Quick update...

I've just returned from San Diego, at eTech, where I gave a tutorial on Monday (thanks to all who participated!)...I'll post highlights soon, but a couple quick links from the show and elsewhere:

Linda Stone did a wonderful talk on attention/attenuation (the write-up is from Nat Torkington about an earlier conference where she apparently gave the same talk I saw here). I'll have a lot more to say about it very soon.

You might want to start reading what Bruce Sterling has to say about our digital world, the future, and especially our use of language to name new things we don't yet understand. I've read many of his books in a sci-fi context, but he also talks a lot about things much closer to our current tech lives.

A session here at Etech by Amy Jo Kim was standing room only, so I couldn't get in! But afterward people were raving about her talk, and I finally got a chance to meet her later. We share a lot of the same passions and interests on applying game/interaction design to non-game software and learning, etc...

If you're interested in learning theory, teaching, legos, writing user docs, etc. -- you REALLY ought to read Harry Potter and the Trainer of Dire. There is much more there than might appear on the surface. And, well, anyone who tells a story in legos is already ten steps ahead of the game.

Someone else I've come across fairly recently and like a lot is Anne Zelenka, a woman writing about technology (and other things).

I'm flying directly to Austin now for SXSW, so I'm pretty much out of commission for another week, but I'm trying to get some posts up. Thanks for your patience folks; y'all have been having an amazing discussion here and elsewhere on the whole expert thing. While I'm on that you-can-be-an-expert topic... I met Stowe Boyd here when he attended my session, and he said that he went from zero to blackbelt in karate in just four years, and in his 40's!