Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast: Recent Episodes

Willem van der Horst

Candid conversations inquiring into the nature of play and work, creativity, games, design, marketing communications, brand strategy, and more.

For this new episode of the podcast I am joined by Colleen Berg, director strategic insights at The Palmerston Group.

Colleen is a fellow strategist based in Canada, as well as a tabletop roleplaying gamer who regularly plays Dungeons & Dragons. I had the chance of being on a panel with Colleen for an episode of Mark Pollard's Sweathead podcast about freelancing (along with Lani Dourado as well), which is where I found out Colleen played Dungeons & Dragons.

I reached out to her and asked if she'd be up for an "actual play" podcast episode, to try out the Gumshoe One-2-One game system with Cthulhu Confidential, an investigative roleplaying game designed to blend the styles of films noir and H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror.

It's the first time I publish a whole episode of play (mixed in with some thoughts about strategy), I'd love to hear what you think of it! This is the first of a series to play through the story titled "The Fathomless Sleep," taking place in a fictional 1937 Los Angeles.

In case you read this soon after publishing, Colleen is going to be speaking at the exciting Sweathead Do Together online Conference on the 22nd and 23rd September 2021, you can check it out and sign up here.

This is a sequel episode to the series playing the Ironsworn solo roleplaying game, if you're new to it I recommend going back to the first episode in which I create the character I am playing, Terilius the Iron Monk.

In this series while playing Ironsworn, I’m going to bookend each episode with a topic more or less related to the game session. In this fourth part of the series, I introduce the episode with mentions of the differences between writing a story, talk, or presentation with a classic narrative structure in mind, as opposed to this type of exercise which has actually more to do with improv comedy, given it is very much improvised on the fly, and in my experience of it so far, more difficult to stick to typical storytelling structure, such as a three act narrative.

Rough timeline:

Beginning to 9:00 min: Intro and talking about narrative structure vs. improvising
9:00 to 57:00 min: Playing Ironsworn (part 4)

If you’re interested in working with me or being on the show don’t hesitate getting in touch - my email is willem@icecreamforeveryone.net, or you can find me on Twitter / Instagram @Hippowill.

Mentioned in the episode:

Ironsworn RPG
Joseph Campbell's Monomyth / Hero's Journey / The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Classic 3 act narrative structure, or Freytag's Pyramid
Improvisational Theatre (Wikipedia)
Playing Ironsworn Part 1: Character Creation, Brand Personalities
Playing Ironsworn Part 2: System & feeling embarrassed
Playing Ironsworn Part 3: Random creative input
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG)
Les Voix d'Altaride (French RPG Podcast
An article about solo tabletop roleplaying games

For this episode of the podcast I'm joined by Andy Nairn, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Lucky Generals, an award winning creative agency based in the UK and USA.

Andy is one of the most respected and awarded brand strategists in the world, and he is publishing a new book: Go Luck Yourself, 40 ways to stack the odds in your brand's favour. The book coming out in June 2021, and you can already pre-order it now.

We talked about luck, Andy's life and career, and this being the podcast where play meets strategy, Andy was gracious to participate in a playful exercise we put together with a couple of examples of exercises to come up with possible ideas for Go Luck Yourself's fictional book launch event. We used inspiration from newspapers we had bought for the occasion, and I prepared a randomised table to have some inspiration to get us started. It was good fun, and I hope you enjoy listening or watching it as well.

Mentioned in this episode

Go Luck Yourself
Lucky Generals Agency

This is a sequel episode to the series playing the Ironsworn roleplaying game, if you're new to it I recommend going back to the first episode in which I create the character I am playing, Terilius the Iron Monk.

In this series while playing Ironsworn, I’m going to bookend each episode with a topic more or less related to the game session. In this third part of the series, I also talk about using more or less random inputs to facilitate creativity in brainstorm and ideation sessions, and it's also a general update about the podcast given I hadn't published in quite a long time.

I had taken time to add sound effects in the second episode, I was thinking of doing the same for this one but honestly I gave up, this has been a long time waiting and I have more in the series coming up. That said for those listening to the whole thing I'd love to hear whether the sound effects make a big difference or not (because it takes a really long time to add in).

Rough timeline:

Beginning to 22:00 min: Intro and talking about random creative input for inspiration
22:00 to 1:00:00 min: Playing Ironsworn (part 3)

If you’re interested in working with me or being on the show don’t hesitate getting in touch - my email is willem@icecreamforeveryone.net, or you can find me on Twitter / Instagram @Hippowill.

Mentioned in the episode:

Ironsworn RPG
Playing Ironsworn Part 1: Character Creation, Brand Personalities
Playing Ironsworn Part 2: System & feeling embarrassed
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG)
Les Voix d'Altaride (French RPG Podcast
An article about solo tabletop roleplaying games

For this episode of the podcast I'm exceptionally joined by not one, but two guests, AND I hand over the reigns to Dina, who led us in playing a lovely demo of the Norwegian surreal tabletop roleplaying game Itras By.

I happened to exchange a few tweets about roleplaying games with Dina who is based in Finland, and noticed her bio mentioned the fact she is hard of hearing. I was reminded of being in contact with Ashley last year, given she works with Rosie and Faris Yakob of Genius Steals, and I was guest writing an edition of their Strands of Genius newsletter. Ashley also happens to be deaf, and I browsed her website, as well as a few videos from the Hearing Like Me community that Ashley participates in.

I suddenly thought that I've been publishing an audio podcast for the past five years without barely ever worrying about whether it was accessible to the deaf and hard of heard, and now I'm beginning to publish videos, I didn't really take much care of checking the automatically generated Youtube captions that they often rely on to consume content.

I reached out to both Ashley and Dina, who were keen to have a conversation and demo a game, which was awesome!

Ashley Derrington is a world traveler, soccer / football player, expert creative producer and project manager, published a wealth of awesome content as part of her Deaf, Tattooed, and Employed project, learning about deaf and hard of hearing communities around the world. She also actively works with the Hearing Like Me community, contributing content and sharing her experiences

Dina Ramse is also a seasoned traveler, game designer, avid playtester, seamstress, and helps games publishers (and I believe other businesses) with their marketing, social media, and community management activities. She has been actively running games for over 15 years, and as you'll see or hear in the video, is a beautifully talented storyteller and narrator.

Itras By is the surreal tabletop roleplaying game we demo in the episode, originally published in Norway, it is also available in a number of other languages, including English and French. I had heard a lot of great stuff about the game and had been looking forward to trying it out, so when Dina offered to lead a game demo I jumped on the occasion.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Ashley Derrington
Deaf, Tattooed, and Employed
Hearing Like Me
Dina Ramse on Twitter
Tales of Sampo (Board Game)
Itras By (Tabletop roleplaying game)
Norwegian Style - An Anthology of Norwegian Roleplaying Games
Surrealism - Art Term (Tate website)
Invisible Sun (Tabletop roleplaying game)

For this new episode of the podcast, I am joined by Marcelo Peretti Kuhn, Co-Founder of The Dojo, and among other discussion points we demo the atmospheric tabletop roleplaying game Happy Together by French game designer and photographer, Gaël Sacré (the game is available in both French and English).

I had the chance of attending an online session of The Dojo's Full Body Thinking method with Marcelo during the GroupThink Fest event earlier this year, during the lockdown. I loved the way they mix body and mind exercises for strategy and knowledge workers, and reached out to Marcelo to both thank him and ask if he'd be up for a recording - and to ask if he'd up for a game demo too.

I've talking about games, and talking about playing games on the podcast, and this is actually the first time a guest joins me in a short demo of a game - and this is a quirky, very little known one, but seemed like it would perfectly fit the conversation topics revolving around mental and emotional wellbeing, meditation, play, strategy, and more. I hope you enjoy it!

Mentioned in this episode:

I am joined by Uma Rudd Chia today. Uma is a creative director, best selling author, global keynote speaker, and founder of the Female Idea. Originally from Malaysia, Uma lived worked internationally, and is now based in Singapore.

We had the chance of working together years ago and being desk neighbours while working at the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in Singapore. We kept in touch during the pandemic lockdown, and asked her if she'd be up for being on the show.

I also asked her to pick a topic she’d be interested in chatting about, and she chose space. We exchanged a few messages, and I in turn picked Mindjammer as a game to talk about. Mindjammer is an award winning science-fiction / space opera tabletop roleplaying game by designer and author Sarah Newton.

For the more serious gamers who might be listening, just so you know what to expect, we didn't get to play the in this particular conversation, so while I talk about the game system and the setting for a bit, we also go into other tangents pretty quickly.

It's my first time adding a video intro and only my second episode with the full episode, any thoughts or comments will be welcome, thank you!

Mentioned in this episode:

10 THINGS BRANDS COULD DO TO SURVIVE A CRISIS

Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Ice Cream for Everyone podcast, where play meets strategy. And both as an edited audio file (cleaned up sound, mostly) as well as on video for the first time!

I am joined by Eric Woning, a brand and communications strategy director based in London. Eric has extensive experience with brands and digital, media, and creative advertising agencies like Mindshare, OMD, TBWA, and more. We follow each other on Twitter and I asked him if he’s up for being on the show.

I also asked him to pick a genre he’s be interested from a list of suggestions, he short listed horror or post-apocalypse, and I picked the award winning tabletop roleplaying game Apocalypse World as a springboard for the conversation.

I’m sorry if post-apocalypse feels a little too close to reality these days, we talk about it, and just to make sure I mention it up front, it’s not really the reason that was selected. We had a brilliant chat, going from games, to brand archetypes, digital technologies, music, and more.

FYI the conversation is explicit and there is some light swearing, and unfortunately have a couple of bump noises I didn’t manage to get rid of while editing the audio.

In this episode:

Eric Woning on Linkedin
Follow Eric Woning on Twitter
Apocalypse World
Dungeons & Dragons
Roleplaying Games "Powered by the Apocalypse"
Tabletop Roleplaying games
D. Vincent Baker
Critical Role
Actual Play RPG Experiences Are Having a Moment (Polygon)
For Some Hollywood Players, Dungeons & Dragons is the Hottest Game in Town (LA Mag, May 2020)
The X-Files (TV series)
The 12 Jungian Archetypes
TBWA Disruption Sessions
How Music Works, David Byrne
Mad Max
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Descent Board Game
B.I.G. - Barbus In Game on Youtube (French Figurine / Wargame Channel)
Ian Curtis - Century of the Self & Hypernormalization

This is a sequel episode to the series playing the Ironsworn roleplaying game, if you're new to it I recommend going back to the first episode in which I create the character I am playing, Terilius the Iron Monk.

In this series while playing Ironsworn, I’m going to bookend each episode with a topic more or less related to the game session. In this episode given it is still the beginning I briefly go over what tabletop roleplaying games are, what a solo game is, the rules system for Ironsworn, play through the first session, and finish off with sharing some thoughts about feeling embarrassed.

Rough timeline:

Beginning to 18:00 min: Intro and system
18:00 to 55:00 min: Playing Ironsworn
55:00 to end: Fear and embarrassment

If you’re interested in working with me or being on the show don’t hesitate getting in touch - my email is willem@icecreamforeveryone.net, or you can find me on Twitter / Instagram @ICWillem.

Mentioned in the episode:

Ironsworn RPG
Playing Ironsworn Part 1: Character Creation, Brand Personalities
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG)
Dungeons & Dragons
HP Lovecraft
Call of Chtulhu
James Bond
Star Wars
Les Voix d'Altaride (French RPG Podcast
Ludology Podcast
An article about solo tabletop roleplaying games

Sound credits: Free Sound

https://freesound.org/people/PlatypusVA/sounds/400665/
https://freesound.org/people/oontzru/sounds/101999/
https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/483308/
https://freesound.org/people/fisu/sounds/181876/
https://freesound.org/people/sandyrb/sounds/41458/
https://freesound.org/people/Benbojangles/sounds/71266/
https://freesound.org/people/toonothing/sounds/315742/
https://freesound.org/people/dobroide/sounds/317419/
https://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/103126/
https://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/103130/
https://freesound.org/people/hasali/sounds/474263/
https://freesound.org/people/Garuda1982/sounds/418181/
https://freesound.org/people/Magnesus/sounds/449652/
https://freesound.org/people/EricsSoundschmiede/sounds/447813/
https://freesound.org/people/JayHu/sounds/506103/
https://freesound.org/people/OwlStorm/sounds/320143/
https://freesound.org/people/klankbeeld/sounds/368824/
https://freesound.org/people/DDmyzik/sounds/460262/
https://freesound.org/people/FunWithSound/sounds/361483/
https://freesound.org/people/Otakua/sounds/219930/
https://freesound.org/people/arnaud%20coutancier/sounds/464332/
https://freesound.org/people/Stevious42/sounds/259641/
https://freesound.org/people/speedygonzo/sounds/257652/
https://freesound.org/people/nemark/sounds/384591/

I hope you and your close ones are safe in the midst of the worldwide pandemic, take care - and don’t hesitate reaching out, whether you have any questions about your brand and marketing communication strategy, or if you want to chat about anything.

We have a guest joining me for this new podcast episode. Rohan Kale reached out, he is a Growth Marketing Consultant, who owns and manages a business developing animation videos, particularly dedicated to demonstration and marketing purposes, and also works on generating leads for clients via LinkedIn.

Rohan was born in India, then studied his MBA and launched his business in Germany, at the time of recording he was in Pune, India. He regularly contributes to projects like Thrive Global, The Good Men Project, and X-Factor Presentations. He has a pretty interesting story to share, and in particular, Rohan has dealt with gambling difficulties in the past - and this is an area, sort of an oftentimes dark side of play and gaming that I hadn’t discussed in any way on the show, so I thought it would be worth having a chat with Rohan about it. Before we go ahead, just a couple of warnings:

I did my best but didn’t manage to remove all mic related noises, there are a few left - hopefully not too annoying, but sorry in advance
This episode is explicit, there are a few swearwords - so please be warned if ever you have little ones around while listening.

Mentioned in this episode

Rohan Kale on Linkedin
Rohan Kale Bespoke Branded Animation Videos
Pune, India
Stuttgart
Cricket
Cartoon Network
Fantastic Four
Spiderman
Scooby Do
Captain Planet
Tim Ferriss
The 4 Hour Work Week
Sam Harris & Matt Wullenweg, CEO of Automattic / WordPress: The Future of Work
Amul ice cream
The Pursuit of Happiness (Film)

I'm pretty excited about this new episode, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of it. I've had plans to begin recording a tabletop roleplaying game while musing about brand strategy and a few other topics, and it's finally beginning! In this episode, I'm creating the setting and playing character for Ironsworn, a roleplaying game that friends told me about and is designed to be played in a solo format (though not only, you can also play the same game with friends).

