. The early-game fun of running around looking for new enemies to fight and fill out the bestiary wears off hard once act 2 begins and everything is either a reskin or a glowing-eyes "vicious" version of something you've already fought, and many maps are fairly sparse with just the odd treasure chest and locked door to liven up your path to the next area. That said, there are also several areas and dungeons which make a minigame out of traversing them; the Eerie Eyrie and the Battleground were standouts for me. Especially the remixed version of Eerie Eyrie you go to later on, where you get a flying mount to ride around. Crafting is surprisingly involved, with a whole minigame around it and hundreds of recipes to find all over the place. In most cases you can just use money in lieu of ingredients, which means minimal farming is required to get a lot out of the system, and the recipes with ingredients that can't be bought feel special instead of bullshit. In terms of items and recipes there really is a deluge of content- there are recipe books all over the place, with new ones available even in the last couple of maps that open up in the entire game, and there's an undeniable cookie-clicker rush you get from getting better at crafting and taking something you could barely get to +1 all the way to +3. I play games like this as a magpie, accumulating items with nice pictures and effects that make me do a 😲 face, and DQ11 certainly delivers. This even extends to character advancement, with Hidden Goodies incentivizing picking skills you might not want otherwise, and entire new skill trees opening up as quest rewards.

Overall, DQ11 is a good combat system with loot and progression systems that are well-executed enough to feel rewarding after 100 hours, all wrapped up in a style and tone that is not up my alley at all. A good litmus test for how much you'd like the game is probably: watch this scene and if you think it's the most epic thing you've ever seen then Dragon Quest 11 is for you.

[sightsoundrhythm]

JUSTIN BROWN

Justin Brown is a drummer and composer from Oakland, California. His journey so far has seen him play with a multitude of artists including Thundercat, Herbie Hancock, Flying Lotus, Esperanza Spalding, Kenny Garrett and, most recently, touring in Europe with bassist Ben Williams.

Always tasteful in his approach and execution, Justin's style is progressive and virtuosic yet extremely musical. He began playing drums at a young age and later graduated to playing in clubs by his early teens, before studying at the Manhattan School of Music.

Justin has recently returned to California after being a longtime resident of New York City, where he had initially moved as a student before becoming an active participant in the city's eclectic music scene. In 2018 he released his first album as a bandleader under the name Nyeusi which gained high accolades from both the New York Times and NPR's Simon Rentner. The album sits at the intersection of jazz fusion and hip-hop, managing to sound both vintage and incredibly modern at the same time. It features a selection of luminary musicians from the New York jazz scene including Jason Lindner (★) and Fabian Almazan and is available to download here

NYEUSI by Justin Brown

SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM spoke with Justin before a show in Vienna, Austria to talk about his musical background and upbringing, connecting the line between some of his many collaborations, and submitting to the music.

You just moved back to California after 13 years in New York. What prompted that move for you?

Well, two things. The main thing was family. My mother is getting older, plus I also have a fifteen year old nephew and I really want to be more involved in his life.

There's no place like New York as far as the music scene, which is what drew me there, but it was just the day to day living that I tapped out on. Just the thought of getting on the train and dealing with all of those energies in a compact space... I just needed a bit more balance, for my own sanity.

So those were the main reasons, but I also have a ton of friends in LA, too, that were pulling me there.

L.A. is the type of place where you can't really beat the quality of living. I might be spending the same amount as far as rent goes but I have more time and I'm able to balance out my day a little bit more. Plus the sun is always out so it's easier on the body and brain.

What are the things that you've valued the most by being between New York and L.A.? Does one feel like a better fit than the other?

That's a good question. Well, I've mainly valued the music. Being in New York I feel like I developed faster, just because it's 24/7 and a lot of the guys that I looked up to and wanted to be around were in New York. By being there I found out who I was and what I actually wanted to do. Also, I always wanted to be involved in more than one thing and New York was the place for me to do that. Whether I wanted to play gospel music, or jazz, or hip hop, it was all happening in that space. I feel like New York made me a little stronger.

L.A. has a beautiful music scene. It's a little more close knit because you have a lot of people who are from there and who grow up with each other. It's almost like these little pockets of families who grow up with this musical journey.

It feels as though it's a little more open now, especially with a lot of the younger dudes, where you get into playing more jazz and experimental music. Although it is still a part of it, it's just not as studio focused. On the flip side of that, L.A. is teaching me a lot about the studio because it's sort of the mecca for that. I'm learning lots about mics and EQs.

I do feel like the two places are still connected. I used to say that if you wanted to become a hardcore musician then you move to New York, and if you wanted to have more stability then you'd move to L.A., but it's changing, mainly because of the younger generation and having access to the internet.

What was your experience like growing up as a kid?

Well, being in the Bay Area, there was a vast amount of artistry, from Tower of Power, to Sly and the Family Stone, from the Black Panther movement to the Hawkins Family. It was really cool to be in an environment where art was prominent.

I was fortunate to go to Berkeley High School where I met Thomas Pridgen and a lot of other amazing musicians. Even though it was a public school, the school band was really good and it had this stature for being one of the best in the country. That school was just a bunch of creatives.

I was there with Daveed Diggs, who was in Hamilton, as well as Chinaka Hodges. There were a bunch of different creatives there and that was really cool to be around. There were also outreach programs like the Young Musician's Program, which is a summer school at the University of California, Berkeley for kids under eighteen and they're basically teaching you at a college level. From being there, and being around the people that I grew up with, I knew what I wanted to pursue. I knew as a kid that I had a talent but I didn't start to exude in it until after I left the Bay Area.

I was very active in music, plus my mother is also a gospel musician, so I was learning a lot. I was fortunate enough to have good parents who helped me to cultivate my craft and I'm very thankful for having been in that environment. I had opportunities to play small gigs. I really commend my mother because from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, she used to let me play at late night clubs and she'd come pick me up at two in the morning. I'm very fortunate that she allowed me to have that outlet.

That's some good parenting.

Yeah! She's a musician as well so she saw an opportunity for me to go in a direction that she didn't really go in. She would go out on tour but it was a struggle because she wanted to be at home with the family. Whenever I wanted to practice or hang out with musicians or go to shows, she was always there to take me. At a young age I got to see a lot of guys playing who would be coming through the Bay Area, like Dennis Chambers and Brian Blade.

You've been friends with Thomas Pridgen for a long time.

Yeah, we grew up together. I met Thomas when I was 8, and I think he was 9. I actually just talked to him earlier. To this day he's like my brother. I'm fortunate enough to have grown up with a guy like that, especially with playing drums.

Were you learning from each other?

