 2014. How you guys doing? Do a big clap for yourselves. I haven't done anything yet, but clap for you. More louder, more louder, more louder. Yeah! While I was watching these All Stars get their awards, actually I was responsible for 330 gems in that moment. I'm so good at Ruby right now. Take that, no JS, what? I was very, very excited about Katrina's vicar. I was sitting two seats next to her and just felt like maybe I had something to do with it. I didn't. But it's nice to feel certain things, even if you're not responsible. I want to start in the beginning for me as far back as I am able to go with documentation so far. This is a photo of my mother's grandfather, my great-grandfather, Benjamin Lonesome, born just as slavery was wrapping up in the US, born in Carolyn County, Virginia, and taught himself to read, moved to Washington DC, helped build roads and designed the highway system there, the road system there. And he had several kids, one of whom was my mother's mother. Her name was Lorraine Martin. She was a very proud woman, very accomplished, especially considering the timing of her own life. She was, I found out much later in my life and at the end of my mother's own life, the first black employee at the US Supreme Court building. Now this is something my mother never told me and my older sister. It's a weird family secret to keep. Right? Family secrets are supposed to be embarrassing. It's like so-and-so had a leg longer than the other, so-and-so voted for, you know, he who should not be named. But you don't like, shh, quietly grandma was a civil rights hero. Don't tell people, they might respect us. Like, what's the downside? I don't, I can't understand exactly, but they had a very, very fractured relationship, so fractured that my sister and I found out about this historic fact by going through my mother's possessions after she died. And we found this clip like, why is grandma hanging out with Jimmy Carter? Is there another story we don't know? What's going on here? So yeah, my, my grandmother and I didn't have much of a relationship. I heard stories. I remember she smelled like, what was it? Orange juice, cigarette smoke, vodka. That was a nice, strong memory for like a five-year-old little boy. And she was so busy with her own life. She traveled, she had this job, she was active in her church. She wasn't always super excited about the duties of being a mom herself with, with her own daughter. And I'm not sure how she could do that, because this is my mother at age four. Super, super adorable. Like, who wouldn't want to be around? Now, look at the cheeks. You can see where I get my cuteness from. It's pretty obvious. So she ships my mother off at age eight. The year is 1948 to a rural boarding school in Pennsylvania, a Catholic boarding school. And my mother didn't like it. And I know she didn't like it because she wrote a letter saying she didn't like it. For those who can't see this, or maybe in general, I will share the text. Dear mother, I am having fun, but I do not like it here. So that was like a hint that she didn't like it. I am mad at you. Please send me some cookies and a Sparkle Plenty doll. They can have dolls here. Please send it, because I do not have anything to play with. Yours truly, Arnita. That's a sad state of affairs. It's also a sad state of handwriting. I'm hating on my mom's handwriting, but it's pretty, the lines are all over the place. She can work on the formation. But in the lower left corner, you see some very, very clear, easy to read handwriting. It just says over. And when you turn this letter over, you find another letter which says, if your little girl is dissatisfied, we'd be glad to have her bed for children who are anxious to come. Signed sister. And I think when she wrote it, she like barely moved a muscle. This was an early prototype of the NSA prison program. They were testing it out on would be terrorists, also known as little black girls who want cookies, because they may also want to vote eventually. And we got to nip those rights in the bud before they get out of hand. My mom didn't last long in the school. She came back. She finished up in DC. She was a features editor at her high school newspaper. She's here dressed very appropriately for the era with a dress cut below the knees and a basket presumably filled with positive affirmative thoughts about the state of democracy in America. I am sure of it. It's a happy time. It's the 50s. Everything was great. And things shifted for her a little bit. I would say her social network shifted. She started hanging out with a different type of crowd, a crowd that looked more like this. This was a good friend of my mom's at the time. His name was El Dorado. I don't know very much detail except that his name was El Dorado. I don't need any more detail except that his name was El Dorado. And you look at all the cool hunting and trendsetting and millennial obsession and what's gonna happen and who's gonna buy what and what's hip, hot, cool, zip, zap, bop. None of it matters. The last cool human to walk the earth was El Dorado. Look at him again. Let it sink in and let your own lack of cool just be out there. I feel it too. Every time I show this slide, I feel less awesome. So then my mom's out in the street. She's challenging authority in some way. Metaphorically in the streets outside of her mom's own office. This is walking down 16 