In this game of perilous quests, characters take vows they swear on a bit of iron leading them to adventures to fulfill on them.

I will record the sequel soon, but otherwise if you'd like to join me in playing a game and chatting about strategy and communications some time, please keep in touch!

In this episode I go through the creative process of the beginning of a roleplaying game, while also mentioning brand personalities a little and a few other bits, like Stephen Kings' seminal 1971 paper "What is a Brand?" and Ogilvy on Advertising.

A few other things mentioned in the episode:

Ironsworn RPG
Shawn Tomkin on Twitter
Quill RPG
Scott Malthouse
Stephen King - "What is a Brand?" and the video version
A Masterclass in Brand Planning
Ogilvy on Advertising
Mad Men
Avis "We Try Harder" advertising campaign / underdog story
Miro.com

A month has gone by in a flash since the last episode I published, and the world has massively changed since - at least much of the world has, as the COVID-19 virus has been declared a global pandemic. In France we have been confined to our homes for the past two weeks, asked to stay home aside for work essential to running the country, going out for groceries, and minimal physical exercise. If you're reading I'm sure you know all this.

Much of my world and media diet has been coronavirus related for more than two weeks now, and while there are experts talking about that side of things with more knowledge than I have, I wanted to record and share some of my thoughts of how it has been for me in the past couple of weeks, and hoping it is useful and resonates with some of your experience as well.

It's also a way to say I am still working on my podcast, and the next episode will be back to some "normal programming" even though as I mention, I'm still exploring what normal is for my podcast.

I think I forgot one important point in this recording, in case you read this, and that is the importance of taking care of your mind and emotions in this time of crisis. I'm even more diligent than usual about my daily meditation, and on that topic I recommend a great and short episode of Sam Harris' podcast: Meditation in an Emergency.

That's about it for now, I'll be back with more soon, stay home stay safe in the meantime!

We are back to a more traditional episode of the podcast this month, it follows the episode I recently published playing Quill, a letter-writing roleplaying game for a single player - you can go back to that one first if you'd like though it's not essential to following this conversation.

After publishing the episode playing Quill, I reached out to Scott Malthouse, the author of the game, and he graciously accepted to take some time for a recording, a mere few weeks later and voilà!

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did chatting with Scott about his games, if you did please take a few minutes to post a review on your favorite podcasting app, it helps me keep motivated to record and publish, and helps others find the podcast thanks to the recommendations.

In this episode:

I am experimenting new types of episodes for the podcast and would love to hear what you think of this one, given it's a first time for me.

Before Christmas, I went out one day with my Zoom H5 audio recorder and recorded my observations visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris for the first time.

Join me for a quite ignorant but hopefully entertaining audio experience from the most visited museum in the world!

Mentioned in this episode:

The Louvre Museum
Nintendo & The Louvre partnership for 3DS audioguides
Musée d'Orsay
Zoom H5 Audio Recorder
Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois
Red Carnations on a Black Grave, tabletop roleplaying game
The Assumption of the Virgin, painting by Giambattista Piazetta
Ancient Rome and Modern Rome, paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, painting by Dominichino
Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci
Le Sacre ou le Couronnement (Napoleon at Notre Dame)
Leonidas at Thermopylae, David
Liberty Guiding The People (Delacroix)
...And many more.

Happy new year, I hope you had an amazing time over the holidays!!

I can't believe it's 2020 already. Now I really feel old, still thinking of "the Twenties" as the 1920s now nearly twenty years into the 21st century. I'm sure people thought and said that a hundred years ago too.

Check out Tim Urban's short post on Wait But Why about 2020 for some more of this kind of perspective in the kind of fantastic diagram he does so well - and just a little bit depressing too.

I'm finally back with an experimental episode, it's about time! I've settled in Paris and still aiming to record playing games and having generally playful experiences with others, though in the meantime I'm beginning the experiment by myself. I'm definitely interested in hearing what you think of this one, given it's pretty different from previous episodes.

Mentioned in this episode:

Wait But Why: It's 2020 and you're in the future
Mark Pollard's Sweathead podcast
Les Voix d'Altaride, podcast rôliste (en français)
Samuel Ziterman (en français, GM Tips, solo TTRPGs)
Cendrones (en français, IronSworn solo TTRPG episode 1)
Quill, A Letter-writing Roleplaying Game for a Single Player, on Itch.io (and Drivethru RPG) by Scott Malthouse of Trollish Delver Games.

Well for a change I'm kind of behind on all sorts of things (mainly the podcast, newsletter, and other similar side projects and ideas - like designing a board game, that hasn't gotten any love in a while. But I digress) I was about to fly from Chicago to Paris yesterday on the 4th July and after nearly 4 hours delay, the flight was cancelled.

It just so happens that I'm in the middle of moving from Chicago to Paris, so they put me up in a hotel near the airport, rebooked on a flight a day later, and I've been doing my best to catch up on everything, including dealing with a few fires and emergencies to do with organizing my 40th birthday party in Spain in a couple of weeks - which I'm super excited about!

That's about it for now, I have more news in the episode, including a week long intensive improv comedy course I took, a workshop about stand-up comedy, performed for our improv comedy student show, did a quick set at a stand-up open mic, lots going on with organizing my big vacation and party to celebrate my 40th birthday - in the villa pictured above, and lots done in Chicago to enjoy all the things I love about the city!

That's about it for now, keep in touch and as usual please tell me if you enjoy listening to the podcast!

I first met Jason at GenCon in 2018, and have been meaning to have a conversation about his game designing since. We had a brilliant chat about coffee roasting, roleplaying game writing and design, some of his history, what he believes his game design is about, and some pointers for people interested in trying out tabletop roleplaying games.

"I'm trying to make memorable, emotionally moving games that make people think about serious issues so that we can use games to teach people how to be better humans through the incredible empathy building that is available in the roleplaying game hobby."

Jason Pitre

Info mentioned in this episode:

I had a brilliant and lively conversation about the value of being helpful, enthusiasm, the craft of writing, storytelling, today's media landscape, and more with Jessica Greenwood, Chief Strategy Officer of R/GA.

Jessica was a journalist before being hired as a strategist and advocates the importance of writing as a craft for strategists in the creative communications industry. Jess was named to Ad Age U.S. Women to Watch Class of 2019.

"The big rub on strategists is that they prefer to be clever rather than helpful."

"As we go to a more data led world, and this sort of signal to noise ratio gets a little more confusing, I think writing is something we need to talk about more. I don't think it's made clear enough to strategists entering the industry that you are a storyteller, you have to tell a story in a way that is irrefutable."

Jessica Greenwood

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, please share with a friend and keep in touch to tell me if you enjoyed listening!

Mentioned in this episode:

Jessica Greenwood on Twitter
R/GA
Samsung
Verizon
Nike
Google
Pepsi
Contagious Magazine
World 50
This American Life - 'Anything can be Anything'
Flat Earth Theory
Papel e caneta
Andre Chaves - Papel e Caneta
The International Exchange
Conversation with Philippa White
Rummikub (board game)
Billie Eilish record
Game of Thrones
Leaving Neverland (documentary feature film)
Sundance Festival
Christine Blasie Ford testimony
Kavanaugh hearings
Sweathead with Mark Pollard Podcast
The Rolistes Gaming Podcast with Kalum

I am happy to share the inspiring and fun conversation I had with Ama McKinley a few weeks ago. I came across her Linkedin profile while browsing as I sometimes do, read her profile, some of her writing, and reached out given she seemed to have an interesting background.

Ama is a freelance strategy consultant, poet, a griot (storyteller), writer, and more, based in Atlanta.

Here are a couple of thoughts from her about storytelling in the marketing industry:

"I think the word storytelling is very used but perhaps underrated in the sense of quality or passion of storytelling. As an industry, I don't thing we're aware of the power that we have, especially when we're able to tell brave stories, or dig deeper in the truths that are across cultures or the truths that are across time. Sometimes the safe bet stories, like "we're authentic, we keep it real." There is no bravery and no substance in this story, and the story fades. It's not a story carried from person to person, or generation to generation."

Ama McKinley

I hope you enjoy the rest of the conversation as much as I did!

Mentioned in this episode:

Ama McKinley on Linkedin
Griot (Wikipedia)
Atlanta, Georgia
Storytelling
The Devil's Advocate (film)
Such is the Way to the Stars (Love+Radio podcast episode about Richmond, Virginia)
American Gods, Neil Gaiman (Book & TV Series)
The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (audiobook version)
Game of Thrones
Born a Crime, Trevor Noah (audio book version)
Maya Angelou
I know why the caged birds sing, Maya Angelou
What Women Want (film)
Seville, Spain
Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain, Jason Webster
The Alhambra, Grenada
Miami Ad School Bootcamp
Ifa Lukumi faith
Orishas
Her (film)
Anansi, Akan tradition from Ghana
Banana pudding ice cream by Blue Bell
Talenti sorbets
2048 (mobile game)
Alchemy (mobile game)
Doing a TED Talk: The Full Story (Wait But Why, Tim Urban)
Pecha Kucha

Steve reached out a couple of months ago with an interest to be on the podcast, he seemed like he was up to a lot of interesting things so we organized meeting up for chat.

We ended up unexpectedly talking about rap and hip hop, Steve's circuitous journey to becoming a planner working in advertising and marketing, his involvement with soccer, the non-league he launched, and many other fascinating stories.

Steve is a compelling proof that a planner can come from all sorts of different background and succeed in the creative communications industry and it was a delightful conversation, I hope you enjoy it as well.

"If you have a vision, stick with it. Just pursue that vision and don't put so much stock in the maxims you get from industry luminaries, because I took that Jon Steel thing of 'Be interesting and be interested' to so much heart that it probably added years on to my circuitous journey."

Steve on breaking into the advertising industry as a planner.

Thank you to the True Star Foundation in Chicago who let us borrow a room in their facility to record this conversation, we talk about it during the podcast, it's a fantastic program supporting Chicago youth in gaining media and marketing experience through a range of after school courses, activities, programs, and job internships.

Mentioned in this episode:

I've had an excellent conversation about design with Jennifer Severns, including some fun geeking out on Marvel superhero movies (tiny spoiler for Captain Marvel, FYI) and video games.

Jennifer is the Chief Experience Officer at the American Marketing Association, they recently went through a large rebranding exercise and a complete overhaul of their internal systems that we talk about in the episode as well.

"I have an infographic of the scientific method printed out in my office, hanging on the wall. If anybody comes in and starts talking about solutions or what's not working, I point back to it and say "OK, what is the question you are trying to solve?". Our primary problem [in marketing] is we go down a road of throwing a product out there without back to what are we testing, what are we trying to find out, and when will we know if it's working or not?"

Jennifer Severns

Mentioned in this episode:

The American Marketing Association (AMA)
Jennifer Severns on Twitter
Captain Marvel
Trolls Hit Captain Marvel with Bad Reviews on Opening Day
No Doubt
Wonder Woman
Avengers Endgame
Nashville
Stomp!
KFC
Nightlife The Deep Dive (with IDEO)
Glossier
The Quantified Self
Destiny 2 (video game)
Business Model Generation
Red Dead Redemption (video game)
Grand Theft Auto (video game)
Exploding Kittens (board game)
Think With Google Video games culture

I invited Jim to be a guest on the podcast and he was gracious enough to invite me to chat in person at the lovely Soulsight offices in Chicago's downtown Loop.

Soulsight is an award-winning branding agency working with some of the largest businesses in the world, such as MillerCoors, Kraft-Heinz, or Pepsico. They rethink and design the experience of brands such as Blue Moon, Sol Mexican Lager, Henry's Hard Sodas.

Jim is a partner in the agency, and co-authored The Big Book of Packaging.

We had a brilliant conversation running across a number of topics, surprisingly including the value of boredom for creativity, thoughts about designing brands, how branding is a team sport, drawing elephants, and even touching on meditation.

"The brands and products we create define who we are as a culture today. If we were to go and dig up how life was like 50 years ago or a 100 years ago, what do we look at? People's trash. You look at the objects they were using to cook with, or clean with. What we're doing today is really defining the needs, the values, the purpose, and the ethics of what our culture is."

"I like to say a brand is an artefact of a moment in time, and some brands can last a hundred, or two hundred years but they also evolve to stay relevant."

Jim Pietruszysnki

Information mentioned in this episode:

The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes 30th Anniversary Edition

The Big Book of Packaging

I had a fantastic conversation with Emma Worrollo, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of The Pineapple Lounge. It's a research agency specializing in better understanding children, teens, families, and helping brands connect with them.

I came across the Pineapple Lounge and Emma while participating on an expert online panel about play, I thought the agency and Emma's work at the intersection of brands, creative communications, families, and play seemed fascinating.

Emma shared her experience of pregnancy and motherhood on her blog Mission to Motherhood, and currently sharing her philosophy of living playfully and designing a playful living environment over at The Playful Den.

"When children and youth are your business, there are 3 things that come up, pretty much in every single brief:

How can my brand be cool? How can my brand be fun? How can I encourage playfulness?

If you can inject play into your [brand] experience, generally, and this is for any age, it's more sticky, it's more memorable, and it's more time worthy."

Emma Worrollo

We talked about mermaids, unicorns, rainbows, colors, living playfully, ope- ended toys, conducting brand research with children, teens, parents, what 'cool' is, and much more.

It was a brilliant conversation, if you enjoy listening, please share with your friends!

Mentioned in this episode:

Follow Emma Worrollo on Twitter
The Pineapple Lounge
The Playful Den
Bournemouth, Dorset
Kawaii
Japan
Harajuku
Mermaids
Aquarius
Astrology
Chicago Polar Plunge
Tony Robbins
Tim Ferriss
Heal Yourself with the Ice Shaman (Wim Hof) - Russell Brand
Mission to Motherhood
What the Heck is an Open-ended Toy Anyway?
Harry Potter
Star Wars
Flow (psychology)
How to Make Slime: Our Favorite 4 recipes
Parkour / free running
Whitling (Pinterest)
Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Hapinness
Atari Console
N64
Sega Megadrive / Genesis
Sonic The Hedgehog
Sonic The Hedgehog (Feature film)
Geocaching
Spider-man: Into the Spider Verse (Trailer)

I'm pretty sure a lot of people will be looking forward to this conversation, and for me it's sort of been a while coming. I met up with Mark Pollard over a couple of years ago in London, had just bought a new digital audio recorder I didn't really know how to use properly (and barely do now, just about enough to record one-on-one conversations), so the recording wasn't particularly good and to set that episode aside.

I was happy to catch up with Mark and we had an excellent conversation about the book he's writing; what he's up to with the Sweathead community and podcast; the way he views neglect and creativity, the five love languages, the games he plays with his children, and more.

