The Coolest Job

Can I just say, I have the coolest job... I mean, where else can you have an XBOX hooked up in your office, and when your clients come by and see you playing it, you actually GAIN credibility!?? Not that I actually have much time to do it -- I'm crazy busy -- but an occasional diversion is fun over lunch when the brain needs a rest for a few minutes...

I walked into one of my client's office today, and he was playing a test version of one of our forthcoming games. I sat and played for a few minutes with him on his big flat HD screen before we started our meeting and was seriously amazed at how far games have come since the days of Zork on the Mac classic back in sixth grade. I've always loved being on the inside and knowing stuff before the rest of the world gets to see it -- and I gotta say, the games we're making in MS Games Studios for release this/next year are pretty dang cool.

This client is a psychology PhD who leads the user research team and is doing some fascinating stuff in the way of psych research. For example, his team is diving into (or maybe already did) what "fun" actually is and looks like. How do you measure fun? How do you even study it? Fascinating...

Speaking of fun, another one of the leads I support always talks about "good fun." It's a catchy term. If you ever played 007 on the N64, by the way, you know something about him. One of the guns in the game is called the Klobb; it's named after this guy -- Ken Lobb. His face was also on some of the enemy soldiers. He's something of an icon in the gaming industry. Good fun... ;)

Finally, I'm back to helping manage the performance of some struggling employees. Now, some people would say that is a horrible thing to have to do. Well, for me, it's energizing. Dealing with people issues like that is why I changed careers in the first place. After working through a couple issues with my own direct reports, I realized that that was more exciting to me than the actual work we did in PR. It's awesome to get back to it now and help other managers work through these kinds of issues in a way that leaves both the manager and the employee feeling good about the outcome and the future. I'm a weird HR guy in that way...