Street Northwest Washington DC where I would later grow up Malcolm X Park in the background. Yay for me growing up. Thank you so much for cheering the hormonal process. And my mom is right there in the middle. Eyes focused not on the prize, but on the camera. Because you never know, you might end up in a keynote presentation in the future. Selfies before was hot. All right. When you have a mother like this, you don't get normal reading materials as a kid. This is the first book I remember having as a small child. I was eight years old. And it looked that bad. It was like, is that blood? What is going on? I'm just mad at people all the sudden all the time now protesting cocoa puffs because gotta be racist. I don't know the arguments yet. I'm not strong enough intellectually to make the argument but I'm mad. Thanks mom. This is the shout outside of our apartment looking very wire like with this is sort of a local economic grassroots activity that you're seeing here. A hand to hand commerce sort of an artisanal sort of locally grown kind of thing going on here. Really native local markets. And my mom just took these pictures I still don't she never fully explained why she would just take pictures of drug deals going down. She wasn't an informant. She didn't like the cops either. But I think she just was anticipating like the 20 year drug dealer reunion. And she could sell these back you know like when you're on a roller coaster and it's like remember when this happened. This is middle school graduation for me. That's my older sister back to back her name is Belinda. She lives in Lansing Michigan. And she was alright for living. That's good. You guys are applauding strange strange verbs. She was a journalist for 20 something years and worked at the Dallas Morning News worked for a good net newspapers. Worked in Lansing State Journal where she was the digital news director and assistant managing editor at the same time as I was director of digital at the onion. So we basically had the same job. Except sadly I remember having arguments with her not arguments just observations from her because we had launched our iPhone app and our web traffic was such and such and such. And she was like but I do the real news. I was winning lies were winning basically. That's my mom obviously in the center and that's me with a little flare of rebellion with my can take cloth in the form of a tie corporate rebellion. I loved it. So here's how this family worked. My mother was the one to raise us and to finance that that raising. She had a job as a systems analyst for the office of the Comptroller of the currency. She was a computer programmer. She started doing this in the late 1970s. She did not have a formal college education not a complete one. I in fact remember sitting in community college classes with her as she was trying to bolster her it and tech skills. So she went from domestic worker dinner cooker paralegal assistant to GS something in the government ranking system which is able to afford me going to the school that I was graduating from here now said well friend school my sister going off to be a journalist all because of computer programming. She is the original black girl's code. That's my mom without any actual nonprofit behind it. And that had another big influence. I obviously had the apartheid thing in my brain from an early age that are hacking into my awareness. But we also had computers constantly as a young kid with the first family on the block with the computer plan Dr. J and Larry Byrd on the internet super early thanks to my school in 1993. And this is a great shot. My sister captured it. This is me graduating from Harvard University 1999. And my mom embraced me. And she said we did it. I was like what do you what do you mean we. I took the test. But it was a metaphorical and some real practical ways we because of the generation that took to create this moment because of the mentors I have because of the studies because of the investment financial moral and caloric that had been made in me to get to this point. Now when I showed up on campus I was convinced I was going to be a computer science major. I had been super Internet kid I was always a kid fixing my friends computers. And I took the intro to computer science class in the fall of 1995 which meant C. And I did not end up majoring in computer science because I discovered the power of the semicolon to ruin everything. Everything. Like if you misplace a semicolon and an essay people still get what you mean. Right. They may get judgmental about that should have been an m dash but they don't you know they don't act like you said nothing like 15 pages in I've said nothing. What all my loop there should is nothing. So I was like yeah OK programming I'm going to take a little break from you and I I made you the philosophy which is actually not that far a different sort of an overtentiveness in terms of the analytic world and logic and everything so I couldn't fully escape that. And I was one of the first online editors at Harvard Crimson our newspaper and paid for school with a job testing software. So I've tried to stay close to this world even as I've drifted you know from the hardcore flavors of this world but a lot of it comes down to to this woman who helped make that possible. Now my sister she ended up on a different and even more beautiful path I think she started teaching yoga