"The idea behind what I'm doing with Sweathead is to connect people who think for a living, many of whom are quite intuitive, many of whom might identify as being sensitive and emotional - not everyone, but many. They want to do something creative, they're trying to figure out how to talk to themselves in healthier ways, and I'm just trying to create a gang around that because the power of these people and their brains - it's huge! If you can help them see through their day jobs, if they're not feeling fulfilled in their day jobs."

Mark Pollard

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed chatting with Mark - and if you do, please subscribe to the podcast (more guests and episodes coming soon!) and give it a 5* rating and a review, it helps others find the show. Share it with your friends and acquaintances who might enjoy it too!

Mentioned in this episode:

This new conversation with Rob Estreitinho went by in a flash, it was a brilliant chat and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it. I even wondered if it was a little abrupt in my managing the end of it, but I was just conscious of time.

We talked about meeting in London a few years ago, how Rob views strategy and defines it for people not in the creative communications industry, about his growing up in Portugal and what he enjoyed playing at and with growing up, about school bullying, then how he found out about this career and got into it.

I love Rob's experimenting with art, creativity, and more on social media, I recommend checking out his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

"I Follow people on Twitter for the smarts, and people on Instagram for the arts."

Rob Estreitinho

Rob is Typing on Twitter

Rob is Typing on Instagram

Rob also writes the excellent Salmon Theory email newsletter, I highly recommend checking it out and subscribing!

Just a warning in case you have kids around: there are a couple of F-words in the episode.

Mentioned in this episode:

Rob on Twitter & Instagram
Salmon Theory newsletter
Open Strategy
Rob Campbell' blog - The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod
Rob's interview on the Sweathead podcast with Mark Pollard
Lego Technic
30 Things I'm Still Learning At 30, post from Rob
School Bullying
George Nimeh aka @iboy on Twitter
Nimeh & Partners, The Agency For Changing Times
Free: The Future Of A Radical Price, Chris Anderson
Seth Godin
The Guardian
Kotaku
Dionne Grant, Buzzfeed UK Social Media Editor on Twitter
The Age of Envy: How to be Happy when Everyone Else's Life Looks Perfect (The Guardian)
Retrowave
retrowave on Instagram
GlitchArt on Instagram
Shadow of War video Games
Pandemic Cooperative Board Game
Lord of The Rings
Meeples Together: The Why And How Of Cooperative Board Games
Drive Movie Soundtrack (Retrowave music, on Youtube)
Drawing
Sunlight

In this new episode of the podcast, I had a great conversation with Julian Cole. Julian is a communications planner with a wealth of experience with some of the best creative advertising and marketing agencies. He was Head of Comms Planning at BBDO in New York last, and recently got back from 14 months traveling to many far flung and exotic locations.

I'd come across Julian's work quite a few times. I appreciate the originality of thinking, that he shares and teaches the way he does strategy and communications planning work, and comes up with creative and playful ways to express new ideas in order to better sell creative work to brand clients.

We talked about his career from Australia to the US, creativity, strategy, play, his travels, and what he's going to get up to next.

Remember to give the show a 5* rating and review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes, or your podcast app if you enjoy the show, it helps other people find it. And even better, if you enjoy the episode, share with your friends!

PS: I have a doubt and now believe I said "Dirty Planning" instead of "Planning Dirty" - my apologies to Julian for confusing the order!

In this episode:

Julian Cole on Twitter
Planning Dirty Newsletter
The Planning Salon Interviews
Youtube
Chess
Capture the Flag
Australian Rules Football
Viral Rockstars video
"IPA Study: Ads That Win Awards Are 11 Times More Effective"
Learnings From The Murder Capital of Creativity
The Rick James Model For Creativity
Christian Ethopian Art
Reg Mombassa, Artist
China Great Wall Slide / Toboggan
$500,000 Luxury Dining Experience In The Maldives

I can't believe it's already been nearly three months since the last episode I published for the podcast!

I've been spending time formulating what Ice Cream for Everyone is about, and finally got to a version I'm happy to share, and is on my updated website front page as well.

In the episode I'm quite simply sharing what I've been up to over the winter, this sort of manifesto, and a set of personal beliefs that I've been working on and helped me refine what the website, and this show is about - without changing much or anything of what I've been doing so far.

Ice Cream for Everyone is a Playful Strategy Consultancy.

Ice Cream is often associated with happy thoughts and memories, perhaps of childhood, simpler times.

Ice Cream is also surprisingly complex chemically, technically an emulsion, a combination of two or more liquids that don’t normally mix together.

Ice Cream exists in a seemingly contradictory and ephemeral state, creating a delicious combination as a result.

Ice cream requires the right ingredients, methodology, and temperature to go from complex chemistry to a simple desert. Similarly, we use creativity, play, and communication to go from complex situations to simple solutions with our clients.

We believe play, communication, and creativity are powerful assets for the development of businesses, brands, and everyone.

We believe dogma, bigotry, and blandness, are a hindrance to the development of businesses, brands, and everyone.

Playful strategy is the application and use of structured play, and sometimes games, to define and solve challenges in a business environment.

Playful strategy provides a recreational oriented state of mind fostering high levels of reasoning, insightful problem solving, and empathy for participants.

We play with elements that don’t seem to normally mix together and combine them into powerful ideas with our clients.

A few of the things mentioned in the episode:

Faris & Rosie Yakob's Genius Steals Consultancy
Willem's Guest edition of the Strands of Genius email newsletter
Sweathead podcast with Mark Pollard
The Strategy Inside Everything with Adam Pierno
Sam Harris introduces the Waking Up Course (10 min audio)
Penguin Talks, The Future of Education with Pr. Yuval Noah Harari and Russell Brand (Youtube)
Russian Doll (Netflix)
Dave Made A Maze
American Gods (Novel & TV Series)

Happy Holidays everyone! It's nearly the end of the year and while it has been a slow one for the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast I'm really happy to finish the year with an awesome guest, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games.

Jamey is an award-winning board game designer, particularly known for quite intricate, strategy oriented games with beautiful pieces and design. He's also known in the industry for the knowledge he shares about design and crowdfunding. He raised $3.2 million on Kickstarter through different projects, and while he moved away from the platform he still writes and thinks about crowdfunding.

I first came across Stonemaier Games with Jamey's first published game: Viticulture, a board game in which players are winemakers in Tuscany. My brother received it as a gift for Christmas last year and I really enjoyed playing it. Earlier this year I got to play Scythe, probably his most popular game. It's pretty crunchy, as in there is a lot going on and a lot to learn. I was a little lost playing the first time but by the end I couldn't wait to play again.

We had an excellent conversation about Christmas and holidays overall, the games we play, how Jamey designs games, how he works and structures his days, thoughts about crowdfunding and more.

If you enjoy the episode, please share it with a friend or post a rating and a review on your podcast app – it makes a huge difference in helping others come across the podcast too.

A few things mentioned in this episode:

Jamey Stegmaier

Stonemaier Games

Scythe

My Little Scythe

Viticulture

St Louis, Missouri

Montpellier

Richmond, Virginia

Euro style board games

Mille Bornes

Labyrinth

Stratego

Monopoly

Scotland Yard

Hero Quest

Chess

Kickstarter

Ben Rosser

Between Two Cities

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Ticket to Ride

Cooperative Games

The Mind

Reef

Azul

Downforce

Scythe Rise of Fenris

Star Wars Roleplaying Game

Time Stories

Microscope

Fiasco

Wingspan

Jeni's Ice Cream

The Three Body Problem

The Malazan Book of the Fallen

Gardens of the Moon

The Gift, Lewis Hyde

Vindication

Via Nebula

A month already since the last episode of the podcast, and a (low) record breaking number, this being only the 4th episode published this season. I recorded this a while back over the summer, so it's a little overdue and at the same time it's right in time for the skiing season. My guest for this episode is Mic McCabe, one of the co-founders of Folsom Skis in Denver, Colorado. As you may know if you follow me on social media, I really got back into skiing pretty seriously two years ago. I hadn't skied since I was a kid and relearned in the French Alps.

Last season I bought an old second pair of skis with the intention of both improving my skiing and trying a few other pairs of skis. Of course I totally geeked out, read tons about it and tried about 12 different pairs of skis from different brands, sometimes 3 in the same day! While in Telluride I found out about custom skis, then found out about Folsom, I talked to them on the phone a few times, finally tried their skis in Breckenridge on Easter weekend 2018, and loved them so much I ordered a pair! I also commissioned an awesome illustrator for the top sheet for those to become my Ice Cream for Everyone skis.

I hadn't talked with a custom product engineer, designer, and manufacturer, I thought it might be a fun conversation for the podcast.

A few of the things mentioned in the episode: * Folsom Skis * Follow Folsom on Instagram and Facebook * Mike McCabe * Colorado * Loveland * CU Boulder * Winter Park * Freestyle skiing * Moguls / bumps * Big Mountain Skiing * Race Skiing * Freeride Skiing * Motocross * Wakeboarding * Engineering * Blue whale > structure that it inspired in building wings? * Evolutionary Biology * Rossignol * Dynastar * Poplar * Bamboo * Maple * Aspen * Vibration dampener * Wagner Custom Skis * K2 * Atomic * Trigger II Shape * DPS Skis * Vail Resorts / Epic Pass * Alterra Mountains / Ikon Pass * ManHunt * How Google Works

In this podcast episode I have a fascinating conversation with Jack Riback, who created and headed the department of Strategic Alliances for Disney Studios. I met Jack quite randomly while listening to jazz at the Green Mill Lounge, in Uptown Chicago, got talking and it seemed he had interesting stories to tell so I invited him for a recording. That said I also have to apologize for the quality of the sound, we had a few technical issues and I ended up calling Jack's phone, which didn't turn out to be as good a sound quality as I'd hoped.

I still think Jack's behind the scenes anecdotes of brokering deals Disney Studios and McDonald's Happy Meals are brilliant, as well as him sharing stories of creative different businesses.

In other news, as I mention at the beginning of the show, I am looking for new contracts and clients at the moment, so if you have questions about your brand and marketing strategy please don't hesitate getting in touch.

A few things mentioned in the episode:

The Green Mill Lounge
University of Illinois
Marketing advertising
DDB
Bernbach
VW
Iconic VW ads / Think Small
Dancing Nixon Box (Howdy doody time)
Urban Cowboy with John Travolta
GAP
Tempo
Time
Newsweek
Named a "Radical Toymaker"
Uber
Facebook
VR
Target
Wallmart
Disney Studios
Department of Strategic Alliances
McDonalds
Happy Meal
History of Fun - Happy Meals / Polygon
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Little Mermaid
Sears
Michael Eisner
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Steven Spielberg

Happy 4th July to everyone in the United States of America! So far I'm celebrating with podcast editing but I'm about to go catch the end of the Cubs game at a friend's patio so I'll be celebrating properly there in Murican fashion with baseball!

I'm very excited about this episode, I had a fun and interesting conversation with my friends Alfie Dennen and Allix Harrison d'Arcy to talk about the board game they designed, currently being funded on Kickstarter, Evil Corp.

Evil Corp is a game in which players incarnate billionaire tech CEOs battling to make money and 'save the world' - whatever the cost. I've been following as they've been working on this for the past 2 years and excited to see their project come to life! The game was funded in 6 only days on Kickstarter and they are going through stretch goals. I believe you have about 9 days to back the Kickstarter!

A few things mentioned in the episode:

About time I get back to publishing after a 6 month long Christmas break from the podcast! This is an experimental update talking about what I've been up to, skiing, talking about board games and game mechanisms, upcoming guests and a few more bits and pieces.

Mentioned in this episode:

Evil Corp Board Game on Kickstarter
Alien Frontiers (board game)
Kingsburg (board game)
The Voyages of Marco Polo (board game)
Chicagoland Games Dice Dojo
GenCon
Folsom Custom Skis
Worker Placement board game mechanism

Happy Holidays everyone!! Perhaps not that much of a seasonal climax, this year we finish the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast sans guests, just a few minutes of yours truly to wish you happy holidays / Christmas / Chanukah (at the time of recording) / Festivus / Kwanza / However you celebrate the end of year - and a happy new year!

That's about it, I've just arrived in the South of France to spend the holidays with family in the Pyrénées Mountains and am looking forward to it! The show will be on hiatus over the holidays and I'll be slowly planning for new episodes in mid to late January 2018.

Thank you for listening, if you like it a 5 star review as a gift won't go unnoticed!!

The podcast is back with a new episode after a brief Thanksgiving hiatus - also slightly due to scheduling breakdowns too. I'm excited, this was a great conversation. Adam Pierno, Chief Strategy Officer at creative agency Santy, reached out to me on Twitter and invited me to be a guest on his podcast, The Strategy Behind Everything, in which we talked about tabletop games. I finally managed to organize my schedule properly to have Adam on my show to talk about his background as a creative in the advertising and marketing industry, how he shifted to work on the strategy side, the book he wrote (Under Think It: A Marketing Strategy Guidebook for Everyone), and his podcast among a few other topics.

I hope you enjoy as much as I did! As I explain in the intro, depending on scheduling opportunities with guests I'm looking at publishing one last episode for 2017 and wrapping up - or it might be just a brief update to wrap up the year and talk about what I'm planning for next year.

Info mentioned in this episode:

Santy
Instil Strategy Training
The Strategy Behind Everything Podcast
Adam Pierno on Twitter
Underthink It - A marketing strategy Guide for Everyone
Delta Airlines
Verizon
Metallica
Disturbing videos on Youtube Kids
Flicker by Theodore Rozak
Reply All Podcast
Mark Pollard on Twitter
Chipotle
Friendly's ice cream
Cold Stone Creamery
Monopoly
Risk
Chess
Checkers
Chinese Checkers

Under Think It: A Marketing Strategy Guidebook for Everyone

I haven't had any guests having worked in both advertising agencies, in marketing as a client, and in fine arts so far. I thought it would be a great perspective to have so I invited my friend Vicky Hoffman to join me for a conversation. It's a little bit shorter than usual, as I'm exploring and experimenting with different lengths for the show, and admit I was running out of time to plan for this episode as well. We talked about Vicky's experience studying metalsmithing and enamels, her career in marketing and advertising, her transition to being a working artist and encaustic painting, and finally her recent studying of wine with the Court of Master Sommeliers.

You can find out more about Vicky Hoffman and her art on her website: vickyhoffman.com Some of the information mentioned in this episode: * UCLA * Picasso * Rodin * Moore * Master of Fine Arts * Metalsmithing * Enamels * Encaustic painting * BBDO (creative agency - Full disclosure: Energy BBDO is my current employer (part of the BBDO Network), mentioned in passing in the episode) * Tracy Locke * KFC 11 Spices & Herbs social media stunt * Target Black Friday wake up calls * The Court of Master Sommeliers * San Luis Obispo Museum of Art

Hi there! Unfortunately I've been running behind original plans for the podcast and don't have a guest today. New guests coming up, in the meantime just an update for a few minutes talking about what is going on right now.