Man, he was at such a high level that I was learning from him, for sure. He had access to a lot of the guys that we were watching and he was exposed to the instrument at a very young age. I think the most that I gained from Thomas was how to find yourself through the instrument and how to really dedicate yourself to the craft. We used to cut high school together to go shed the whole day. We'd meet up at school, go to his house to play drums, and then go back to school for band. (laughs)

I also met Ronald Bruner through Thomas. I remember that Thomas would call Ronald and they would play drums over the phone! Those two are my brothers for sure.

Is Ronald still playing with Kamasi Washington?

Yeah, he is. I'm not sure what Thomas is doing right now but he does everything. I know that he was playing with Residente and before that Trash Talk. He's playing a lot in the bay area and he's always super active. I got to see him play with The Mars Volta and that was unreal.

Yeah. All of the drummers who have passed through that band have been phenomenal.

Yeah! Jon Theodore, Deantoni Parks, Thomas, Dave Elitch. All special dudes, for sure.

When you left the Bay Area, did you go straight to New York?

Not right away. I ended up auditioning for the Dave Brubeck Institute, which is at the University of Pacific, in Stockton, California. So I studied there for two years before moving to New York, which was actually a smart move because when I look back on myself at eighteen, I wouldn't have been ready for New York, as a human and as a musician.

It was cool to still be somewhat closer to home and to still be able to take the time to really figure it out. Eric Moore also lived in Stockton, California so I became really good buddies with him. He was my shed partner and we played drums every single day. Being there allowed me to really focus in on the instrument and that's where it hit me that I wanted to do this.

I learned that in order to be good you had to put in the time and the work. So that put me in a really good space and it became a habit of me just trying to get better.

Was it after studying in California that you went to the Julliard School for Music in New York?

I auditioned for the New School and Julliard, where I ended up getting a full scholarship. Once I saw the curriculum though I realised that it wasn't for me. Their curriculum was something that I had already been through, with all of my studies at high school and also at the Brubeck Institute.

I actually dropped out on the first day of school. I woke up and just thought, 'I can't do this'. I didn't even go to class, I went straight to the Dean and told him that it wasn't for me.

At the time there were so many musicians that I looked up to, from Steve Coleman to Yosvany Terry to Josh Roseman... I mean, Steve Coleman had a workshop every Monday at the Jazz Gallery and I used to go there and study. Then it was really about playing and learning what that experience was like, so I dropped out of school. It was the best thing for me because I was just ready to play.

That was a smart move.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I look back on it and it probably would've been easy to go back to school and to get a degree and get my masters but I wasn't in that headspace. I was ready to play and I was on a mission to try to get better. So I dropped out of Julliard and spent one year in New York working. I got a day job at Guitar Centre just so I could survive. After six months I thought, 'if I'm really going to do this, I just have to fall face first'. I had to be involved in anything and everything that I could, from a restaurant gig to a jazz gig. I knew it was going to be really hard but I had to do it.

After that first year there I ended up going back to school. I went to the Manhattan School for Music and that's when I met other cool musicians and started to build a name for myself. While I was in school I got the call play with Kenny Garrett and after that I started touring.

After leaving Julliard and taking a year to work, do you feel like you benefitted from not fully going down the academic route at that point?

Absolutely. It felt like a better move for me to do that.  

I still consider myself to be a jazz musician, and in New York you still have the masters there who are the great practitioners of this music. I was going to shows and sitting right up under the drums and watching everyone from Brian Blade to Billy Hart, and I even got see Max Roach when he was still around. So it was about going to check out the masters, asking them questions and really learning about the culture.

If I was doing a hip hop gig, I was going to the hip hop clubs and asking Rich Medina what albums to check out. CBGBs was still around, so I got to and see what that was like and to experience that. So it was about learning the culture of each music and I feel like that's something that they aren't going to teach you in school. It's something you have to find for yourself.

What would you like to see implemented in music education that wasn't present when you were studying, or that you feel is just absent?

That's a really good question. I think allowing more students the opportunity to check out the masters. They need to be bringing in people who have the real experience and not just a teacher who went to school, learned the methods and then says, 'here's how to be a jazz musician'. That's not the way to do it.

Colleges bring in master musicians but it's only a minuscule part of the thing. It'd be great to be able to call someone like Billy Hart and to take students to them, to see the show. Also, it's an economic game. Berkley and the Manhattan School for Music have the money to do it but I think it's really about grabbing a hold of the experience. You're not going to really grow unless you're out there doing it. You can be taught a bunch of theory but to be in the moment and playing is where it's at.

You've collaborated with a multitude of different artists including Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Esperanza Spalding, How have you found it adapting to all of those different situations?

It's all about connecting the line. They're all unique individuals but they're also very like-minded. They're vessels submitting to this music and they're all willing to grow. I feel like the more music you go and check out, the easier it is to connect the dots and be able to adapt.

I learned that I would play differently in certain situations, whether I was playing with Esperanza Spalding or Thundercat, but it was really all about submitting to the music and setting a foundation to make things feel good. It's all music and I just want to be able to bring out the characteristics of what the artist is trying to say. At the end of the day it's about having the mindset that it's really not about me. It's about a bigger picture and to be a vessel in a way that gives someone hope or inspiration throughout their daily life.  

The physical aspect between the people I play with can also be different. Once I started playing with Thundercat, I knew that I could play in that style but I knew that I didn't have the physical capability and stamina to do it. So I had to go back to the drawing board in some ways. I even went to Thomas (Pridgen) and asked him, 'how do you not get tired playing these gigs?' He told me that not only do you have to play like that in your practice but you have to take care of yourself by getting proper sleep, drinking a lot of water and stretching. Over time it became easier.

I had a regimen within my practice where I would work on independence and groove, but then it just became about playing and getting my body in the flow. It takes a lot of patience to understand what works and how your body reacts to certain things, like when you play from fast to slow. Trying to relax the mind and body within that. It really comes down to submitting to it.

So it's mainly been the physical changes between gigs that I've had to adapt to more than the musical ones. I guess there are stylistic things which are different. I mean, with Esperanza it'll be sort of samba and bossanova, but with Thundercat it's more backbeat rock. Essentially it's about grooving, making the music feel good and always being open to learning. I try not to be single-minded in music, because the more things you're able to expose yourself to, the greater the musical language is that you can draw from. It's about always being 100% in it. Always checking out music and going to shows. Always talking about music, and just being a musical nerd. The more experience you get the more natural it becomes.

You played with Herbie Hancock. What was it like getting that call?

Bro. That was crazy. Playing with Herbie was a surreal experience. He's been a major influence on me throughout my musical journey so it was a dream come true.

I think it was Terrence Martin that recommended me. I got the call and did the rehearsal... I rarely get nervous but I was starstruck. I couldn't believe it was happening. For the first few days of the tour, it took me a little while to get over the hump. Like, 'oh, man, I'm on an airplane with Herbie Hancock! I'm eating with Herbie Hancock!' (laughs) On the third or forth day he walked up to me and said, 'Yo, Justin! You've been killing it these last few days!' And it just kind of took a load off me, because he was cool and he was feeling what I was doing.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions about Miles (Davis) and Tony (Williams). He actually told me that Tony played with John Coltrane, which was mind boggling to me.