she got really excited about it got really into it and she was bugged by the notion of yoga as just the province of super thin and live and little lemon and six telepants and she started teaching it for free for a donation based price in the hood in Lansing and she eventually left the newspaper all together to be full time teaching donation based yoga in the hood in Lansing which is just the worst endorsement for the newspaper industry I think. This is a veteran award-winning person who's like I want to teach free yoga to people with no money. I think there's a bigger future in it. So this is my obligatory family shout out this is my sister's Twitter account she's great you're in the Midwest you make it up to Lansing and support some of the work that she is doing. So what happened after this foundation has laid of this great older sibling of this mother of this infusion of politics and technology and doing all these newsy type things well I obviously ended up here at America's finest news source and worked for the onion for five years and it was a great way I got that job they posted a job for politics editor in the fall of 2007 I just moved to New York from Boston and I was like that's my job they don't know it yet but they'll come around and applied for that job and got through part of the interview process and they said what would you like to be the web editor as well like oversee everything we're doing online like yeah like so that's like another job right like not the same job so you're gonna like more pay not the same pay. The onion negotiation style is very aggressive and of course I said yes because it was a greatest job I ever had and got to play around and have a lot of fun there I also wrote a book toward the tail end of my tenure there a very humble identity guide and with a very subtle marketing message that I wish I wouldn't want to push people too much some people just all heavy-handed with them bye bye bye it's like let people come to this in their own terms basically consequences so what's been fun about this the book is a memoir you know it covers some of the ground I just did but in a lot more words so you don't even have to read those chapters it's also got this guide to sort of a how to satirical guide how to be the black friend how to speak for all black people how to be the black employee how to be the next black president and then there are a series of interviews that I conducted with a panel of experts I called them a black panel and what made them experts that they were born black and so they had decades of experience in the game and so we wanted to kind of test that out and I balanced the scales as evenly as I could I had three black men I had three black women and as a control group I had one white Canadian man and I asked them various central questions when did you first realize you were black which is like an interesting question and when do you first realize you're anything you know there's somebody from the outside usually says something weird about you how black are you preferably quantify it did you ever wish you weren't black and can you swim very grounded very scientific questions and the best part about my my control group answer so I didn't want just any white guy one of the widest white guy I could find and so I was like I had to go north colder right Canada and I also wanted someone who was a real authority so I got Christian Lander who wrote stuff white people like and was behind that whole blog so like he has put himself out there speaking for white people's interests and he did a great job for those of you who are white I can a couple of you you have a great ambassador in Christian Lander you should send him some kind of like re-up or vote for him again I don't know how it works in your councils I just I watch Game of Thrones I feel like it's messy but he should thumbs up in the arena for him let him find another fight so that was fun the other fun thing has been seeing people start to play with the the meme of the book and something that didn't necessarily drive but have witnessed and enjoyed is Instagram around how to be black and you start to see this blend of pure old-school editorial with flatter networked world where everybody can publish and so pictures start to emerge on this theme every picture's got a story of at least a thousand words preferably less if you have a good editor in this case the man holding the book prior to this photo was white I still is I did the book the book's not that good it's not I mean disclaimer spoiler alert you're gonna stay whatever you are but he walked into the subway and was somehow coincidentally surrounded by this group of black men who were curious about the object in his hand and so they said what good sir are you reading which is just is how older black men talk now I don't know how many of you are in touch but it was decided last week and and their faces capture the full range of reaction that I've seen on the internet to the book you got dopey smurf on the left doesn't get it checked out not for him that's okay that's okay not everything is for everybody moving right along super engaged reader probably gonna miss a train because he's so into it healthy skeptic engaged skeptic he's gonna take to like reddit or like some twitter hashtag hatred later but right now he's building up his arguments and then you got the brother on the right is a special