In short:

I have been freelancing at Energy BBDO in Chicago for a few months now, an advertising agency. and officially switched to working there full time. Ice Cream for Everyone will keep going on here on the website, blog, newsletter, podcast pretty much as per usual - and it's my personal online environment, it doesn't reflect the views of my employer, as is traditional to point out.

I will be on fellow strategist Adam Pierno's podcast: The Strategy Behind Everything, talking about tabletop roleplaying games. It was a great conversation! Check out his podcast when you have a chance!

I am scheduling conversations with guests so watch out for a more substantial update in a couple of weeks, thank you for your patience!

For this new episode of the podcast, I had an excellent conversation with fellow gamer and podcaster Meghan Dornbrock. Meghan has a lot of different and fascinating projects going on, including a video game in development, many illustrations, the Modifier podcast (which is also part of the One Shot Gaming Podcast Network). I first learned about Meghan and her podcast via Twitter, liked the different projects I came across on her main website, enjoyed listening to a few episodes of her podcast and reached to organise a recording. Modifier is pretty similar to this podcast, though more specialized in talking with tabletop roleplaying game designers, and if you check the list of episodes you'll see we have several guests in common.

In the episode we talk about Meghan's commitment to accessibility in gaming, herself being visually impaired, how her podcast started, how she got into gaming, what exactly are magical girls, what qualifies this particular genre, and much more. Enjoy!

Some of the information mentioned in the episode:

I had a great conversation with Malachi Rempen: screenwriter, traveler, and creator of the Itchy Feet web comic and travel card game. Malachi recently and successfully crowdfunded the Itchy Feet Travel card game. We covered some good ground talking about storytelling and the importance of having the end in mind, travel stories, marketing, the Kickstarter project he recently finished, cinema influences with the Coen Brothers, writing advice, and much more. Enjoy!

Some of the information mentioned in this episode:

Itchy Feet Comic
Itchy Feet Game
Support Itchy Feet on Patreon
Itchy Feet on Twitter
7 habits of highly successful people
Coen Brothers
Fargo
No Country for Old Men
Hail Cesar!
Stanley Kubrick
Pandemic Legacy
Jamey Stegmaier - Stonemaier Games
Invisible Ink, Brian McDonald
The Talent Code

I hadn't played any video games in a long while and I'm glad I got back into it thanks to Thomas Brush's beautiful Pinstripe game. As I explain in the episode, I came across Pinstripe's Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign last year, really liked what I saw and participated in bringing the game project Thomas had already been working on by himself for several years to fruition. The game was released on Steam a few months ago and I played through it. I really enjoyed the design, style, storytelling, atmosphere, quite tough themes to approach, and the music. I reached out to Thomas and we had a great conversation about what it takes to create this kind of solo indie game project. We talked about Thomas' background in South Carolina, his creative influences, how he started designing games, and much more.

You can find Pinstripe on Steam, and if you have a console take note that it will be released on XBox and Playstation in just a few months. Thomas is now working on his next game: Once Upon a Coma.

Mentioned in this episode:

Pinstripe Kickstarter campaign Thomas Brush Atmos Games Thomas Brush | AtmosGames on Twitter Pinstripe on Steam Time review of Pinstripe Once Upon a Coma Game Hollow Night Game Firewatch Game Greenville, South Carolina PAX West Conference Hurricane Irma Bible Belt Sweet Tea Cream Tea E3 Game Expo Tim Burton Emo Newgrounds.com SXSW Indie Game documentary Steam / Valve Pan's Labyrinth Guillermo Del Toro The Last of Us Bioshock Clash of Clans Candy Crush Monument Valley UsTwo House of Cards Playstation Xbox Think and Grow Rich TED Radio Hour - A Better You episode Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock Unity Game Awards Mark Hamill The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World Settlers of Catan Cards Against Humanity Scoundrels Pirate Game Design with Randy O'Connor

I had the chance of organising a conversation with seasoned brand strategist turned entrepreneur Frank Striefler. Inspired by dating sites matching potential partners, and frustrated by his own experience as a candidate and as a hiring manager in the creative communications and marketing industries, Frank created a job matching site: Siftly.com. I've had Siftly on my radar as it had been growing in popularity over the past few years, and also because it started as a dedicated platform by and for strategists in marketing and communications industries.

In the past few years the job matching site for experts and specialist jobs extended from strategy roles to offer services for other functions such as account management. Soon they will be launching Siftly Now for freelancers in the creative communications industries.

Frank has a wealth of experience both with creative agencies and global brands like Nike, we had a fascinating conversation about his career, what led him to create Siftly, how it works, and some future projects coming up with the new business. I hope you enjoy!

In this episode:

Siftly Job Matching
Frank Striefler
Frank on Twitter
Nike
Wieden+Kennedy
TBWACHIATDAY
Miami Ad Schools
VCU Brandcenter
Urth Caffe in Santa Monica, CA
The difference between ice cream, gelato, and frozen yogurt
Dolcenero Gelato, Santa Monica, CA

Quick August update to keep in touch with you all listeners as I'm preparing for future episodes, scheduling conversations with creators in the weeks to come. So this is just a few minutes long to keep you in the loop and mention a couple of things that caught my attention in the past week or so as I've been catching up on a backlog of email newsletters, as I'm considering a few possible changes to the Ice Cream for Everyone website (about time, it's slow and clunky now), and the Ice Cream Sundae newsletter.

I logged back on the Steam gaming platform to redeem a couple of coupons from new video games I'd supported the development of during Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns like Pinstripe, found out about a recent game by the creator of Monkey Island called Thimbleweed Park, and recommend Nick Quah's Hot Pod email newsletter about podcasting news and trends.

I forgot to mention in the episode that I was also going to attend Genius Steals Faris & Rosie Yakob's WARC webinar about the ABCs [Account, Brand, Comms] of Agency Tools and Processes. This was Part 1 and it was excellent, the presentation will soon be available to download online. Part 2 is coming next month if you'd like to check it out.

Show notes:

Steam (gaming platform)
Pinstripe (video game)
Ron Gilbert (game designer: Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island)
Thimbleweed Park (adventure point and click video game)
Nick Quah
Hot Pod Newsletter (podcasting news and updates)

In this pretty experimental episode of the podcast, my good friend Jean-Paul (JP) Biondi and I attempted a wild and live recording out in Chicago's West Loop. We thought it might be a good idea to test the hype of Au Cheval, a restaurant that according to many reviews has one of the very best burgers in Chicago and even America.

For those who follow the podcast, we heard of JP before in the Chicago Summer Sounds episode, but this time we have a proper conversation, punctuated by background music, and opinions about the food we're eating. We used to work together at Saatchi & Saatchi in Singapore, a large advertising agency, and now he is the Marketing Manager for the Midwest at Lyft, the ride sharing company.

A few questions to ponder in this episode:

Is it worth all the hype?
Is the Au Cheval burger really that good?
Does this sound good at all, and is it a good idea for an amateur podcaster to be recording in bars and restaurants?
Does an audio description of food sound interesting?

A few things mentioned in the episode:

Lone Wolf Tavern
3 Floyds Brewing Company
Lyft
Au Cheval Diner Chicago
Au Cheval on Yelp
"Why People Wait for Hours to Eat Au Cheval's Cheeseburger" (Eater Chicago)
Priestdaddy: A Memoir, Patricia Lockwood
The Wanderers, Meg Howrey
Splendor (board game)
Betrayal at the House on the Hill (board game)
Cards Against Humanity
7th Sea (roleplaying game)

It's my birthday! I haven't managed to organise a new recording with a guest and yet am committed to publishing every other week so I made a birthday episode, in which I basically beg you to rate and review the podcast on iTunes, and talk about the game design idea I submitted for this year's Game Chef design competition. Simply click the iTunes link above to write a review!

That's about it folks, Enjoy the rest of the day and please take time to review the podcast if you enjoy it! It's always great to get a few words of encouragement, feedback, questions, or even constructive criticism.

Mentioned in this episode:

Willem on Twitter
WTF Podcast with Marc Maron
Game Chef 2017

We're back with a new episode of the podcast, I had a fantastic conversation with Allan Cohen, a strategy consultant I had the pleasure of hearing as a keynote speaker at Landmark's recent Conference for Global Transformation in beautiful Monterey, California. I loved the two sessions I had the chance of checking out and thought it would be great to talk about business consulting with Allan and the kind of creativity involved in determining and solving a variety of business challenges of the kind he has experience with. Little did I know our conversation would take us into talking about artificial intelligence, self driving vehicles, and complex adaptive systems.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and if you do please subscribe to the podcast, take the time to write a rating or a review on your favourite podcast app as it helps more people discover and enjoy the show. Alternatively, you can go and tell a friend whatever traditional way you would choose to do so. Thanks!

Mentioned in this episode:

Allan Cohen, Strategy Consultant Landmark Worldwide Conference for Global Transformation Pong (video game) Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov Star Trek Dr Who Business Processes Reengineering Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Learning Algorithms Structure Linear Programming / Object Oriented Self-driving cars Swiftkey Google's AI beats a top player at the game of Go TED: "What a driverless car world could look like" (video) Google's AI "Project Magenta" just created music (video) Turing Test Chatbot / messaging bots Big 4 Accounting / Consulting Groups Amazon to acquire Whole Foods Israel The Mastery Foundation Werner Erhard Northern Ireland Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams Pizza flavored ice cream (in Philadelphia) World of Warcraft Complex adaptive systems Rain of Gold, Victor Villaseñor Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity, John Holland

Better late than never, the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast is finally back!

Thanks to a chance encounter for International Tabletop Day at the Chicago Public Library, I met Randy and got to play test his pirate board game, Scoundrels. It was great fun, so we got talking and I invited him to be on the podcast.

I didn't know at the time that he happens to work from the Cards Against Humanity office and co-working space, so I got a visit and we were able to record in their studio, which was unusually high quality for me. I'm looking forward to having the rest of my recording equipment shipped.

Randy is a video games artist by trade and we had a great conversation about what is recommended to have a successful career in gaming, how Randy got into games, what his inspirations are, and how he started working on his board game.

If you enjoy the episode, please take time to give it a rating and a review on iTunes / iPhone podcast app (or your favourite podcast app), this only takes a few minutes and it really gives more visibility to the podcast so others can find it.

I am getting back in a regular publishing schedule and my goal is to have an episode published every other week, at least twice a month. I am back contacting people to have conversations with and am looking forward to sharing them with you!

Info / links:

Apologies for the long hiatus and lack of updates about the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast! I took a few months off publishing for the show after one recording didn't work the way I wanted and then I've been traveling in the United States for the past few months. Now I'm settling in Chicago it's about time I update you with what's happening.

The other main point to this update is to share the elevator pitch of what the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast is all about. A friend told me the show seemed to lack a main theme or topic, so I thought about it and this is what I came up with:

Ice cream comes in many exciting flavours, and so does creativity. When creating, we use our existing knowledge, experiences, inspiration, intuition and flair to create newly.

I find the process of what and how human beings create endlessly fascinating.

In the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast I have candid conversations with creative professionals to talk about their lives, explore where their ideas, creations and designs come from, what inspires them and how they shape that in the variety of activities and careers they take on.

I might tweak and refine this first version though for now it encapsulates the way I see the show and the reason I publish it pretty well. Naturally the kinds of guests i've had on the show so far and will likely keep having operate and create in areas I'm interested and have on my radar, hence featuring guests in advertising, gaming and design for example.

Thank you for your patience with the show, future updates are coming and of course I'm always happy to have recommendations for guests you think I could be reaching out to and have a recorded conversation with as well.

This week I'm glad to talk my friend Patrick Searle about what is happening in Southeast Asia. Patrick co-founded content marketing network GetCRAFT; they have developed an online marketplace connecting specialist creators such as journalists, writers, videographers, photographers on one end with advertisers, brands and communications agencies on the other.

After spending time working in China, Patrick travelled around Southeast Asia and based himself in Indonesia. Jakarta is increasing becoming known in the industry for having a young and vibrant startup and design scene.

On the strength of their success in Indonesia, GetCRAFT announced a few months ago in late 2016 that they were expanding to new countries in Southeast Asia, starting with The Philippines.

Having known Patrick since when we used to chat during morning coffee meetups of strategic planners and whoever was up for joining. I'd been looking forward to talking to him about his experience of Southeast Asia and transiting from working in quite traditional advertising as a strategic planner to launching GetCRAFT.

A few of the links / info mentioned:

The Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast is finally back after an unexpectedly long and lazy end of year break! I hadn't originally planned not to publish in December but it just... flew by - sorry about that! I'm working to put the podcast back on the right track now for 2017.

Some of the important news in this episode introduction is that I'm moving on from London and moving to the U.S. and that I'll be focusing my energy back on Ice Cream for Everyone as my brand & marketing strategy consultancy, recording and publishing the podcast, writing and looking for clients.

Meanwhile, back to the important bit and the reason why you might read this and listen to the podcast: we have exciting guests on today. I met Kelly in Los Angeles as part of a training course I'm participating in and he turned out to be working for The Go Game, a team-building games company I first came across at SXSW Interactive in Austin, back in 2009. Ian is one of the co-founders of The Go Game, and Kelly joined a little over a year ago as a producer and runs games with them. We had a fantastic conversation, brilliant to hear behind the scenes stories of how The Go Game came to be and some really offbeat anecdotes of the kind of fun mayhem their games can occasionally generate.

Enjoy and don't hesitate contacting The Go Game if you're thinking of organising some kind of company / team-building event!

A few of the links / info mentioned in this episode:

The Go Game
Kelly Rogala, Game Producer and Product Designer
Ian Fraser, Co-Founder
SXSW
Camp Grounded - Digital Detox / Summer Camp for Adults
Outward Bound: Outdoor Education Adventures
Juma Ventures
Ben & Jerry's
Nextel Communications
MechWarrior (video game series)
Wilderness first responder class
Burning Man Festival
ESPN
Improv Everywhere
Jane McGonigal
Bitcoin
Pokemon GO
Risk (game)
Dungeons & Dragons
Escape Room

Happy Thanksgiving! May you have abundance of all great things in life for the year ahead!

We have an exciting guest on the show for this episode: I had the chance of meeting Maurice at the Podcast Movement Conference I attended in Chicago earlier in July this year. Since then I checked his podcast, Revision Path, and really enjoyed it so I asked Maurice if he'd be up for joining me for a conversation.