What period would this have been in?

This would have been in the '60s. Herbie was really good friends with Tony, so I asked him: 'Man, did Tony ever play with Coltrane?' and he said that, yes, he did. There was a week at Birdland where something had happened with Elvin (Jones), where I think he might have got arrested, I believe. So Coltrane asked Tony to play that whole week. I asked Herbie, 'Are there any recordings of it?' and he said, “Yeah. I believe his wife has the recordings.” So it was documented.

Herbie never heard the recordings but he saw Tony afterwards and he said that Coltrane was the reason why Tony switched to playing with bigger sticks. Coltrane had so much stamina from playing as much as he did that Tony wanted to get on that same level. This was in the '60s, so already early on he was trying to get more energy and more power after playing with Coltrane. So that was a really cool moment that he shared with me.

Herbie's full spectrum, on a musical level and on a human level. He's extremely open and is very technically minded. We were all sitting at the dinner table one night and we're taking pictures on our phones. Herbie walks up and says, “you guys want to see something? You ever seen a 3D camera phone?” A company called Red made the first 3D camera phone and they sent him the first one. He was like, “yeah, they sent me the aluminium one. I asked for the titanium one, so that'll be waiting for me when I get back!” He's always been that guy. When Sony first started making CDs, they called him. When Midi was first starting to be used, he was one of the first guys to know about it. So it was just really cool to be in that space. I got to chat to him everyday.

He's not going back but he's moving forward into the beyond. I'll definitely cherish that moment [of playing with him] for the rest of my life. I knew going into it that I had be humble; to be thankful and learn as much as I could from Herbie. It definitely made me a better musician and a better human, just from that one month on the road with him. Just seeing how focused he is... it was unreal.

What have been some of the milestones in your playing that have pushed you creatively?

Meeting Herbie was definitely a milestone for me. Anytime I get to talk to one of the masters, I feel like that makes me a stronger human and a stronger musician. It makes me more confident in what I want to achieve. Playing with Kenny Garrett... as well as being able to play with my peers, you know. It's really cool to just be able to grow together.

The day I heard Caravan by Art Blakey when I was ten years old blew my mind. Just hearing how he played the drums and how much authority he had over the instrument was one of those moments where I thought, 'oh, so that's how you do it!'

For me it's about adapting to the energy of the room and being open in that sense as to how I can inspire someone. It goes back to submitting to the music. All of the practice, as well as checking out videos and seeing drummers live definitely helps, but I also want to be a musician that is completely in the moment. I don't ever want to go onto the bandstand thinking that I know what's going to happen. I want to have a mindset that is ready to expect the unexpected and to always play what is called for in the music. You have to be able to open yourself up to what's going to come out naturally and not try to force anything to come out.

All of those things have made me a better musician.

What's something that you've been paying attention to recently that's been inspiring you, either musically or non-musicially?

Well, I'm not really political but I am paying more attention to issues in the world, because as a black man, I feel like I have no choice, you know? I have no choice but to find a way to dumb down the bullshit. So I'm trying to pay more attention to what's going on in the world; to try and inspire someone to get through, because these are tough times.

I've been given a gift... in church you learn at a very young age that it's not about the accolades or being seen, it's about being a spiritual vessel, to give back and to give praise to the most high.

I guess musically I'm really paying a lot of attention to the drum community and seeing how social media is having an affect on it. I saw the transition with my generation, so it's a little harder for me to go all in and just post things up all of the time. I don't want to over expose myself, but I also just want to be a positive example for someone and to inspire the next generation of younger players, to show them that it's possible. I'm also paying more attention to my health, because with the older I get and the more I'm touring, my health is key to staying strong.

You put out the Nyeusi record a little while ago. Are planning on doing anything more with that project?

I'm still trying to figure it out. I am starting to hear the music and I am starting to get the inspiration to do another album, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call it Nyeusi, because I'm in a different space. With where my life is moving, and all the things I draw inspiration from, there might be a different message.

I wanted Nyeusi to be a theme of who I am more than anything. Even though it's my music it's still not about me whatsoever, and I wanted room for all the other musicians to speak in that project. I mean, I might do a Nyeusi II, just because it was well received and people gravitated towards it, which gave me the push to keep going.

It took a lot of energy and a lot of time to put that album out, and once it was out I didn't really do much touring. There was another side that I had to learn about which was how to be an artist and to present the music. Now, I'm more in a head space of wanting to play and wanting to get the music out live and create more content. So it's very loose and in the air, but I will say that for 2020 I'll be doing more shows with Nyeusi and I'm going to have more live content out, so that's where I'm at with it.

Any European dates for 2020?

Yeah, in the fall, and maybe even later on, and then just doing some shows in New York and L.A..

If you could give three albums to a drummer, which would you choose and why?

This is really difficult. Man.

Ok, I would say:

James Brown – Funky Drummer, or The Payback. Why James Brown? Because that's where hip-hop is coming out of, with backbeats and breakbeats. So it can provide a good foundation for someone wanting to become a hip-hop drummer and to have an understanding of the language. Not just James Brown but soul and funk music.

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. Just because that's a quintessential record for jazz. You can hear where it's coming from and where it's going.

Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life. He's an amazing songwriter and he plays every instrument. Being a drummer, you can get so caught up in the drums that you lose sight of what the message is, and Stevie Wonder is a beautiful storyteller. The music is killing but there's also a message which makes you want to investigate the lyrics. You get a sense of purpose and what music is actually meant for; what your role is as a drummer, too.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you, either as a musician or just on a human level?

On a human level, learning to love and respect everyone for who they are and what they do. To never knock another person's path. To always be encouraging and spread love, if you will.

As a player, and this is going to sound crazy, but playing louder and faster. (laughs)

I mean, that's a really hard thing for me so I'm really trying to develop and get my phrases and musical statements to be a lot stronger, so that it becomes a part of a language and not just a lick or a fill. So I really want to keep developing and getting better as a person.

Good answer. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and do this.

Man, no problem! Thanks for asking!

Interview & live photo by Dave Jones.

[andreagilroy]

On My Life

Some of you know about this because we have discussed it in person, and others of you have probably assumed this was the case, but I thought it was time to publicly and explicitly discuss what’s going on with me regarding THE FUTURE when it comes to career options, particularly the dreaded tenure track. This’ll be long, I guess. Read at your own risk.

Simply and shortly, it has been three years and I have applied for nearly one hundred positions in areas such as media studies, visual studies, American studies, cultural studies, contemporary American literature, comparative literature, and, of course, the few comic studies positions that have come up. I have applied across the country and internationally. I received one request for more information. I have never been invited to even one first round interview.