case because he's offended because he doesn't need some stupid book to tell him how to be black obviously look at his matching turtleneck leather jacket baseball cap it's got blackness on lockdown uh and then you see people really playing around a lot more fun some of these from tumblr some from reddit every six to seven weeks it actually front pages on reddit because reddit's like a like a clown fish he just forgets itself constantly like look what I found like no we found it 13 times already but it's fun to watch people have the same argument over and over again uh the wisdom of crowds I believe is what they call that um and then you know these people staging really interesting moments and the book has been assigned in school so the compulsory mark is the best one I encourage you all to to get into that um if credits are on the line and then you have a growth market it's nice so since then I've tried to think about how and where to bring these threads together bring the storytelling bring the humor bring the the creativity broadly speaking into a home bigger than just my body because I'm a finite being with limited capacity I'm gonna die at some point and companies they live forever and they have better tax benefits so I started one it's better to be a company in this country if you haven't figured that out there should be a session on that so started this company called cultivated wit as I left the onion and it's based on this quote from Horace a cultivated wit one that badgers less can persuade all the more artful ridicule can address contentious issues more competently and vigorously than can severity alone and so that is our sort of marching order to try to bring these threads together it also means that we have a really cool website and I'm gonna risk everything and take you to a live web demo thing keyboard so here's what we're up to first of all a little winky that's fun yeah it's nice right trying to build some personality into some basic things so this is you know we're a company that does these and that so we are operating on sort of four bands at least one of which is doing marketing and digital storytelling and sort of making campaigns that are beautiful with design we merged with an animation and design studio out of san francisco and so work on behalf of good clients to tell good stories we do an event series called comedy hack day that I'm gonna tell you more about in detail later but it's the best comedy show you've ever seen and certainly the best hackathon building tools we have a little tiny software department of one of a developer we feed him Red Bull and two hours of sunlight per week and he's doing great he's doing really really great he's a co-founder and then we do these things we use speaking and workshops we also have some fun things on the blog whatever whatever best emails ever I wanted to take you through one of the interactions on our site so we created this thing called section four and it's like do you care to enter well yeah I want to I want to intersection four there's no one seeing okay cool great the thing of your clicking is pretty quickly where you're not taking this seriously one more time are you sure yep I am sure join the society what is your name okay great got that down you just keep your name machine's websites you're not doing much other way we like to be called grand pooba okay good in case of emergency what email address can we reach you in order to ask for a phone number awesome let's do that how would you rate your experience so far this is I would say a four next question what is your super power you have to be bringing something to the table if we're going to be let you in at the very least I would say it's growing on patience let's get you into section four how would you rate your experience so far and sliding last thing before you got to do it body you having to jump through so many hoops it actually did ha well guess what you're not in not until you correctly answer these questions which is better bass guitar or writing elk so round of applause for writing elks round of applause for bass guitar all right bass guitar how many miles in a marathon I'm just going to go with jetpack I'm not going to sample the crowd on that one who is the smartest person in life Stephen Cawking Hitler okay other let's say Katrina Owens all right right I should probably enter that name any former U.S. president if he had been born in an alternate universe where all humans were named after plant life what the fuck okay very good how would you rate your experience so far that's actually are you currently have you ever been a member of any of the following al-qaeda the Federal Reserve Bank at Cleveland the American Dental Association any seagull conservation society or has your really any pro seagull organization of any kind or the Oakland PD have you ever been involved in production to sail a little miniature cars that shiners drive during parades no what is the secret password great I just typed in the word secret to see what happened please pick any contentious issue of the day take a side state in a hundred words or less why are you no thanks how would you rate your experience so far oh look they're all fine just like elections the results are rigged okay send my application your application for admission to section four has been received thousands of people have gone through this process and we