By the way, I apologise for my mistake in the introduction of the episode, I say Revision Path has been going on since 2014 but it's actually 2013 - the first interview was published on 23rd March 2013, precisely.

Revision Path won several awards, including a "Most Inspiring Design Podcast Award" from Creative Markets and in the show Maurice has conversations with the best Black graphic designers, web designers and web developers from around the world. In his words:

"On each episode, we explore the stories, processes, experiences, insights, and creative inspirations of these awesome creators."

Maurice also has his own strategy and design consultancy, called Lunch. It also just happens that right after recording with Maurice, he was headed over to Facebook's Headquarters to give a talk about Revision Path as well as interview a few people for his show, and I mention this in the intro. You can head over to the Revision Path website to check it out.

Among many inspiring side projects over the years, Maurice launched the Black Weblog Awards, and shared his passion for tea in the Year of Tea podcast last year. Maurice is a pretty awesome person with some great stories as well as a great perspective on design, I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you will too.

A few links mentioned in the show:

Time flies, I say a couple of weeks on the podcast intro recording when it's already been three weeks since my last episode! I've been both busy with the day job heading the strategy team at +rehabstudio and I also left for some holidays last week, horse riding and participating in a course about body language in Arizona, near Tucson - amazing experience!

Now on to this new episode, I had an awesome and fun conversation with Kim Mackenzie, a fellow brand strategist based in New York City and founder of the Ladies Who Strategize Slack group, a collaborative messaging group - well for ladies who strategize, as the name indicates pretty well.

Kim spent several years studying cinema and media in New Zealand so we had some great conversation about her interests in films and TV series, as well as some of the news at the time we recorded, such as the consolidation of all McDonald's marketing and advertising work handed over to the Omnicom group in a recent and lengthy competitive pitch. Previously, the famous fast food restaurant chain's advertising had been managed by agency Leo Burnett for numerous years. I suppose they wished the cut on costs.

I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed it!

A few of the links mentioned:

Kim Mackenzie and follow Kim on Twitter
Ladies who strategize - apply to join the Slack group
Cindy Gallop
David Cronenberg
Woody Allen
Hitchcock
The Brood movie
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Porn Theory Class
Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip
The West Wing
Aaron Sorkin
TED Radio Hour podcast
Morgan Spurlock The Greatest Move Ever Sold
Sheetz
POM Wonderful
The Wine Cellar Auckland
McDonald's Omnicom
Blackwood Seven
Fast Company
NY Times
Phish Food Ben & Jerry's
Superiority Burger
Jeff Goldblum
Jurassic Park
Nintendo and iPhone 7 release
Professor Leyton puzzle game
Ghostbusters movie (reboot)
Punch Drunk Love

We have an exciting new episode to the podcast today! Thanks to Kalum of The Rolistes Podcast who introduced us, I've been able to have a great conversation with Brian Feister, a web designer / programmer and more importantly for the conversation also the designer of Open Legend, an open source roleplaying game system. We had a brilliant conversation about web design and marketing, open source programming, roleplaying game systems and the kickstarter project for Open Legend that is currently live - I recommend you check it out.

I checked again after I recorded the intro and Open Legend RPG has already passed the $25k mark in pledge funds in just over a day, which is fantastic for this exciting project.

I hope you enjoy, if you do please leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast application!

A few of the information mentioned in the episode:

Open Legend RPG
Open Legend RPG Kickstarter project
Open Legend RPG on Twitter
The Rolistes Podcast
Nerdarchy
Dungeons & Dragons
Object oriented design / programming
Open Source movement / coding
Wordpress
Roll 20
Dogfish Head Brewery
Alternity
The Hobbit
Philosophy
Geocities
Timely
Matthew Mercer
Ed Greenwood
Forgotten Realms
John Wick
Amaura's Dawn
RPG Academy
GenCon
Geek & Sundry
Goexp.io

For this new episode of Ice Cream for Everyone, Kalum of The Rolistes, an excellent London based tabletop gaming podcast had asked me to interview him for the one year anniversary of his podcast. We had a fantastic conversation about Jeremy aka Kalum got into roleplaying games, his gaming influences, how he started podcasting, his job and many more interesting stories. Enjoy!

A few of the links mentioned:

The Rolistes Podcast - One Year Anniversary episode
The Rolistes Patreon Page
The Rolistes on Twitter
Mr Sunday & Nick Mason’s The Weekly Planet
Laurent Garnier’s It Is What It Is
Wil Wheaton’s Radio Free Burrito
Nephilim RPG
In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas RPG
Neil Gaiman
Good Omens
Sandman

Hi everyone! This has been silent for a little bit too long, sorry for the delay! I'm getting back on track and to finally kick off the second season of the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast I've prepared a little summer report. I tested my Zoom H5 digital recorder while in Chicago in July and I've (badly) edited a few bits and pieces - the best of what I could salvage out of amateurish and pretty bad recordings.

I'm also summing up the upcoming episodes. One of the reasons I'm late with the podcast is that I've started a new full time role and I've been getting into the swing of the new job and meanwhile had a bit less time for the podcast unfortunately. I still recorded in September and have some exciting episodes coming up in the next few weeks.

Apologies for some of the sound quality for outdoor recordings, I'm still learning.

A few links to information mentioned:

My new employer: +rehabstudio
Landmark Worldwide
Partnership Explorations
The Order of Things, Michel Foucault
Six Flags Great America
Tour de Fat
New Belgium Brewery
Guys We F****d, The Anti Slut Shaming Podcast
Dan Savage Lovecast
You Made if Weird
Las Vegas Insider
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The Rolistes Podcast
Revision Path Podcast
Maurice Cherry
Kim Mackenzie
Brian Feister, Open Legend RPG

I've prepared a demo clip of several snippets of the first season of the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast, this is perfect if you want to get a sense of the podcast without spending too much time on it.

Edited snippets are from the following published episodes:

John Wick: Award Winning Game Designer & Author (7th Sea, L5R) “The Best Ever Made”

Heidi Hackemer, Brand Strategist and Founder of Wolf & Wilhelmine

James Wallis, ‘Godfather of Tabletop Indie Game Design’

Philippa White, Founder of The International Exchange, leveraging the power of communications to solve some of the world’s biggest problems

Cindy Gallop, Make Love Not Porn Founder, Michael Bay of Business & Brand Building Professional

Enjoy!

As I've mentioned in the past couple of weeks I'm wrapping up the first official season of the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast! To complete the season I thought it would be great to circle back with my good friends Adam Cohen, Lauren Giblin and James d'Souza some of you may remember I recorded the very first episode with.

We talked about the progress of the show over the past of the 30 episodes I recorded without them, update what they've been up to over the past 10 months or so since the last recording, how their podcast listening habits changed and everything about the Ice Cream for Everyone podcast. We talked about the choice of intro music, my intros, comments and feedback about the way I ask questions in interviews, the kind of guests I have on the show, the direction for the future of the show and of course we finished with a few ice cream related questions.

The episode is long enough as it is so I haven't added any intro / outro bits though of course and as usual please share the episode with friends if you've enjoyed it or even better please give the show a rating and a review on iTunes (or via your iPhone podcast app)!

I mention The Podcast Movement conference during the episode and I am attending! In fact, I'm writing this post with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan in Chicago where the conference takes place next week. I'm really looking forward to it! While I take a summer break and figure out the next season I'll be publishing shorter in between season sessions with a few thoughts of what's going on so stay tuned.

Info / links mentioned:

The New Case for Gold

Special collaboration guests on the podcast this week, I'm joined by my French friends of the tabletop roleplaying game podcast Les Voix d'Altaride: Julien, Sandra & Xavier (more of the Voices of Altaride couldn't join us this time unfortunately: Benoît, Morgan, Kalysto).

We learn more about the Voix d'Altaride podcast that I also contribute to on a regular basis, we talk about how we all got into tabletop roleplaying games, whether there is a tabletop roleplaying game "French Touch", the differences between "fluff" and "system" in tabletop RPGs and talk through several examples of French tabletop roleplaying games our English speaking listeners might not know about. Thanks to all of them for participating in English!

As usual, pretty much everything is accessible for people interested in learning more about tabletop RPGs as well as seasoned veterans. Enjoy!

As a side note, and this is mentioned in the intro, we're soon getting to the official end of the first season of the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast. We'll have some kind of different or reduced activity over the summer. I'm also putting a call out to anyone who listens to the podcast on a regular basis and would be up for participating in a recording of the 2nd season of the podcast, please give me a shout!

Information mentions during the podcast:

As I think I've quickly mentioned in the previous episode, we are soon arriving to the end of the official first season of the Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast, I'll be wrapping up a the end this month and I'm figuring out what I'll be doing exactly over the summer, maybe a few shorter episodes and summer specials, we'll see. I've just recorded the season finale which was brilliant, I'll keep that one under wraps for a couple more weeks.

We have an exceptional guest today, Mitch Joel is pretty much as the top of any best marketing podcast lists you can find, his podcast, 6 Pixels of Separation, has been going on for over 500 episodes and 10 years. Mitch previously worked in the music industry in Canada before joining a digital marketing agency as a co-founder called Twist Image. The agency was acquired by Mirum, in turn owned by global advertising communications agency J. Walter Thompson and a part of the WPP Group, the largest communication and media holding group in the world. Mitch regularly comments about the industry in his blog, his podcast and during events or conferences.

We had a brilliant conversation about trends in the digital and communications industry, his career in music, Groove - another podcast he hosts in which he has conversations with the best bass guitar players in the world, and much more. Enjoy!

Information mentioned in the episode:

Follow Mitch Joel on Twitter
6 Pixels of Separation Podcast & Blog
Books by Mitch Joel: 6 Pixels of Separation & CTRL ALT DeleteMirum new business win Unicef
Mirum, a global digital agency
Mirum wins UNICEF pitch
J. Walter Thompson Worldwide / WPP Group
Groove: The No Treble Podcast
Almost Famous (film)
Bands and artists: Tommy Lee, Motley Crue, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Blind Melon, Nirvana
Games: Atari 800, Pong, Chess, Checkers, Connect 4, Love Letter
Logitech handheld scanner
Tech / startups mentioned: Siri, Amazon Echo, Snapchat, Uber, Tinder, Programmatic advertising, Shopify
Seth Godin
Lidia Yuknavitch, The Beauty of Being a Misfit (TED Talk)
Susan Cain, The Power of Introverts (TED Talk)
Baycrest
Bilboquet Ice Cream, Montreal
Mitch's talk at Hubspot Inbound Conference 2015
Content Marketing World 2016

We go back to the realms of tabletop roleplaying games with two special guests in this episode: my good friend Julien of the French speaking podcast I regularly contribute to, Les Voix d’Altaride and Greg Stolze.

Greg is a game designer, writer and novelist - particularly known for his work on tabletop roleplaying games. I was looking forward to this conversation given he co-designed one of my favourite games: Unknown Armies. They recently went through a crowdfunding campaign for the 3rd edition of the game and raised over $250 thousand dollars to bring the project to life and I’m very much looking forward to it (if you're late to the party it's still possible to participate in the campaign to order the game in advance via Backerkit). I played a campaign of Unknown Armies 2nd edition with a group of friends in the South of France last year that was great fun.

We had a brilliant conversation and I’m glad to touched on themes that hadn’t been on the podcast so far, discussing different types of horror games, ethical and moral dilemmas and why it’s fun and/or interesting to include those in games. We also talk about ways to approach game rules and systems according to a setting. As usual, everything is very approachable and – at least I think – interesting for both people into roleplaying games and people who don’t know too much about it, so don’t feel left out if you’re not much of a tabletop player.

I should note, there are a few face off and distortions in speech towards the end – it’s all right, during our call I thought it was a actually worse than it is, and it’s really mostly in the last few minutes, I managed to get most of the conversation OK.

Links / info mentioned in the episode:

I had the privilege of talking with Jim for the podcast and it was a blast. I discovered Gallup's Strengthsfinder back in 2006 on a friend's recommendation and thought the test was very useful. As I mention during the episode, it's something that helped shape and build my CV as I transitioning to work in marketing & brand strategy.

More recently, thanks to my friend Adam's recommendation I found out about the Gallup Strengths Webcast series Called to Coach and Theme Thursdays hosted by Jim from the Gallup Campus in Omaha, Nebraska. I enjoy listening to both regularly and reached out to Jim to find out if he'd be up for participating in a recording.

For those who don't really know, Gallup is an international research, performance and management consulting company. It was founded by George Gallup in 1935. Advertising legend David Ogilvy joined the company in 1938 and worked there for 10 years before opening his own advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world still to this day (Also where James Whatley works, recently featured on the podcast). Gallup were particularly known for their opinion polls in the US, and then the company was acquired by Positive Psychologist Don Clifton's company SRI in 1984.

Jim has also been interested in new technology gadgets for a long time, in particular home automation gadgets and home networks. He started a podcast network called The Average Guy, that now features several shows including their flagship Home Gadget Geeks, Cyber Frontiers, Home Tech Tips, Tech Reviews, and Ask The Podcast Coach.

We cover a lot of ground in the show including Jim's time in the U.S. Army, his skiing in Europe, growing up in the Silicon Valley, Gallup Strengths, The Omaha College Baseball World Series, home gadgets and more. Enjoy!

If you've enjoyed the episode, it would be great if you share it with friends, or even better post a review on iTunes /iPhone's podcast app!

Info mentioned in the episode:

Jim Collison on Twitter: Personal | Gallup
Gallup International
Gallup Strengthsfinder (Find out more about Gallup Strengths and take the assessment)
Gallup Coaching Resources
Gallup StrengthsFinder Technical Report (pdf)
Gallup Called to Coach Webcast: Youtube | iTunes | Stitcher
Gallup Theme Thursday Webcast: Youtube | iTunes | Stitcher
The Average Guy Network
Home Gadget Geeks
Cyber Frontiers
Home Tech Tips
Tech Reviews & How Tos
Ask The Podcast Coach
IBM
Apple (Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak)
San Jose Mercury News
HP 8088
Apple EE
3.5 floppy disc
Cadence International
CRM - Customer Relationship Management
The IT Crowd (TV Series)
Data Warehouse
Big Data
ROI - Return on Investment
Warren Buffett
Positive Psychology
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Power of 2 (book)
Omaha College Baseball World Series
Zesto's Ice Cream, Omaha, Nebraska
Command & Conquer (real time strategy game)
Missile Command (arcade game)
Anonabox VPN device
Shelfie
Amazon Echo
AI - Artificial Intelligence
Home Automation
Gartner Hype Cycle

Amazon Echo - Black (1st Generation)

Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life

Already another episode of the podcast! This week we go back to gaming with my first ever live audience recording at the GameCamp Unconference that took place last weekend in London at the South Bank University.