I was the interim head of a program since graduation. In my graduate years, I organized events, including a pedagogy conference. I am a member of a board of a conference in my field. I have letters from three luminaries in my field, two from outside my institution. I have an impeccable teaching record. I have a publication; and in my last round, I had two publications under review. I have multiple conference appearances. I have a strong service record in and outside academia. I had peers and colleagues look over my materials at multiple stages. I admit I did not pay Karen Kelsky hundreds of dollars to look at them.

I admit that I have not applied for every available position. Shaun and I decided long ago that our quality of life meant we would not be willing to live just anywhere. I have not applied for any and every visiting position (though I have applied for many). I did not apply for every adjunct position. I have a hard time, at my age, imagining moving across the country every year for a one-year position only having to start over and do it all again.

I admit that I could be publishing more. I know this, but my focus has always been on teaching and working with my peers in the field, and I think my record reflects this. Unfortunately, in the era of metrics publications are all that matters. I had hoped the excellence in other areas could overcome this, and that the presence of publications and promise of more (there are more on the way, still!) would work. It did not.

So it came to this: I knew the market was affecting my mental health (and thus my physical health) in seriously negative ways. I was spiraling. I felt like I was doing everything right, but getting nowhere. I would see people who I thought I was as good as getting positions, and I didn’t understand it. I was questioning my worth not just as a scholar, but as a human. I have, since I started grad school, fiercely protected my moments of humanity. I have a husband. I get to spend time with him. I get to sleep. I get to be a person. No job should take that away, no matter how much I love it. (I mean, obviously there are crunch times, but, you know what I’m saying). So I realized that I had to step away.

I realized that I could still find ways to teach outside of the tenure track. It would be hard and different, but I could do it. That’s one reason I’ve started my YouTube channel. Not everyone gets access to Comics Studies 101 in college. Maybe they can online! I’m also hoping to find ways to work with teachers at all levels who hope to teach comics, to help them teach comics better. I know there’s a demand for this in a lot of middle and high school classrooms. I know, based on my experience at conventions, people outside the college classroom want to discuss comics and fandom in serious ways. Helping out with Miss Anthology has been one of the most enriching experiences of the past few years. I look forward to finding ways more to do this kind of work.

I have also, in some of my alternative positions, remembered my wealth of other skills. I am very good at administrative and organizational tasks. I am LOVING my current work as an associate curator on the Marvel Show opening soon at MoPop. I would love to continue exploring this, for sure!

For that last three years, I have been stringing together one-term or one-year gigs with the hope it might lead to something permanent. Now, I know it won’t. I can work temporary teaching gigs knowing it is on my terms. There are problems with the “gig economy” – a lot of them – but I am happier knowing that I am working in an uncertain world -on my terms- rather than chasing some imagined carrot that may never materialize.

We also really like it here in the PNW. And for someone wanting to be involved in the comics world, it’s the place to be. I like working with creators and creatives, with people working directly in publishing (maybe someday I’ll get involved in that, too). I hope to continue to teach in the classroom, too—there are, after all, two comics programs right nearby and I’m qualified…no other area in the nation can say that! I’m happy to pick up classes (I’ll be doing one this summer for UO, in fact). I’m not giving up on teaching, just on tenure-track academia.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at!

[harrietspatial400]

1500 word write up:

Globally there are more honey bees than any other types of bee and pollinating insects, making honeybees the world’s most critical pollinator of food crops. It is predicted that one third of the food that we as humans consume each day relies on pollination mainly by bees. It is proven that if honey bees were to go extinct there would only be four years left of human existence. This fact is unknown to a lot of people, and it is a problem of our society right now as we do not understand the risks at hand. Bees are responsible for the majority of the fruits, vegetables and other things like almonds, coffee and chocolate. Oilseeds like sunflower, coconut and oil palm, will run out eliminating more than half of the world’s diet of fat and oil. It’s not only cottonseed that’s important, without cotton we would be stripped of countless clothing and household items, including blue jeans, shoe laces, towels, mattresses and high-quality paper products. Honey bees are also known to pollinate clover and alfalfa, without honey bees alfalfa fields will perish which are fed to cattle. Because of this there is the dairy and meat industry will die out, also a massive range of food products that are manufactured are made from these ingredients. Another significant role that honey bees play in is the pollination of other crops such like cotton and flax, along side these there are a number of important non-food products created by the honey bee, such as beeswax used in beauty and cleaning products products. By keeping the cycle of life turning, bees boost the colour and beauty of our countryside. As the years go on bees become in trouble even more and it is not becoming a public and political concern all over the world. It is important that people become aware of the importance bees have on our lives and on nature. Years ago it was known for miners to carry a canary in a cage through the mines to act as a basic air quality test. Canaries are much more delicate to the air quality than humans are, so when miners saw a bird in trouble, they knew something bad was about to happen and knew to get out quickly. Bees are todays society’s “canary in the mine” by simply doing the same thing, warning us of the environmental and health issues of the path we are currently on. The various factors of this are things like, a poor diet, stress, pollution, infection, pesticides, climate change, and many more. It has created conditions that have dramatically decreased the number of hives. Some threats to bees consist off specific diseases. Bees can become too weak to fly or be unable to reproduce, or lead to death. Various mites and pests, a specific mite known as Parasitic tracheal mites causes a threat, these mites can take over bees respiratory system as they are so small, and as they grow they make it nearly impossible for bees to breather as they completely cut off their air supply. Along side these, climate change is a threat to bees. With all of these different weather events it can effect the timing of when flowers bloom, were flowers mean less food for bees and they will starve. Its important to help protect bees and their declining number, growing your own garden that produces food for bees will attract them to collect nectar from your plants. Some of the best flowers for bees to collect decor from are blue and yellow flowering plants. Mass plants are highly effective so bees can spend most of their time in one area foraging instead of looking elsewhere. The life cycle of the bee consists of each bee to have a specific job best suited to each bee, these jobs have been divided into three castes which is dependent on their age. The first caste is the workers, this is the most popular caste. The workers make up 85% of the colony, the worker bees are known to be the most hard working as it includes forage to collect pollen and nectar. Usually when the bee turns 20 days old they are able to leave the colony and forge. The second caste is the queen, the queen gives birth to every single bee in the colony. With her pheromones it influences the mood within the colony. The final caste of the colony are the drones, this is made up of the male bees, typically there are only a fee hundred male bees in a colony. The male bees don’t have forging tools or stings, they have larger eyes which are used to locate the queen on mating flights. In order for the colony to communicate it lies on the queen bee. The queen gives a signal which encourages workers, without the queen to give directions the colony would fall apart. The main movement bees make while foraging is often called the waggle dance, the waggle dance is how bees communicate if they’ve found a amazing nectar supply. As bees forage resources up to 8km away from their hive bees use the round dance. When the nectar is more more than 40 meters away from the hive the bees perform the waggle dance. This dance allows bees to share information on direction and distance. It is important to inspire environmental education by offering new ways of thinking about existing problems and working to protect the environment. Ecological art is something created by artists that are concerned with the state of our environment. “Artists interpret nature and create artworks to inform us about nature and its processes or about environmental problems we face”. (Green Museum 2003, 4). “Others define ecological art as a movement that uses art that is restorative too promote awareness, engagement and activism around major environmental issues”. (Blandy etal, 1998; Cembalest 1991). When a designer has a extensive understanding idea of a design problem, they get a valuable insight that informs the importance of the experience. An experience is a type of event to personally engage individuals to implant a impression or leave a memory. A experience is a different way of practice that creates opportunity for change, it gives the narrative a chance to engage and create their own experience that they will remember. Experiences give individuals the chance to visualise new solutions and understand the problem and issues at hand, this is a way to create a new comprehensive and dynamic path to innovation. Experiences are responsible for services, products and the environment. A great experience is a imaginative combination of al these things, it creates a single narrative for everyone. Joseph Pine & James Gilmore states that “Passion to serve our users, make meaningful work in this world, and of course, to provide a personal experience to them. This curiosity and openness to what design could do have led us into the fields of research”(The Experience Economy, 1999, pg. 9-15). To truely experience the essence of a design is to strip it back so its raw and you can see it for what it really is. The hive is made up of three major materials, wax, honey and propolis. Wax is the main material, it basically makes the hive. The structure of a hive which is majority comb is completely bee made. A series of hexagonal cells are made of wax which interlock the hive, bees store honey and pollen within these cells. The goal for a bee is to make honey. Propolis is the glue for a bee hive, propolis is 50% tree resin which makes it very sticky which is why bees use it to insulate and patch holes in their hive. The Hive, designed by Woolfgang Buttress, is a exclusive structure themed around the lifecycle of a bee inspired by valid research into the health of bees. The Hive shows an detailed metal honeycomb with an illuminated dome at its centre. This is made from thousands of pieces of aluminium which create a lattice effect which is fitted with hundreds of LED lights that fade and glow as a particular soundtrack hums and buzzes around you. These multi-sensory elements of the Hive are acknowledging to the real-time activity and movement of bees in a beehive. As the energy levels in the real life beehive surge, the light and sound within the instillation changes, allowing visitors to experience an insight to life inside a bee colony. 1000 LED luminaries line the interior of a beehive, vibration sensors are used to read the activity from the bee colony. A rotational twist in the structure proposes movement, symbolic of a swarm. “I’m not an architect, I’m an artist, so I was more interested in the experience and in how you could convey an idea and a feeling through an experience rather than an object or a building,” Buttress. The Hive is an abstracted analogue of a honeycomb, which speaks for the underlying and important relationship between bee and human, sound, science and landscape through an immersive and multi-sensory experience. “The Hive creates a powerful, immersive space for us to explore the urgent issues we face in relation to pollinators, their intimate relationships with plants and their vital role in helping us feed a rapidly growing population,” added Richard Deverell, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. 