are still reviewing those applications we'll get back to them slash me at some point after now and then we have this whiskey friday community which is about bringing people together in a very complex celebration at the end of the week on a friday you drink whiskey that's it that's it so um I wanted to I'm gonna actually oh we had plenty of good time so here's what happened with uh part of what happened with us is we were some heavy like word-based people and we found the folks who built that website with us slash for us were called I shot him and they were designed and animation student won a lot of awards for really beautiful infographics and visual story telling and we were mean while coming out this onion background like word-based storytelling so we just decided to combine forces and create Voltron here is what we released for our merger I shot him and cultivated with our now one creative super group that felt good like really good I need a moment so that's that oh good yay applause and now let's risk the live demo again so you guys remember when so we have this thing in the US it's the Constitution right and and it sets forth a certain job member of Congress and presumably attached to that job is doing it but in late October last year Congress one of the few designated constitutional jobs in the whole country said we're not going to do it anymore and they shut it all down and so people were upset and the news was covering things and we were like how do we respond to this so we went to you ever bought a domain name when you're drunk any round of applause anybody ever yeah so we said I wonder if fuck you Congress dot com is available and surprisingly it was so we bought it and proceeded to retell the story of the government shutdown in a manner that was a bit more direct and in a way that people could better understand and so we would find news stories that were talking about how this shutdown affected people and then retell it and then pithier language a more tweetable language so you just kind of cycling through this thing and it was really effective at generating and sort of capturing the the anger that was in people and then we said okay let's go beyond just kind of click rage and actually put your zip code in and share your thoughts with your member of Congress which for many people is the first time they knew who their member of Congress was so that was a nice introduction and then the third level was to get beyond all that and to really get people registered through turbo vote to be connected to root strikers and sunlight foundation to actually engage in a more productive thing to take this cathartic moment which is very political take this profanity this great word which is fuck it's just it's just a great word thank you thank you five people I feel like maybe there was a policy paper issued right before you attended which says do not celebrate the word fuck so yeah that was uh that was a ton of fun now for things that have less to do with that oh yeah and I left the end of that for a little bit but I'm not going to talk about that because I'd rather get to the actual meat which is less about where I've been or where the groups have been attached to have been where I think we can all go in terms of bringing creativity and humor storytelling broadly speaking and technology and coding closer together because I've straddled that line myself having overseen development teams having been a terrible programmer bless you by the way so here is my weird theory of how these worlds can and should come together to be more interesting than they are apart I've never shared this before this is you're getting that that the new new theory as articulated in this way when you think about and you can think of the word comedy as media you can think of a story vague creativity and big quotation marks code doesn't have to be an exactly software programming or engineering it can mean technology broadly speaking but we've been in this world this level one world where you were kind of using each other as a means it's like oh I have a comedic video and I'm going to cut and paste it over a transport method over the internet and call it like innovation it's like no it's just like a slice of TV shipped differently it's not you're not changing the very underlying nature of the type of humor that's happening there so it's not necessarily innovation happening in that particular view of the world if you get a little closer you kind of bring these things together part of what happens is people putting jokes and humor in places not designed for them there's a container and folks will shove creativity into it with or without permission here is an example now you see a lot of this in performance art and UX insertion so five years ago we had the swine flu huge news viral thing much more than the actual H1N1 virus spread and I had a thought which was is there a Twitter account for the swine flu the answer was yes there were three they were all distributing legitimate scientific information about the swine flu which I thought was a missed opportunity so I created the underscore swine underscore flu as a very extreme personality of condescending all-knowing arrogant and profane little creature who would there we go right this is the swine flu angry little piglet bird flu ain't got shit on me location fucking everywhere and the most fun of this character lived out