Nadya Direkova just posted her SXSW slides (best game mechanics presentation ever)

Inspiration for today

Each year my company, Rethink, sponsors an $18k scholarship at Langara College. And each year we produce a short call for entries film. I’m really proud of the scholarships and the cool films our creative department make with very little production money. Hope you enjoy…

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2011 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan on Vimeo.

Inspiration for today

Here is some inspiration for today. Watch it full screen. Then go do something as brave/stupid as this.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Need to present an app concept to clients? We made an app for that.

Me and the good folks at Rethink have been presenting lots of application ideas to clients in the last year. We got sick of showing screen designs on a TV so we built a neat little app called the Realizer.

The Realizer lets you upload and link together screen designs and then put them on your iPhone and iPad to mimic the actions of a real app. It’s amazing how real the experience can feel for a client.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you about this is because after using it for a few months we decided that this was way too useful to keep to ourselves. So, today we released the Realizer as a web tool and free app download.

We hope you love using the Realizer as much as we all do!

The SXSWi guide you’ve been looking for

For all of you making the yearly pilgrimage to SXSWi this year, Brad King has written the best guide I’ve seen so far. It includes loads of practical tips (wear comfortable shoes, don’t expect to find a cab, drink water) and loads of tips for getting the most out of the 5 days (do lunch with friends and strangers, don’t show up just in time, make your own party).

Here are a couple of my favourite tips:

Don’t Just Hang With Your Friends: If you spend all your time with the people you already know, you’re missing the point of South by Southwest. It’s cool to have a posse. It’s cooler to have a new posse every day.

Big Parties Are For Suckers: You think you want to go to the big parties. You hear there’s an open bar. The music will be kicking, you say. Maybe that’s true. You won’t notice though because the line is around the block. Plus, there’s no place to sit. And you can’t hear anybody. Or get back to the bar.

Home Will Be Sad: You will experience a bit of a let down when you return home. You will want to quit your job, school, life…everything, and return to South by Southwest. Take a deep breath and do what the rest of us do: get on Twitter and count down the days until it begins again.

Have fun down there and play safe. And if you are going to be in Austin, please look me up (@pema), I’d love to have lunch with ya.

Vancouver?

Not what you expect to see out your window in Vancouver. Snow! Weird.

Get excited and make things

Guy living in the woods decides to make huge robot plus the tools to build it. OK, I’m inspired! (thanks to Andrew for the link).

RIP Andy Irons

One of the best surfers in the world, Andy Irons, died unexpectedly this week of Dengue Fever. RIP Andy.

Inspiration from the ocean

This kept me inspired all day.



DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.

Rethink Toronto wall mural

I know – I’m a bad blogger. Possibly even a bad person… I haven’t posted here yet about my new adventure helping to start Rethink’s Toronto office. Needless to say it has been a ton of fun.

One of the fun parts has been helping to design the kind of office space we want to work in. And a week ago we made the office come alive with a giant wall mural by the insanely talented artist (and Rethink art director), Carson Ting. Here is a great little ‘making of’ film Carson put together. Thanks Carson!

RethinkTO wall mural art by Chairman Ting from Chairman Ting on Vimeo.