I was lucky to have some excellent guests join, such as Ed Fortune who writes for Starburst Magazine, Dave who used to teach video game design and development in Beijing and now started his own independent games studio, George who studies in the Games Culture department of the university and many more. We were 14 by the end of the episode which is pretty good also considering I recorded at 11am shortly after the beginning of the event given there wasn't much going on at that point.

We had a fun conversation about geek culture, tabletop roleplaying games, live action role playing games, indie video games, Candy Crush and the ads that get stuck in our heads. I hope you enjoy the conversation, please share it with with you friends on social media if you enjoy listening!

Links and information mentioned:

A couple of months ago I attended a fascinating talk from Kwame Ferreira at London's Creative Mornings event, you can find the video of the talk via the link. I introduced myself following his talk and Kwame was kind enough to spare some time to meet with me and have a conversation for the podcast.

Kwame heads a global innovation design & engineering agency and incubator fund, particularly known for developing socially conscious innovation. They solve design and technology problems both large coporations, and also use their time and imagination to solve problems for communities throughout the world where they occasionally send team members in areas problems might need solving, like countries in Africa. As an example and something they are known for, they are helping Dutch company Fairphone design and build the operating system of their new smartphone.

While it is possible to find a couple of talks from Kwame online, he doesn't tend to be very public and so I felt privileged that he gave his time for this excellent conversation about the future, design and technology. I hope you enjoy it!

Some of the information mentioned:

Special occasion as I'm writing this on my father's 70th birthday! I'm on holidays in the South of France, running around to post this episode of the podcast slightly in advance compared to the Wednesday publishing day because there's a high chance tomorrow would be too difficult to publish online after celebrations planned tonight - and that's of course due to the fact the house I'm staying at doesn't have an internet connection, rather than any consequences of a potentially inebriated evening.

For those who follow I also skipped the online release of the previous week's Ice Cream Sundae newsletter, I'll publish it in a few days instead. For those who wish to be up to date, the best way is to subscribe to the list and get it directly in your inbox!

Great episode today! I had a fantastic catch up with my friend James Whatley aka Whatleydude a few weeks ago, w.e had a fun conversation and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed having the conversation. James is the Digital Director for Ogilvy & Mather in London, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. He also co-hosts a weekly audio podcast called The Voicemail with Stefan Constantinescu, where the latest mobile technology news, and write an excellent weekly newsletter called "5 Things on Friday". We talk about those and a lot of his other projects and activities in the episode including some travels, arts, comic books, gaming, advertising, digital marketing and more.

Some links to information mentioned in the episode:

May the 4th be with you!

This week on the podcast I had a fascinating conversation with Heidi Hackemer about everything from the courageous stories of her grandmother during and after the Second World War, to her travels around the United States with a pickup truck or a motocycle, to her career in branding and advertising and her founding of her current brand strategy consultancy, Wolf & Wilhelmine.

As I explain in the beginning, I'm trying something slightly different in this episode, I suspected I was over-preparing for a few of the previous interviews I published, in that it was taking me hours and I was also making a lot of assumptions based on the information I'd found rather than ask questions and let the interviewee speak. This time I chose to limit myself to an hour of preparation and see where the conversation went. I don't know if it's a direct consequence or if I'm making this up, though it seemed while editing that I'm making more "Ah" and "Hum" sounds than usual... In any case it was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy listening to it.

As Heidi mentions, she will be speaking at the FutureFlash conference near Toronto, Canada, in a few weeks on the 18th and 19th May 2016. The event website says it's sold out though of course if you're already going then watch out for Heidi's talk!

A few links to the information mentioned in the episode:

Follow Heidi on Twitter / Instagram / Medium.com
Wolf & Wilhelmine
Heather LeFevre Twitter / Podcast interview
Brain Surfing
Faris & Rosie Yakob / Genius steals
Joshua Tree National Park
Grand Canyon
Death Valley
Yellowstone
Hugh Garry interview (cycled across Death Valley)
Battle of Stalingrad
Ellis Island
Yoga
9/11
Pigeon racing
Ernest Hemingway
The Blues Brothers
Amadeus
Music: U2, The Police, Queen
We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider
FCB (advertising agency)
Copywriter / Art Director
BBH
The BBH Barn - internship programme
Dating Brian
School of Communications Arts 2.0
6 items or less
Field of Dreams
Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck
Valerie Nguyen
Google Innovation Lab
Red Bull / Felix Baumgartner Supersonic Fall
Jason Harris, CEO @ Mekanism
The United State of Women Summit
Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond
Ica & Contagious FutureFlash 2016
Beyonce's lastest album Lemonage and new clothing line
Get Rich or Die Vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame

Brain Surfing: The Top Marketing Strategy Minds in the World

This week on the podcast I had a fantastic opportunity to meet with some of the team from FailBetter Games based in Greenwich, London. Alexis Kennedy co-founded the studio, and Cash DeCuir joined the team as a writer a little over a year ago.

They are best known for their Subterranean Victorian Gothic narrative online game Fallen London, that was just launched on mobile as an iPhone iOS application. As of now, you can check out Fallen London in the App Store and there's a good deal of chance it's right there featured in the best games at the moment. Of course, you can also play the game directly as I used to when it was first released in late 2009 via the Fallen London website.

I found out about the game years ago and immediately loved the beautiful writing and mysterious world to explore, as I prepared my initial lists of people I'd like to talk for the podcast, FailBetter Games were right there from the beginning.

We talk about their gaming and design inspiration including tabletop roleplaying games and video games, what Fallen London is all about, Sunless Sea (another game available in the same universe) and much more during the episode.

Slight warning with regards to language, there is a tiny bit of explicit language so maybe watch out if kids are around.

Information / links mentioned during the episode:

FailBetter Games & on Twitter
Fallen London
Fallen London on iPhone / iOS
Register interest for an Android mobile version of Fallen London
Follow Alexis Kennedy on Twitter
Follow Cash DeCuir on Twitter
Sunless Sea on STEAM
Open Brethren, or Christian Brethren
Fighting Fantasy / Choose your own adventure books
Ars Magica RPG
Fate Game System
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Mario Kart 64
Super Smash Bros.
Bioware Games Studio
Dragon Age: Inquisition
PopCap Games
Follow Lottie Bevan on Twitter
Mindjammer RPG
Scrivener (writing application)
Twine (writing application)
Greenwich Mean Time
Cutty Sark
Greenwich Maritime Museum
Follow Hannah Flynn on Twitter
Stella Artois advertising "Be Legacy"
Spotify
Extra Credits Gaming Channel about Sunless Sea
Felicia Day on Twitter

We have a very exciting episode of the Ice Cream for Everyone podcast today! I had heard about Cindy Gallop a little while back and contacted her a few months ago to ask if she'd be up for participating in a conversation with me. A few months later and we managed to coordinate schedules to organise this.

For those who don't know her, Cindy famously describes herself as the Michael Bay of business; she likes to blow shit up. She has over 30 years experience in brand building and creative communications experience, much of it with BBH, arguably one of the best advertising agencies in the world.

She was voted New York Advertising Woman of the Year in 2003, and in 2009 did a TED talk for the launch of her new business, Make Love Not Porn. We talk about it in detail during the show, and I encourage you to check out the TED talk, it's only a few minutes long.

Cindy regularly talks about the state of the creative communications industry at different events and conferences and is an advocate for diversity in business. We had a fantastic chat, and I hope you enjoy too!

If ever you're near Sydney, Australia she will be the opening keynote speaker at Mumbrella 360 Australia on the 7th June, and will also be speaking at a User Experience in San Francisco in August.

I should warn the episode has a little bit of explicit language and of course talks about sex, in case that might offend you. I apologise for the line dropping at a couple of points in the episode, I've been having trouble with my Internet Service Provider, I'm in the process of changing it to avoid this in the future.

Some of the information mentioned in this episode:

Follow Cindy Gallop on Twitter
Contact Cindy via email: cindy@makelovenotporn.com
Make Love Not Porn
Make Love Not Porn TV
Penang and Singapore Laksa
Tampopo (Film)
3% Conference
2015 3% Conference keynote
Cannes Glass Lions
Sheryl Sandberg
Hakuhodo Agency
Oxford University
Everyman Theatre Liverpool
2003 New York Advertising Woman of the Year
The Drum: Cindy Gallop on redesigning the Business of Advertising (full talk)
Cindy's 2009 TED Talk
Cindy interviewed in The Black Apartment for StyleLikeU.com
Crowdfunding, Venture Capital & Angel Investing
Kickstarter
Cindy on Porn, Youth and Brands
PR Week: The Future of Sex is Social, Unvarnished and Human, Cindy Gallop
Little Black Book: Why Advertising Needs to Get Over its Sex Issue
Anjali Ramachandran on the ICfE Podcast
Ada's List
Angel Academe
Cannabis, Bitcoin, Fintech & #SexTech
How People Are Making Virtual Reality Porn (Kotaku)
How Pegging Can Change the World
Lila Sutra
Collaborative Competition
If We Ran The World
Shared Value + Shared actions = Shared profits
Harvard Business School case study
The Black Apartment, Notorious B.I.G. music video
Speaking at public event in Sydney Australia Mumbrella 360 event - opening keynote June 7-9th
Speaking UX week in SF in August 2016
Ben & Jerry's: Cinnamon Roll, Frozen Greek Yogurt and Core ice cream flavours
Häagen Dazs Rum & Raisin ice cream
BBH Häagen Dazs advertising campaign, 1992

I had learned about the murder mystery treasure hunt events organised by A Door in a Wall since before leaving London in 2011 and stayed signed on to their email newsletter so even while living in Asia I vaguely followed the events going on and am still looking forward to participating to one of them.

The live gaming events have been attracting a loyal following of participants, enough for Tom Williams to make this a full time activity and recently the first regular monthly event, called A Veiled Threat.

I met with Tom in London and we had a great conversation about his background and inspiration for the game events he creates for A Door in a Wall. We also talk about arts, Warhammer miniature games, Escape rooms and more. There are a few odd noises in this recording, sorry about that. I hope you still enjoy!

Some of the information mentioned in the episode:

The School of Communication Arts 2.0
A Door in a Wall
Follow Tom Williams on Twitter
Andy Warhol
Screen Printing
Warhammer 40k miniatures
Epic Miniatures (Warhammer 40k universe)
Game Theory
Freakonomics
Tim Harford
Shunt
Punch Drunk (immersive theatre)
Sleep No More (Punch Drunk Production, New York)
Escape Room
London's Best Escape Rooms (Time Out)
Crystal Maze (British Game Show)
Time Run London
The Red Church Brewery
Hammerton Brewery
The Rake
Maltby Street Market
The Kernel Brewery
Innocent Smoothies (Apple Mac spoof advert)
Ikea BookBook
Marmite: Love it or Hate it

I'd caught up with Anjali at The Story conference back in February and asked if she'd be up for participating in a recording. We managed to find some time a couple of weeks ago and it was excellent to have a conversation about everything she's up to these days.

Anjali is the Head of Innovation for phd, a global media agency. She also co-founded Ada's List, an online community of women in tech and business in the UK, now expanding to the US as well. Anjali regularly writes in industry publications and speaks at a variety of events and conferences. As this is published and in case you're going too, she will be speaking at the Internet Age Media Weekend in Barcelona from the 7th to the 10th April 2016. She also writes a weekly newsletter and curates a website featuring innovation, startups and new technologies from places away from Western countries focus, called Other Valleys.

We had a fun and fascinating conversation about Anjali's international upbringing, her interest in TV shows, her sociology studies, her role with phd, Ada's List and much more. Enjoy!

Some of the Information mentioned in the episode:

Important note: It seems conventional on other podcasts I listen, to mention explicit language - in case your kids are around while you listen or something. There are a few F-words in this episode. I apologise I forgot to mention it in the intro to the episode.

This week on the podcast we geek out about tabletop roleplaying games (and a bunch of other stuff - don't feel left out if you don't play tabletop roleplaying games) with an awesome guest: Luke Crane. Luke had won multiple Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Games in 2006 for his first system Burning Wheel and again in 2008 for MouseGuard. He also designed several other games such as Burning Empires, FreeMarket (with Jared Sorensen) and recently Torchbearer. Luke regularly talks about game design as a variety of events and conventions. Last but certainly not least, Luke is also the Head of Games for Kickstarter, the online crowdfunding website. He gets to support thriving game designers bring their projects to life thanks to the support of fans on the popular crowdfunding platform.

We had a fantastic conversation about the design voices in Luke's head, his lunar origins, authors intentions in game design, his latin studies, the Burning Wheel RPG system, his favourite games and movies, how games and tabletop games in particular are seeing a renaissance thanks to crowdfunding and more.

Enjoy!

Some of the Information mentioned in the episode:

Luke Crane's Games on the Burning Wheel website
Burning Wheel RPG Wikipedia Page
Follow Luke on Twitter
Kickstarter
Burning Empires RPG
Torchbearer RPG
MouseGuard comics
MouseGuard RPG
MouseGuard: Swords & Strongholds, Board Game
The Mystery of Moon Dust, The New Yorker
Spotlight, 2015 film
The Gallic Wars, Julius Cesar
NES Pro Wrestling
Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set (D&D)
Marvel Superheroes RPG
Paranoia RPG & Greg Costikyan
First Blood (Rambo)
McCabe & Mrs Miller, Robert Altman
Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo
Deadwood (TV series)
Ursula K. LeGuin
Shadowrun RPG
Torchbearer RPG
John Wick interview & 7th Sea 2nd Edition Kickstarter
Exalted RPG on Kickstarter
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman
Podcast interview with Luke Crane on Narrative Control about game design
Podcast interview with Luke Crane on Designers & Discourses show, about MouseGuard particularly
Luke Crane at RopeCon 2014: RPGs Are Awesome (video)
Chamber LARP (Live action roleplay)
Ample Hills Creamery, New York
Black Liquorice Ice Cream (recipe)
2016 SuperBowl commercials
Apple "1984" advert
Apple Jony Ive's interview on the Charlie Rose Show
PAX East, April 2016

I am playing around with the Ice Cream publishing day of the week at the moment, here trying Thursday out for size instead of Friday, if you have any comments please keep in touch.

This week on the podcast, I caught up with Richard Huntington in London. For the planners reading this, Richard is pretty well known for his writing and comments about the advertising & marketing industry, whether you agree with him or not it would be tough denying he's a very smart person - even though he denies it most of the time.