[mintdonna2-blog]

Reminded About the Power of Student Centered Pedagogy

Yesterday I was blessed by the opportunity to attend and participate in day 2 of the 2018 LearnFest (@theLearnFest) Conference in Austin, Texas. LearnFest, or “The Learning Festival,” is Carl Hooker‘s (@mrhooker) new iteration of iPadPalooza. LearnFest joins a very short, personal list of top quality, amazing educational technology professional development events. These include The Mobile Learning Experience in Arizona (@tonyvincent and @azk12), Miami Device in Florida (@felixjacomino), UnPlug’d in Ontario (@thecleversheep), and the Willowood Technology Summit (@nctplarry) in Texas. Unfortunately those four events have either been discontinued or morphed into other events with different leadership. In all of these cases, however, transformative learning is possible mainly because of the amazing and passionate educators who come together to share and learn collaboratively. That dynamic continued for me (and I am sure many others) at #LearnFestATX yesterday.

The founder of the #LearnFestATX @TheLearnFest learning feast: @mrhooker! pic.twitter.com/viJU84ZhUF

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 14, 2018

This summer’s LearnFest event was “the beta” of the new model, which included several new elements like teacher “Shark Tank pitches” for fundable proposals to improve school and learning for students. The winning team won up to $1000 to implement their proposal, which they had brainstormed and developed in a few hours the day before.

1 Shark Tank pitch is about to win $1000 @TheLearnFest – ? ?? #LearnFestATX #LibrariesRRock pic.twitter.com/ir0AqjZXO8

— kristen fournier (@pacifickle) June 14, 2018

The learning highlight of yesterday for me took place in the closing, which featured four TED-style presentations by different brave (and perhaps crazy!) speakers. Carl titled this segment of the closing event, “What’s HOT in Ed Tech,” and each volunteer presenter had to spin a virtual wheel (on an iPad app, of course) to select a type of hot pepper they had to eat first, before giving their presentation. This was the brainchild of Chris Miller (@EdTechChris), who was one of the four speakers along with Carl.

Now it's time for "What's HOT in #edtech" and @mrhooker is going first – He spun and got the "jalapeno" #LearnFestATX Giving a preso on #AI Artificial Intelligence after eating it ?????? pic.twitter.com/vEcRaubAxY

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 14, 2018

Each of the presentations were excellent (hot peppers aside) and included a great mix of thought provoking trends as well as new tools and technologies to try out in the weeks ahead. Carl’s presentation about artificial intelligence echoed (coincidentally) much of my own thinking about AI: We need to be grappling together with peer teachers and students about what teaching, learning, life and work can and should look like as powerful AI bots are increasingly available to “do our bidding” and augment our capacities to do productive as well as creative work.

Mark Simmons (@t3chl0gic) presented second, and shared the phenomenal (and free) app “Novel Effect.” (@Novel_Effect) As you read a picture book which has been added to their large library, related and synchronized sound effects as well as music play to accompany your narration. The app listens to you read, to keep pace. Super cool!

My kids read tonight with @Novel_Effect! Woah It is AWESOME!! Thanks for sharing this today @t3chl0gic at #LearnFestATX !! pic.twitter.com/kwrS8OKdsQ

— Adam Santos (@San_Tacos) June 15, 2018

Chris Miller (@EdTechChris) presented last, and shared about Cisco Spark Board. I’ve heard a little about the Sparkboard, but Chris’ presentation made me realize I really need to check out this tool and learn about it in depth.

