I participated in the annual Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival in the emirate of Sharjah, and blogged about it here. It was an honour & a privilege to share my insights into writing & creativity with local students and international publishers.
London Book Fair 2016
As the publishing world descended on London this April, I was fortunate to speak twice at this event. On 13th of April at 2:30 pm, I was on a panel called: The Book As A Brand Platform “In the digital age of opportunity, publishers have more in common with other content creators than ever before. Licensing […]
Pop Jammin’
Who needs a new social network? I don’t know about you, but between twitter, Facebook, instagram, and YouTube (confession: I’m not on snap chat), I feel a bit too social. So I was initially reluctant when the good folks at Super Awesome purchased the Pop Jam app and invited me to become a “channel.” But […]
In the Wild
Years ago, as a young brand builder at Procter & Gamble, I was part of the team that launched Febreze, and led the launch in Canada. I worked tirelessly for months, bringing a core (and then ever expanding) team of like-minded people together to get this new-to-the-world product category to market. The night before “SOS” […]
Byte the Book (March 22, 2016)
I appeared at the Byte the Book event, focusing on maximizing the value of content rights. The report of the event is here: http://www.bytethebook.com/news/report-2 Byte the Book is a digitally-powered literary salon for movers and shakers in the digital, publishing, and content world. The monthly events are held in some of London’s swankiest private members clubs.
Learning from Pixar…from the Inside Out
(note: the following post was originally published on LinkedIn on February 29th, 2016) Watching Pixar take home the Oscar for Best Animated Film reminded me that we all have loads to learn from Pixar Animation Studios. Much has been written and celebrated about their creative process, including in Ed Catmull’s must-read book (‘Creativity Inc.’), but […]
Literary Legacy
Yesterday, I learned that author Harper Lee had died. I’ve never met her, and actually know very little about her personal life, but she gave to us a literary gift in To Kill A Mockingbird that will outlive us all. I first read the book in high school, when soon-to-be adult views on the world […]
Kidscreening
This week I’m in Miami for the annual Kidscreen Summit, flying the flag for AWESOME… In it’s second year in Miami (used to be NY), Kidscreen has become a global meeting place for people making content for kids (and kids at heart). It’s part conference (Mary Coleman of Pixar is the keynote speaker) and part […]
Bulking up
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I’m obsessed with creating characters, stories, and worlds. I love writing fiction because it’s an organic process, probably the purest expression (after oral storytelling) of story. But I’m also a relentlessly visual thinker and I love the creative collaboration that happens in television (as opposed to the loneliness that […]
Kidscreen (Feb 8, 2016)
I had a great time speaking at the annual Kidscreen Summit on Feb 8th, on a panel called HOW TO TRAIN YOUR CREATOR. All of the details are here: http://summit.kidscreen.com/2016/sessions/67414/howtotrainyour/ The official blurb is: “There’s sometimes a tension in the kids industry between singular vision and creative collaboration. So how can you get the best out of an […]