I'd caught up with Richard at the European Planning Conference in Prague a few months ago and asked if he'd be up for having a chat for the podcast, which he graciously accepted. He probably had no idea I'd mine the internet for possibly ancient and best forgotten information about his student years. We had a fantastic conversation about how he got into advertising and marketing, how important writing is for aspiring and current strategic planners, as well as commenting about tabletop board games, ad blockers and content marketing.

It was a brilliant and fun conversation, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Information mentioned in the episode:

- Follow Richard on Twitter or his blog & website, Adliterate
- Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency
- David Cameron's dead pig initiation dinner
- Dartington, Devon, UK
- Department of Geography, Cambridge University
- Richard's presentation "Interesting vs Right" at the European Planning Conference 2015, Prague
- James Dyson, Industrial Designer
- Proximity London
- Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO advertising agency
- Mark Cridge on Twitter (founded Glue, now Isobar)
- Russell Davies, writer & strategist
- George Orwell about writing
- Eddie Izzard, his latest London show and recent 27 marathons in 27 days for Sport Relief
    * as an extra side note, I can personally say Eddie Izzard is possibly one of the best things / people I've discovered about British anything after moving to the UK in 2004. He's amazing. Full stop. Watch his stand-up comedy. All of it. And thanks to my good friend Adam who introduced me to Eddie Izzard in the first place.
- Malcom Gladwell's articles for The New Yorker
- HSBC
- Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian
- Simon Sinek, Start with Why
- The Anatomy of Humbug, Paul Feldwick
- Banh Mí, Vietnamese sandwich (as an ice cream)
- KOJAWAN - 21 st Century Izakaya
- Board Games
    * Settlers of Catan
    * Monopoly
    * Pandemic
    * Zombicide
    * Escape: The Curse of the Temple

Thanks to Heather's introduction following a previous episode of the show, I've had a brilliant conversation with Rachel Thompson. Before falling into advertising and marketing Rachel was studying cultural anthropology and made Live Action RolePlaying games in the UK the main focus of her Masters. We had a great talking about her knitting, interest in science-fiction, comments about the recent trends in virtual reality headsets, loyalty for brand (or lack thereof), live action roleplaying and much more. I hope you enjoy!

If you like it, please write a review on iTunes, or share the link to this episode to a friend.

Some of the information mentioned in this episode:

Follow Rachel on Twitter, or her website
Pepsi knitting
The Barbarian Group
Green-Wood Cemetary
Neil Gaiman
- Neil Gaiman, commencement speech, University of the Arts, 2012
- American Gods
- American Gods TV series
Utrecht University: "When Seeing is Believing: The Construction of a Secondary World in Live Action Role Play"
Defiance (TV series)
Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Interview with Heather LeFevre, Heather on Twitter
How Scandinavian player "killed" Live Action Roleplay to save it
The 1985 Panic over Dungeons & Dragons
Vin Diesel playing Dungeons & Dragons - The Witch Hunter / Geek & Sundry
HTC Vive Virtual Reality demo
Catatonic: A wheelchair horror VR experience
Kill zombies in East London
This American Life
Reply All
Serial
Pepsi Pass application
How Brands Grow, Byron Sharpe
How the Mad Men lost the plot
Interview with Philippa White, The International Exchange

We have an exciting show this week, a great conversation about gaming and diversity with Tanya DePass. I found out about Tanya and #INeedDiverseGames thanks to an article I read on Offworld. I'm conscious that the majority of my guests so far are a bunch of white guys, I'm interested in talking to a diverse set of interesting people from around the world so I thought it would be great to find out more about the "I Need Diverse Games" community with Tanya.

We have a lovely conversation about Tanya's background as a gamer, both video games and tabletop, her time spent in Japan for studies, her background in computer science and human computer interaction, how #INeedDiverseGames started as an angry tweet from Tanya and grew into a full time activity, her activities as a diversity liaison with conventions like GaymerX and more.

Tanya also co-hosts a gaming audio podcast, Fresh Out of Tokens (iTunes / Stitcher), that I also highly recommend you go check out, there are some great conversations about gaming and with game designers. I've listened to a couple of episodes so far and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Some of the information mentioned in this episode:

Follow Tanya DePass on Twitter or her personal website
Support Tanya on Patreon
I Need Diverse Games on Twitter, Tumblr, Twitch.TV and Facebook
Contact #I Need Diverse Games via email
Support #INeedDiverseGames on Patreon
Fresh Out of Tokens podcast (iTunes / Stitcher)
"In fantasy worlds, Historical Accuracy is a lie" about representation in Dragon Age by Tanya DePass
Tanya interviewed on Gadgette
Tanya on the Unconsoleable Podcast
Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG
Classic games
- Cruis'n USA
- Contra
- Excite Bike
- Street Fighter
ColecoVision
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
Bioware Dragon Age (video game series)
Mass Effect (video game series)
Civilization (video game series)
XCOM (video game series)
Secret of Mana
Les Voix d'Altaride
Dance Dance Revolution
Roll20 Virtual tabletop gaming tools
Big Eyes, Small Mouth RPG
Anima RPG
Underground RPG
Cards Against Humanity
Settlers of Catan
Deus Ex Human Revolution
Dujanah on Kickstarter
Aurion: Legend of the Kori Odan on Kickstarter
SFCO (Formerly Geek Bar Chicago)
Paizo Publishing
Chicago Nerd Social Club
The Big Bang Theory (sitcom)
IndieCade
GaymerX
Breyers Ice Cream
Cold Stone Creamery
Cheerios TV commercial
Mafia III
Uncharted (video game series)
Tom Clancy's The Division

This week on the podcast, Philippa tells us about The International Exchange. After a successful career working with some of the best advertising agencies including Leo Burnett and BBH, Philippa created TIE in order to leverage the skills of professionals in the communications and marketing industry and put them to use for the benefit of non-profit organisations, often based in developing countries, and help them make a difference in the world.

We had a great conversation talking about Philippa's background in South Africa and Canada, her studies in Bangkok and working in London. She now lives in the Northeast of Brazil, in Olinda, near Recife, and runs TIE from there.

Now her clients include some of the largest advertising agencies in the world including Network WPP, Wieden+Kennedy, Leo Burnett, BBH, and more. TIE also works with non-profit organisations in Brazil, Ghana, Malawi, India and more across causes as diverse as providing houses with fuel efficient stoves to taking care of re-inserting street children into society.

If ever you're listening to this and wish to get involved with TIE, first check out their Facebook Page, second follow them on Instagram, Twitter and lastly, if your agency isn't working with them yet then I guess send your powers at be a link to this interview so they can hear more about it!

Some of the information mentioned:

The International Exchange
Follow Philippa White on Twitter
Follow TIE on Facebook
Truth, Lies and Advertising, Jon Steel
Perfect Pitch, Jon Steel
Leo Burnett
BBH Agency
Wieden+Kennedy
Johnny Clegg
Manitoba Writers' Guild
Creative Company, Andy Law
P&G Always "Like a girl"
Honda "Hands"
Johnny Walker "The Man Who Walked Around The World"

In this episode of the podcast, I've had a in-depth conversation with Matthew Dawkins, better known in the roleplaying game community for his Youtube video channel: The Gentleman's Guide to Gaming.

While he recently stopped publishing regular videos on Youtube, he is now spending more time writing pieces for roleplaying books in the Chronicles of Darkness series with Onyx Path publishing. If you haven't heard of him (and are interested in tabletop roleplaying games) I recommend checking the channel out.

We go over much in the conversation, including how Matthew got into tabletop roleplaying games, how he started his video channel, his appreciationg for White Wolf's World of Darkness and the game Vampire the Masquerade and the fascinating "Vampire the Masquerade: Youtube Experiment" which I've also played, albeit not for long.

I hope you enjoy listening, if you do please share it with a friend or leave a review on iTunes, thanks!

Information mentioned in the episode:

The Gentleman Guide's to Gaming Youtube Channel
The Gentleman Gamer on Facebook and Twitter
JLA Watchtower on LiveJournal
Onomatopoeia, DC Comics Villain
Salisbury, UK
Stonehenge
Fighting Fantasy
Baldur's Gate
Min Max (roleplaying games)
Non-Player Character (NPC)
Forgotten Realms novels and setting
Dungeons & Dragons
Hercules & Xena RPG
Gamemaster (GM) / Dungeon Master (DM)
Beholder (Dungeons & Dragons monster)
Magic of Faerûn
Temple Hill (Forgotten Realms novel)
Tetsubo57 RPG Youtube channel
SLA Industries RPG
The Spoony experiment
Changeling: The Lost
in media res
The Gentleman Gamer interviews Eddy Webb, creator of Pugmire RPG
The Gentleman Gamer interviews Mark Rein-Hagen (creator of Ars Magica, Vampire the Masquerade & more)
Vampire the Masquerade
Democracy board game
White Wolf publishing
Ed Greenwood
Sandy Petersen / Cthulhu Wars board game
Geek & Sundry
Gentleman Gamer Vampire the Masquerade Clan videos (and Vampire the Requiem clans)
Godlike RPG
Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles
Twilight
Underworld film series
Call of Cthulhu RPG
Kindred the embraced tv series
CCP Games
Eve Online MMORPG
Paradoxe Interactive
Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition
Mummy the curse
Pathfinder RPG
Vampire the Masquerade Youtube Experiment (Facebook) and the main website
the VtMYTE: The taste of blood in one's mouth (the scene Matthew and I played in together)
Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary
Changeling: The Dreaming 20th Anniversary
The Gentleman Gamer interviews Richard Dansky, developer of Wraith: The Oblivion 2nd edition
Beast: The Primordial
GenCon
Wizards of the Coast
Paizo Publishing
Pinnacle Publishing
Chaosium
Pelgrane Press
Wil Wheaton
TitansgraveRPG

I'm not usually superstitious but this week's episode of the podcast could give me new insight into being triskaidekaphobic. It's only as I finished editing the episode I realised it's the thirteenth!

I was really excited to meet the team at Sensible Object for this episode, the recent studio behind a new type of game blending physical and digital elements called Fabulous Beasts. I've been following what happening with it and as you might imagine I'm pretty interested in new types of games.

Beasts of Balance (previously named Fabulous Beasts) is in the last few days of a crowdfunding project and I encourage you to go check out the game and participate in the Kickstarter to support them.

I visited their studio at Somerset House in central London and had a lovely chat with their lead designer Tim Burrell-Saward. A few days later when I started working on the sound editing for this episode, I realised like 80% or more of the episode had almost constant background clicking sounds that I find really annoying. I've spent hours on trying to remove them, reading and watching tutorials, etc. I don't know what it's due to, it's the first time that it happens. It's a real shame - though maybe I'm dramatising.

At least I thought it's ok to listen to a few minutes of this at a time so rather than imposing the whole thing or throwing it away altogether I opted for a slightly experimental third option, I kept only what I considered the most important and best parts of the interview, and talked in between paraphrasing some of the things Tim and I talked about.

To complement the audio podcast, I recommend watching a few videos with reviews and play tests of the game, which hopefully will give you a better idea of the way it works and the reasons why I think it's an exciting project.

More of the information mentioned:

Beasts of Balance on Kickstarter
Tim Burrell-Saward - personal website & Twitter
Alex Fleetwood - personal website & Twitter
Hide & Seek
Hide & Seek Tiny Games Kickstarter project
Hide & Seek event: A Game of Crowns (The talking throne Tim mentions)
Somerset House
Makerversity
Indiecade winners
Fabulous Beasts in the press
- Vice Gaming
- BoingBoing
- GeekDad
- More on the Fabulous Beasts press page
Form, Function, Fabulousness by Tim, about the design of Fabulous Beasts
Deep Dive about Fabulous Beasts' game design
Populous (video game)
Godus (video game)

After the past two weeks delving behind the scenes of Ed's tabletop game crowdfunding project, we're having a branding and marketing moment. I caught up with my ex-colleague and friend Sid Loyal, a brand strategist with extensive experience in different Asia-Pacific countries, from India to Singapore and Australia. I thought it would be interesting to hear from his perspective about strategy for the advertising and marketing industry in Asia-Pacific.

Sid has great stories to share about how he started in the advertising industry, what he learned along the way, his extensive sneakers collection and a little of what's going on in India for brands and creative communications.

A few links to the information mentioned:

Follow Sid on Twitter
"Everybody is sick of the Apple, Nike and Virgin references" Sid writes about the need for real life experiences for GapJumpers
"Sneakers as a statement: More than fancy footwear" Sid writes about sneakers as cultural icons
Limited edition Converse Weapon designed by John Varvatos
Limited edition glow in the dark Reebok Pumps
Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency
Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency
Innocean Worldwide advertising agency
Examples of Brand Wheels
72andSunny advertising agency
"When in peace, prepare for war" or "If you want peace, prepare for war" a Latin adage
Flipkart
Nirula's ice cream
A guide to craft beer in Mumbai
The rising stars of standup comedy in Mumbai

This is the second part of a 2-part episode; you can find the part 1 here.

We continue our weekly calls with Ed and keep following his efforts to crowd-fund the expansion of his science-fiction themed tabletop roleplaying game Era: The Consortium Secret War on Kickstarter.

As the project had just recently passed the £1,000 mark at the time we spoke, Ed gave us a few more tips acquired from his experience of running Kickstarter projects, including what not to do.

We pursue the conversation to discuss how his games company, Shades of Vengeance, started supporting other tabletop roleplaying games creator to complete and finance their games and share them with a wider audience. This started at the Anime North in Toronto a few years ago and they have now successfully supported several games that Ed talks through.

In the last conversation, we wish good luck to Ed for the final days of his Kickstarter project and ask him a few of the now traditional Ice Cream for Everyone cool down questions.

A few links to the information mentioned:

Era: The Consortium - The Secret War on Kickstarter
Dragonmeet Convention London
Badass PR
Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Anime North Convention, Toronto, Canada
Dice & Stuff weekly Era: The Consortium game session podcast
Amazing Space Adventures RPG
Eclipse Phase RPG
Isaac Asimov
Order of the Link RPG / Staff pick on Kickstarter
Sliders TV series
Marked for Death (Fate RPG System module)
D20 RPG system
Era: The Consortium reviews
- Wild Musings
- Reality Refracted
- Million Word Man
Mass Effect video game series
Halo video game series
Babylon 5 TV series
I'm Sticking With You, The Velvet Underground (I didn't find which advert Ed referred to, please keep in touch if you have ideas!)
Bantayan Island, Philippines

For this new episode of the podcast, we try something a little experimental with roleplaying game designer and writer Ed Jowett based in the UK. We had a few conversations over time to follow the behind the scenes of his Kickstarter crowdfunding project to support the finance of an expansion to his science-fiction based game; Era: The Consortium.

This is a two part episode and there is still time for you to check out his Kickstarter project. For anyone out there fan of science-fiction universes, interested in roleplaying games, or simply in finding out more details about running a crowdfunding campaign, it's definitely worth a listen.