You did a great job presenting about this today! ?????? I have heard about the @cisco Sparkboard before but your preso really inspired me to check it out in earnest and learn more! ? #LearnFestATX

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 14, 2018

Chris wrote a post about the Sparkboard on his blog which gives more information, including a link to this instructional video by amazing Oklahoma educator (and “Cisco Education Advocate” Lance Ford (@lancemford):

The third presentation in the “What’s HOT in Ed Tech” series, by Jennifer Flood (@Floodedu), was my favorite from the entire LearnFest 2018 event, and is the inspiration for the title of this post.

Yes it was! You inspired me and made the entire drive down from OKC worth it!!! ?????? #LearnFestATX

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 15, 2018

Jennifer reminded all of us in the audience yesterday at Westlake High School how important student-centered pedagogy and learning theories are in schools and classrooms. She quoted four of my favorite educational luminaries: John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Seymour Papert, and Jean Piaget.

#LearnFestATX I loved this inspiring preso by @Floodedu reminding us of the vital role of student-centered pedagogy: Dewey, Montessori, Papert! pic.twitter.com/6H78hdQwJi

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 14, 2018

Jennifer also shared a pedagogically-aligned book recommendation with us that I’m adding to my summer reading list, “A Schoolmaster of the Great City” by Angelo Patri. (Available free via the Internet Archive. It was published in 1917 and has passed out of copyright.)

#LearnFestATX Great book recommendation from @floodedu "A Schoolmaster of the Great City" https://t.co/x8qYDRAoYQ pic.twitter.com/PCf38ijMGb

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) June 14, 2018

Here’s why I found Jennifer’s words so inspiring and personally meaningful.

Our family has lived in Oklahoma since 2006, and as a state we have pitifully low expectations for our public schools and public school teachers. The majority of our elected officials in the Oklahoma State Legislature simply don’t care about the quality (or lack of quality) of education in our public schools. This was dramatically highlighted this past spring, in the prolonged Oklahoma teacher walkout, which resulted in minimal legislative changes. The threat of the walkout prompted the legislature to pass a teacher payraise before the walkout started, but that law lost some of its funding mechanisms and is now threatened by a November ballot initiative. That teacher pay raise was the first tax increase in Oklahoma in the past 26 years, since the state voted to require a 3/4ths “supermajority” to raise any new revenue. Because of that supermajority requirement for revenue bills, our Oklahoma legislature has effectively lost its ability to meaningfully govern our state.

From '79-'13 OK corrections spending has increased 272% more than education spending during the same period. Chew on that. #oklaed #okleg

— Tyler Bridges (@bridgestyler) July 7, 2016

Combined with the urban/rural divide which holds political compromise and progress hostage on many other issues, our state is “stuck in a pit” where we can’t find the political will or leadership to adequately fund pubic education as required by state law.

"Urban and Rural divide could be a big issue next week with the #OklaEd teacher walkout. It's a big issue when it comes to local control issues like min wage & property taxes" by @jdunnington #OklaEd #OkLeg

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) March 29, 2018

How do these Oklahoma political realities relate to Jennifer Flood’s presentation yesterday at the LearningFest in Austin?

Almost all the requirements to become a classroom teacher in Oklahoma have been effectively abandoned because of our teacher shortage and funding crisis. We’ve seen a dramatic spike in the number of issued emergency teaching certificates in our state, from 32 in 2011 to over 2000 in 2018.

“In 2011, only 32 people held emergency teaching certificates in Oklahoma. As of 2018, nearly 2,000 emergency teaching certifications have been licensed in the state.”#OklaEd #OklahomaTeachersWalkout https://t.co/42voA1LYv8

— Wesley Fryer ??? (@wfryer) April 10, 2018

The political, economic, and educational culture in Oklahoma today preaches the following fiction to all stakeholders:

You don’t need any special educational preparation, experience, or background to be a K-12 teacher in Oklahoma. Pedagogy, learning theories, classroom management experiences, student teaching, mentorship, or any other type of teacher preparation are unnecessary and not of value. If you’re breathing, not a convicted felon, and have a college degree, you’re ready to teach in an Oklahoma public school classroom today.

This educational culture is beyond distressing.

Seeing the photographs and words of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Seymour Papert, and Jean Piaget yesterday reminded me about why I became a teacher in the first place, and why I studied Curriculum and Instruction to earn my Ph.D. Authentic learning is so much more than “the delivery of information” into the ears, eyes, and minds of others. It’s about experiences, reflection, collaboration, and making meaning which is attached to previously built schemas in our brains. Technology tools are most effective, empowering, transformative, and amazing when we view computers not simply as delivery platforms but rather as “imagination machines” and “bridges to creativity.”

Through all our discussions of technologies, apps, websites and AI-powered automation, however, it’s vital that we remember the importance and value of the teacher, and specifically the pedagogies embraced by teachers. Jennifer reminded all of us of this in her presentation yesterday. Despite the distraction (and visible pain) of having to eat an habenero first, these messages come through to me from Jennifer loud and clear, and I was moved.

Pedagogy and beliefs about learning can sometimes be glimpsed through Twitter profiles. In her current Twitter profile, Jennifer Flood shares with us an important element of her educational philosophy and pedagogy:

Building a better world by designing experiences that empower students to make choices.

So does my wife, Shelly Fryer:

Passionate about helping kids love learning

My own pedagogy and personal educational mission is reflected in my latest Twitter profile byline too:

I love unleashing creative potential, helping others #Create2Learn w digital media

It was inspiring and invigorating to make multiple connections with different friends and educators down at the Learning Festival yesterday, but it was also important for me personally to be reminded of the power of pedagogy.

As human beings, the words we say to others make a difference. As teachers, the philosophy of learning which shapes the experiences we design and facilitate for and with students makes a difference too. If you haven’t read directly (as Jennifer exhorted us yesterday) the words of Dewey, Montessori, Papert, and Piaget, add them to your reading list now and start reading them soon. Add John Holt to that list, along with Frank Smith. And Angelo Patri.

Pedagogy and learning theories matter, because they shape the teachers we are and the experiences we craft together for children. Thank you Jennifer Flood. You reminded me about what is most important in education and schools, and inspired me to consider again the roles I have to play in teacher education.

I’m here for the learning revolution. Bring on LearnFest 2019!

Burned my face off but it was awesome! #LearnFestATX #sayyesmore pic.twitter.com/V2ngviVgHb

— Jennifer Flood (@Floodedu) June 14, 2018

Did you know Wes has published several eBooks and "eBook singles?" 1 of them is available free! Check them out! Do you use a smartphone or tablet? Subscribe to Wes' free magazine "iReading" on Flipboard!

If you're trying to listen to a podcast episode and it's not working, check this status page. (Wes is migrating his podcasts to Amazon S3 for hosting.) Remember to follow Wesley Fryer on Twitter (@wfryer), Facebook and Google+. Also "like" Wesley's Facebook pages for "Speed of Creativity Learning" and his eBook, "Playing with Media." Don't miss Wesley's latest technology integration project, "Mapping Media to the Curriculum."

On this day..

Source: http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2018/06/15/reminded-about-the-power-of-student-centered-pedagogy/

[mikegchambers]

My personal journey to the cloud from my first job on a trading floor to startups

“Hi, my name is James. I’m a self-confessed cloud-oholic and I’ve been off-premise for 7 years now.”

Please do not share this picture with anyone … it’s was my pre-cloud late 90’s look.

There’s no self-help group for someone like me — technology is in my blood. I owned my first computer when I was 5, and from then onward I collected technology like most kids had stuffed toys.

I started writing for a local computer magazine at 12, then a national UK magazine. When I got to college, I had a regular column on a British platform called Oracle Teletext.

“You’ll never need more than 16KB of RAM.” Let me just type that reminder into my 4GB Pixel….

It would have been easier to do cool kid things and hang out at the mall but spending every waking hour thinking about all the problems that can be fixed with machines kept me too busy.

My first job on a trading floor

After earning a CS degree at college, starting work as a software developer was a jarring experience. Having to work in teams of developers is not something they taught at school, nor did they train anyone on how to make sense of ancient convoluted systems. At school, you start from a blank screen and build something beautiful all by yourself, which very rarely happens at work.

If you show this picture to ANYONE… oh wait, it’s the Internet.

My group built electronic trading software for hedge funds, portfolio managers, and the like. Most trading happens at the open and close like a twice-daily Black Friday that stresses the back-end. Our infrastructure was killing us as the platform grew and the amount of data choked any attempt to solve the problem without taking the system offline.

Best of all, our users were traders — and they were assholes on a good day. Their needs changed constantly and were communicated telepathically. They completely lost it when during an outage and had no tolerance for bad data, missing functions or sloppy UI.

Smart, volatile and demanding users — working for them ended up being the very best training for today’s user base, and it taught me several life lessons:

User don’t know what they want. At least, not the final version of what they want. They can read the road for the next hundred feet but anything beyond the headlights is unknown. The paradox is we can only know what to do build in the short term, yet our scaffolding has to work forever.

Developers underestimate how much effort is involved. The one constant across all developers is a total failure to estimate to how long something will take. 80% completion happens quickly and then the last 20% takes forever, if at all. You pad their estimates, your boss pads your estimates and the delivery is still late.

Stability is everything. Your system should not fail. Do not, under any circumstances, allow it to fail. But if you do fail, every single outage must be investigated and remedied so it never happens again.

On Error Resume Next: Product Management

In the mid-2000s, I moved to the Bay Area and worked in startups for several years as a Technical Product Manager. This was during the phase when everybody who previously had an idea for a website now had ideas for mobile.

In the Bay Area, a Product Manager is a coder who is yelled at by customers and also produces road-maps nobody uses.

As we moved into mobile, our users were regular people with cell phones, and our competitors were either well-funded startups or the established technical luminaries. Our development teams were much smaller, budgets were tighter and yet our epic aspirations didn’t seem to notice we were horribly equipped for success.

Mobile made scaling problems insurmountable for start-ups — buying new servers sucked up budgets, configuring load balancers and database replication wasted development time that should have been spent perfecting the UI. And investors and founders, usually bored with the the grind of their real jobs and attracted to the gold rush, were on a mission to become the next billion dollar app with no revenue and an army of users.

At the time, there was iOS, Android, Windows and BlackBerry, all using different frameworks and languages, and it looked like these could fragment further. We were trying to put together apps that are essentially a dozen screens which could have been built as a .NET desktop app in a day. And yet we did manage to release apps, solve problems and build some businesses.

I learned:

You don’t know enough. Your team’s knowledge has gaps in networking, security, scaling, electrical engineering, machine code, you name it. When you face problems that veer into these areas, it’s like quicksand for your product. Developers like tough problems and have curious minds, so these types of issues are a siren’s call.

Complexity is death to progress. When your team owns all the pieces, they write complex code that locks systems together. But when developers can only use APIs to talk to other systems and don’t know how they are implemented, they write simple code that makes the system modular.

Dreams aren’t code. If you can’t make your idea function in a spreadsheet or a flowchart, it cannot be built in code, no matter how simple the investor or VC says it is.

Understanding the problem domain is key to building good solutions.

Discovering a better way

Sometime around 2010 it became clear to me that as a development group, we could confidently write solid applications running on machines in the same building. But deployment was difficult — and once apps hit production they weren’t performing as well.

We had been using some cloud apps for a while but hadn’t seriously used AWS until it became absolutely necessary. A client app had started to gain momentum and we didn’t have the money to scale up on-premise, so we became AWS users very quickly. It was a fortuitous but mildly alarming moment to realize we didn’t have any alternatives — but it quickly became the de facto way to build our products.

I had some lightbulb moments during this time:

Infrastructure is hell. It brings out the inner tinkerer in everyone, and it’s a distraction that stops you writing code. You also can’t manage it well no matter how hard you try. So don’t.

Dev-staging-prod doesn’t work. It’s not sophisticated enough, doesn’t stop bugs reaching the customer and ultimately just provides an illusion of quality. Every service needs versioning at every stage with incoming traffic routed accordingly.

Agile is beautiful. We were doing it while also doing waterfall because that was considered professional. When I read the Agile Manifesto I almost wept — I knew this was how we would build software from now on.

What happens in Vegas … becomes a career

In 2012 I attended the very first AWS re:Invent conference in Vegas and that changed everything. Witnessing the entire ecosystem around the platform, it was obvious that many people had been grappling with the same issues and there were a slew of great solutions available.

There was a haunting question about why nobody else was offering this — Amazon was the only game in town and either they were incredibly prescient or we were all being gleefully over-optimistic about this whole cloud thing. This lag continued for years — it gave AWS a 6-year lead over its competition which is why its capabilities still smoke the competition.

In our shop we weren’t the first to the cloud by any measure but we embraced it wholeheartedly. Within 6 months there were a number of unexpected side-effects:

We became truly agile. Our users still didn’t know what they wanted and the devs still underestimated the work, but the dynamic in building products had changed. We could spin on a dime and make radical shifts without blowing the house down — or blowing the budget up.

The things we didn’t understand well were understood for us. Cloud took many of the computer sci-ency problems away and solved them. This allowed us to focus on building only the apps and our productivity (and profitability) sky-rocketed.

Our apps became really good. Many weren’t popular and didn’t survive investment rounds but they were extremely stable, scalable and looked like the products of a much bigger team. I cried for the apps that didn’t make it.