In the episode, we talk about the progress of the campaign in the first two weeks, as well as the other games Ed designed at Shades of Vengeance; Era: Lyres and Era: The Empowered. We also discuss Ed's inspirations for game mechanics, science-fiction and where he started playing video games and tabletop roleplaying games.

Some of the information mentioned in the episode:

Era: The Consortium - The Secret War on Kickstarter
Shades of Vengeance / Imagine RPG
Dragonmeet convention in London
World of Warcraft
White Wolf Publishing
Wizards of the Coast
Hasbro
Mega Traveller 1 on the Amiga
Traveller RPG
Paranoia RPG
Durham University gaming society
Dune, Frank Herbert
Babylon 5 TV series
Firefly TV series and RPG
Shadowrun RPG
MCM Comic Con London
Prefundia.com
Kicktraq.com
Reddit
Mutants & Masterminds
Marvel RPG
Consortium indie video game by Interdimensional Games
The Pixar Theory (Pixar single universe spanning all movies)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen (cf. Ep 05 with game designer James Wallis)
Animated Spiderman TV series

I caught up with John Griffiths in London a couple of months ago at an industry event and asked him if he'd be up for participating in an episode of the podcast. John is incredibly smart and always has fascinating stories to tell about his account planning and strategy experience in the advertising industry. He has been working as a planner in advertising for 30 years, and integrated with other marketing disciplines such as PR, promotions, direct marketing, sponsorships and online / digital for the past 20-25 years. He has won Research Awards for Best New Thinking (2010) and Best Workshop (2011)

John is also co-writing a book with Tracy Follows I was interested in knowing more about and thought it was worth sharing with you. 98% Pure Potato: The origins of advertising account planning, an account of the first people who worked in the first account planning departments in the sixties, created by Stanley Pollitt at BMP and Stephen King at JWT. John interviewed many of these original UK Mad Men and learn how they created this discipline of account planning with the intention of bringing people (consumers) at the heart of the brand communications targeted to them.

I think it's interesting for anyone to hear about the behind the scenes of how advertising and marketing is made, if ever you were curious it probably worth checking out even if you don't work in advertising or marketing.

If you do work in advertising & marketing I think this is a must listen and the upcoming book a must-read, you can still pledge for your copy of the book on Unbound. Of course I would say that, just check it out for yourself!

Some of the information mentioned

Follow John Griffiths on Twitter or check his website
98% Pure Potato: The origins of advertising account planning
John G's Mobile Weblog: Travels captured on a mobile phone (2005)
Stephen King, JWT
The UK Account Planning Group (APG)
Dave Trott
Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry
Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH)
Truth, Lies and Advertising - Jon Steel
Bill Bernbach
DDB Worldwide agency
Mad Men (TV series)
"1984" Apple's first Macintosh advert
Saatchi & Saatchi
Hall & Partners
Method Acting
Blade Runner
Ridley Scott & Associates (RSA Films)
Jungian artchetypes
Joseph Campbell Monomyth / Hero with a Thousand Faces
Brand architecture (Brand Key, Brand Onion, etc)
Cranium (board game)
The Green Marketing Manifesto, John Grant

Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning

A special episode of the podcast today, I had the unexpected opportunity to talk with the team at Rayark Games: the founder and CEO Ming Yang Yu, co-founder Jerry Chang and Managing Director Ed Courtroul. It was an international conversation with Ming Yang and Jerry in Taipei, Taiwan, and Ed in Tokyo.

Rayark Games is a growing development games studio known for their mobile games, first with music and rhythm games such as Cytus and Deemo. Last year in April they released a console quality action "Hack & Slash" game, Implosion: Never Lose Hope. The game went on to be downloaded millions of times on Apple iOS and Android and become 2015 Game of the Year in several countries.

in their review of the game, Touch Arcade wrote:

It's an outstanding game, and if you're reading this review because you want to know whether or not you should drop ten US dollars (or your local equivalent thereof) on it, let me cut to the chase for once. Yes, you should. Head over the the App Store, hit the button to purchase it, prepare a cup of your beverage of choice while it downloads, and get ready to settle in for a slick action game with superb production values and seriously well-designed combat. I can't recommend this game enthusiastically enough.

Their new project, and what really caught my curiosity beyond the great games they're already creating, is that they are now in the final stages of crowdfunding a feature length animation film based in the same universe as their last video game. I really encourage you to check out the Kickstarter project for more about it, and of course listen to the podcast episode to find out more about the leadership team at Rayark games and the inspiration behind the upcoming Implosion Zero_Day animation film.

You might still be able to support this motivated young independent team of creators on the Kickstarter project here. You can also follow the progress and updates about the film project on their website.

Some of the stuff we talk about in this episode:

Implosion Zero_Day on Kickstarter
Implosion Never Lose Hope on iOS or Google Play
Hack and Slash games
Rhythm games
Devil May Cry (games)
God of War (games)
Studio Ghibli
Howl's Moving Castle
Spirited Away
Grave of the Fireflies
Totoro
Non-photorealistic rendering
Richard Linklater
- Before Sunrise
- Before Sunset
- Before Midnight
- Boyhood
The Matrix
The Sixth Sense
Blade Runner
Dungeons & Dragons white box (1974)
Magic: The Gathering card game
Dominion card game

Since I read and enjoyed Heather's Brain Surfing book, I asked if she'd join me for a recording of the podcast. I've been in regular contact with Heather for the past few years given I help with the team analysing the data to make the Strategist Survey happen.

Over the course of the conversation we learn more about planning & strategy in advertising, how Heather started her career in advertising, her views on brands and marketing, some of the large project she worked on like Burger King's Whopper Virgins with CP+B, the beginning of the Strategist Survey (previously named Planner Survey), her travels with different mentors, learning from 9 top strategists around the world preparing for the Brain Surfing book and of course more about the contents of the book itself. Enjoy!

You can purchase Brain Surfing on Amazon or check it out on Goodreads.

Some of the information mentioned in this episode: * Heather Lefevre's website * Follow Heather on Twitter * Heather' s stand up comedy * Stefan Sagmeister Happy Show * University of Texas Advertising Master's Program * UT project feedback video Spring 2011 * Crispin Porter + Bogusky advertising agency * Burger King advertising campaigns mentioned + Whopper Freakout + Whopper Sacrifice + Whopper Virgins * Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip * The West Wing * Strategist / Planner Survey (watch out for results of the 2015 survey) * AKQA * Tribal DDB * The Peace Corps * Eat Pray Love * Heidi Hackemer * Stefan Sagmeister * Saher Sidhom * Sense Worldwide * Maria Popova & Tim Ferriss podcast interview * Where good ideas come from * The Artist's Way * Dr Jiang explains the Marriage market in Shanghai * Rob Campbell reflects & Rob Campbell's blog * Phil Adams and his blog post mentioned in the episode * "Thank you, advertising" post on Linkedin * To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink * Marissa Van Uden & Marissa on Twitter * Cold Stone Creamery * The Witcher 3 * Fallout 4 * Community TV series + RPG episode excerpt * Settlers of Catan * The Vandenberg Wreck, dive site near Key West

Brain Surfing: The Top Marketing Strategy Minds in the World

For the sixth episode of the podcast I had the pleasure of catching up with George Nimeh while visiting Vienna. We met at the Impact Hub, a co-working space in the centre of Vienna, just a few doors down from George's previous employer, the Austrian newspaper Kurier.

I've known George since late 2007 when he hired me to join iris in London, he was the managing director of the Digital arm of the creative agency at the time. George has a wealth of experience in media, publishing, digital technologies, branding and advertising working for companies such as The New York Times, Organic, iris and Red Bull.

He shares a lot of his knowledge and experience in this episode. Main topics include ad blocking technologies, the evolution of online advertising, looking for the new, creating valuable content and telling stories, the comeback of patronage, the challenges of old and established legacy publishers, etc.

He recently gave a talk at TEDx Vienna with the theme "What if there was no advertising?" you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01PUSrLCvcM

Links and information mentioned in this episode:

Follow George on Twitter, or these other places online
Impact Hub Vienna
Kurier Austria
Organic
iris Worldwide
The New York Times
Red Bull
Red Bull Space Jump video
Vlad Gozman, author and organiser TEDx Vienna
Kickstarter
Brainpickings, Maria Popova
Settlers of Catan
Candyland
Berlin School of Creative Leadership

For the fifth episode of the podcast, I met with James Wallis in London. James is a British designer and publisher of tabletop and roleplaying games. He began roleplaying games with the classic Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller in 1981 and worked on many games since. He also wrote for gaming publications and traditional ones like the Sunday Times. Now he has his own consultancy, Spaaace, A triple "A" company.

He also consults with brands to design gaming experiences, leads game design seminars and has successfully completed several crowdfunding projects. Game designer and podcast show host Robin Laws first called him the godfather of indie game design. The most known games he worked on extensively are probably Once Upon a Time and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He is currently working on bringing Paranoia, a classic tabletop roleplaying game into the 21st century.

I met James at a conference called Playful several years ago and thought of asking to participate in the show. We had a fantastic conversation, James has amazing stories to tell about his career in game design and writing. I hope you have as much fun listening as I did having the conversation.

A few of the links mentioned:

Follow James on Twitter
James' consultancy, Spaaace
Pelgrane Press
The Dairy in Clapham, London
Pantheon
John Tynes
Violence RPG by Designer X
The Forge
Empire of the Petal Throne
TSR (original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons)
Dungeons & Dragons
Runequest
Traveller
Call of Chtulhu
Richard Bartle - multi-user Dungeons - MUD & MUSHes
JANET & ARPANET
Dragon riders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
White Dwarf
GenCon
Hogshead Publishing
Wizards of the Coast
Magic the Gathering card game
Pokemon card game

In this fourth episode of the Ice Cream for Everyone podcast I meet my brother Björn van der Horst and his business partner Omar Romero on the site of a new bar and restaurant they are building in collaboration with the Hilton Hotel London Metropole.

The upcoming bar and restaurant will be called Kojawan and has magnificent panorama views of London from the 23rd floor.

Björn and Omar talk about their careers as chefs as well as their new projects, which include Kojawan and Bone Tea broth bar. I mention this in the intro to the episode, at the time we recorded this they were planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign to finance the next steps of Bone Tea, things have changed since then and they gone the route of private investment for the next steps of the project instead of crowdfunding.

I've just had excellent news the podcast is now listed with iTunes Podcasts directory, so you can subscribe there. If you enjoy listening I would hugely appreciate if you could leave a rating and a review please!

A few links to the information mentioned:

Follow Björn on Twitter
Follow Omar on Twitter and Instagram
Saint Seiya
Hyper Japan in London
Dungeons & Dragons paladin
Evian-les-Bains
Gary Rhodes
The Greenhouse, London
Alain Ducasse
Russian Tea Room, New York
Picholine, New York
Marlon Abela
Gordon Ramsay
Soneva Fushi
Rosewood London
Bone Tea & Facebook Page
Beso de Angel ice cream with mamey sapote fruit
"Rôti sans pareil"
Turducken
Cadbury's Gorilla advertising
Old Spice The Man your Man could Smell like advertising
World forum of Mexican gastronomy

I was invited to speak at the European Planning Conference this year in Prague, I recorded my talk so this is a special episode of the podcast.

I'm adding the slides on my blog and Slideshare for reference, though as I also mention in the episode the slides are mostly a few images and not really necessary to understand the talk.

I get slightly lost in the section talking about chess and abstract strategy games, listening to the recording I realised I'd made the two points I had in mind and that define these types of games:

All the elements are visible to players, no hidden parts
They contain no random elements, nothing left to chance.

I hope you enjoy, and as I mention in the podcast please keep in touch if you might be interested in having me come and speak at your event or conference.

A few references mentioned in this episode:

European Planning Conference
Kristijan Petkoski
Fiona Rosario
Landmark Worldwide
iris Worldwide
Saatchi & Saatchi
Possible
Man, Play and Games (Les jeux et les hommes), Roger Caillois
Senet
Spiel Essen
GenCon
Board Game Geek
Catan
Ticket to Ride
Crowdfunding is driving a $196M board game renaissance
The Man who built Catan, New Yorker
Monopoly Killer, Wired
Collaborative Board Games
Zombicide
Dead of Winter
Pandemic
Knights of Badassdom
Live action roleplaying games (LARP)
Les Voix d'Altaride
Tabletop roleplaying games

For this third episode I caught up with my friend and award winning media professional Hugh Garry in London. I met Hugh on a trip to Tanzania with The Great Football Giveaway a few years ago, and since then he organises a different adventurous and/or purposeful trip every year.

He is a director at Storythings, a studio decidated to helping businesses and organisations find new ways to tell stories. Before that he worked at the BBC Radio 1 as a creative producer for a long time, and he was also a DJ for a long time.

It was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy listening!

A few links to some of the information mentioned, for reference:

Hugh Garry
Storythings
The Great Football Giveaway & Our trip to Tanzania
Stefan Sagmeister TED talks
BBC Shoot the Summer
Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull
Royal Historical Society
Hammer House of Horrors, The Silent Scream
Information doesn't want to be free, Cory Doctorow
Blendle, a radical experiment with micropayments in journalism
Car Insurance startup charges by the hour
Brewdog Nanny State
John Ashdown, Guardian Sports Journalist (1 beer / day challenge for 365 days)

For our second episode I interview one of my favourite game designers, John Wick, and I am joined by my friend Julien with whom I participate in his audio podcast about roleplaying games Les Voix d'Altaride.

In this episode we talk about John Wick the movie, John's inspiration and creative process, roleplaying games, principles of game design, cooperative board games, examples of subversive storytelling, live-action roleplaying games (LARPs), the best movie ever made, and the best book ever written.

I had great pleasure interviewing John and I hope you enjoy listening!

Links and information mentioned, for reference:

For this first episode of the Ice Cream for Everyone podcast, I am joined by my friends Lauren Giblin, Adam Cohen, and James D'Souza to ask them a few questions about their podcast listening habits and uncover information that will help me further define the future of this podcast.

In addition to audio podcasts, Adam tells us about his quite extreme high fat diet, we laugh at dangling modifiers, James compares podcast shows to the Hero's Journey, and Lauren shares her appreciation for the heathy qualities of Hampstead Heath.

This is the first time I record and edit an audio podcast and unfortunately one of the voice tracks failed so I had to pick it up from an lesser quality recording, my apologies in advance for the sound glitches and stammering.

Episode content (roughly):

Introductions
Podcast listening habits
What the ICfE podcast could be about
Gender & podcasting
Music or jingles in podcasts and the Hero's Journey
What's your favourite ice cream flavour?