My future as a Technical Product Manager in cloud

In using cloud solutions as the backbone to all the products I’ve worked on, I’ve had to step up my technical game constantly. It’s not enough to be a Product Manager with road-maps and wire-frames — I need to know reliable patterns and trusted practices to create the best technical architecture.

This has meant constant training, taking on programming projects and learning new frameworks as the environment changes. It’s also meant making a commitment to conferences and workshops, which has become an automatic line-item in my budget.

On the business side, cloud has given me the confidence to assess viability and likely cost, predict timeframes more reliably and help business partners understand where the business ideas and the technology meet. In many ways, the concepts between agile, cloud and lean are so intertwined that I often think they are different views around the same thing.

Fail fast, waste little, learn constantly and always deliver customer value — cloud is central to making this work.

There are still a few road bumps

There are still plenty of naysayers. I worked for some more traditional companies after the California days and it was like jumping in the DeLorean and setting the clock to ‘Fail’.

They all grappled with an aging, fragile, expensive IT infrastructure that delivered limited business value and had no hope of helping them innovate or differentiate in the future. Those companies are waiting for a generation of executives to retire and competitive threats to reawaken the appetite that once made them giants.

There are also the fakers in the industry, the ones who for years dismissed cloud, laughed at Amazon and claimed it could never work. Now they scramble to promote their own clouds with the same limited tools and restrictive contracts they had on-premise.

The me-too players like Oracle serve to bring the laggards into the cloud ecosystem but they offer nothing fundamental or game-changing to the technology. 5 years ago they said cloud wasn’t secure and now they say only their clouds are safe, so I suppose fear can drive sales in anything.

But I live by mantra “Go where you are celebrated, not tolerated.” I’m not here to convince yesteryear’s IT professionals that our industry’s change is accelerating geometrically. I’m here because I’m committed to using the cloud and its toolbox to build the next generation of software that solves the next round of problems. I want to get to machine learning and AI, and move from onClick to onPrediction — the cloud is where all of this will happen.

So that’s my story. Most of us geeky kids who grew up with computers didn’t become Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos but it’s been an amazing ride. The opportunities are everywhere and the future has never been brighter. My name is James. I’ve been a self-confessed cloud-oholic for the last 7 years. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

My personal journey to the cloud from my first job on a trading floor to startups was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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[nickdotwatt-blog]

Are You Content? The demise of Team Rock and Print Media

11 years ago I ran a conference at the ICA with Tony Wilson, the legendary Mancunian record label owner, radio and television presenter, nightclub manager, impresario and journalist. Tony came up with the name for the event - Are You Content - which had a double meaning - is the creative output of musicians, journalists, authors, TV, film or game makers nothing more than content, and were these ‘new’ content creators happy about their creative output being called content? The day started with various luminaries and senior folk from across the content industries each having 20 minutes to explain why they would not only still be here in 10 years time, but more importantly why would they be both relevant and profitable. Although most of them seemed to think that although the future would be provide them with some considerable challenges, they would all still be with us, and still relevant. How wrong most of them were. 

Yesterday saw the demise of Team Rock Ltd, a specialist publisher of music magazines, run by supposed music people, not like the ‘suits’ like Time Inc., Hearst or Condé Nast. Team Rock ended the 2015 year with net debts totalling £11.7 million, up from £5.9 million the prior year, however they only generated advertising and copy sales of £6.5 million in the 2015 year, down from £7.5 million in 2014, while administrative expenses ballooned to £12.4 million, up from £9.3 million in 2014. So what went wrong? Were they simply incompetent business people, or is there something else going on out there? 

There are two major problems all publishers are facing right now that suggest a very uncertain future - both copy sales and ad revenues continue are set to decline even further.

In response all the major print and online publishers have been closing titles, or reorganising and rationalising  editorial and ad sales teams (a euphemism for redundancies), in an attempt to remain viable. Pick up any magazine these days, even the market leaders, and you’ll notice that they’re a lot slimmer than they used to be. Why? Well people simply aren’t buying magazines in the numbers they used to, and the ad revenues are slowly drying up. 

This slide from Mary Meeker’s annual trends report perfectly illustrated the problem the industry faces:

The amount of time spent on consuming print media has dropped to 4% - that’s less than Radio, TV, the internet and mobile in the US. We simply aren’t buying or reading magazines and newspapers like we used to, which might also explain why newsagents are closing down even faster than pubs. The other scary piece of the puzzle for publishers is that the ad spend they receive is 4 times higher than it should be for the size of audience it reaches. If you think things are bad now wait and see what happens in the next few years as all the ad agencies and advertisers finally shift their revenues to mobile and other digital channels.

So not only are circulations dropping, ad revenues are also set to collapse. This could see the end of huge parts of the print industry as we know it.

Print publishers invested early in digital (I launched NME.com and then Loaded magazine online back in ‘96), so how come they aren’t reaping in the rewards of their investment? After all they’ve had 20 years to work out how to make money from their online content.  But with no copy sales or subscription revenues to act as a bedrock, they’ve struggled to bring in significant ad revenues, and are still hindered by antiquated thinking, and a lack of real innovation. 

And to compound the problem consumers are being turned off visiting sites due to excess advertising clutter. Too many sites are so full of ads it’s often hard to find the content, with constant interruptions from pop-up ads that shout to try and grab our attention. 

But is the future really as bleak as the picture suggests? Could it get any worse?  

Sadly it could. Google and Facebook set to take 71% of UK online ad revenue by 2020, leaving everyone else scrabbling to grab a share of what’s left. 

However, there is a chink of light at the end of the tunnel.

One publication that could provide a model for at B2B and news publishing is US tech site the Information. The online title has  in just three years become profitable by producing just two stories a day, and charging $399 a year or $39 per month to read them – and they take no advertising. It’s whole raison d'être is to publish ‘Content you won’t find elsewhere’, and it works. This article lay’s out how and why it has been a success, and why ‘quality not quantity’ may offer a future for publishing.Another opportunity for publishing, which can offer work for all my journalist friends, is what’s called content marketing. Brands are being told they have to produce content at scale and they need experts to create it. This is the new face of contract publishing, and companies such as Contently - with a freelance network spanning 60+ countries, including over 100,000 award-winning journalists, videographers, graphic designers, researchers, and photographers, could offer a future for great content creators. They aren’t looking for copywriters, they are looking for skilled journalists that can produce engaging content that people want to read or watch, even if they (consumers) won’t pay for it anymore. I’m currently the editor of CMO.com a site for senior marketers and business leaders, which is highly respected in the industry, and employs a number of experienced and respected journalists. The owners aren’t traditional publishers, it’s funded by Adobe. While the biggest parenting site in the world is Babycenter, is owned by Johnson & Johnson not Time Inc. or Hearst. So there is a future, but it’s unlikely to look too much like the one we have now. More newspapers and publishers will go to the wall, and the number of magazines on the news stands will decline. 

 Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. But not.