through a Twitter account which is obviously not new now but at the time was not done very much was playing with the mechanics of Twitter in the process because there were a lot of auto notification set up if you got a new follower Twitter would just email you and tell you they didn't even give you the chance to opt out of that early on so I would find people who were talking about the swine flu especially those who were expressing a fear of contracting the swine flu and I would follow those people and then that would trigger an event an email shows up in their box saying you are now being followed by the swine flu that's a new type of joke that's happening right that's like time delayed delivery is like a Doppler effect on a punchline like I don't even know what that's called but it's not stand up it's something else it's interesting and it wasn't coding but it was sort of taking advantage of the mechanics of the system the mayor, Emmanuel, Twitter account obviously got it this town was a ton of fun and sort of using the idea of character played out in a different medium not on an SNL sketch but through this feed that we're all taking part in and having that interruption of this character in the same life that follows BBC News accounts and you know your other friends from the Twitterverse so there's another example of this that I did not orchestrate at all merely witnessed the onion ran this story many years back Planned Parenthood opens $8 billion abortion plex that's obviously not true or you think it's obviously not true but a member of Congress that's him Congress from earlier he posted this to his Facebook page he said this is what we're up against we got to stop this right and I think he did that because he's a fucking idiot but also think it was just like we're in a fast news cycle click-clack-clock whatever who knows and it pre-aligned with his worst fears he's like probably he saw this probably I don't know what's $8 billion I work for Congress I'm not gonna count so there you go so that was sort of interesting more interesting was watching the community take this identity and put it somewhere it didn't exactly belong Yelp some slash community member said you know what there should be an abortion plex and they create you can build a building without building a building it's like cheaper than second life too and so took all the cues from the story put it in the appropriate town and that would have been interesting what was amazing is that this creation attracted 283 reviews of the abortion plex such average length essays as this one this four star reviews I stopped by here to check it out because I got a gift card for my friend who told me that the abortion plex has the best mimosas and performs the best abortions and let me tell you I'm a sucker for both and more just more more more more now it's not on Yelp anymore so this is the history maybe it's on internet archive in some version Venmo which is a bill paying system heavily with roommates and colleagues and friends the splitting bills is a common feature there's a little notes field that they default to share publicly and one of our bloggers Mike Faley dug into what's going on with these Venmo payments and people are putting ridiculous excuses for why they are paying people in this public feed going a whole week without peeing the bed there you go who's a good little Mikey for purchasing a couple of life threatening alcoholic beverages that may have set my life on a path to ruin $20 that's a pretty good deal so that was fun and then there's you know from the other side because I'm biasing this toward people who think as writers and sort of performers they're sort of performing in a new medium but it also comes from the engineering side and I'm still impressed by this example so we're going to do it live again let's risk it all Google voice they've got a neat little feature which lets you send SMS from your computer for now they're merging it into Hangouts which is a whole other thing because apparently like an IM is now a Hangout and an email is a Google like we're all Google Plus users now because we have Google whatever you're typing your SMS and watch that character counter go down right and then it turns over saw that flip over right here now we're in message two there's 150 left and this is what I do I used to test software so always when I see an input field I just want to push it and see what happens right that's amazing someone approved that you know what I'm saying they committed and it shipped and they didn't pull it back this has been up for years and it's just it's a beautiful reminder that there's people making these things and there are people who have a sense of humor and there's judgment in those people I kind of and then for me it triggers a response because I sometimes get those text messages from friends it's just so long it's like why don't you just email you know there's a whole other app you could use for this what they should do is like auto compose and email message if you keep going but that's my humble suggestion to whether shutting it down so it doesn't matter but it was fun it was fun so the third level is the biggest one it's the most interesting to me which is these circles are so overlapped you're actually co-creating and there's almost humor in the code and code in the humor and it's not just a hijacking or misuseful application it's natively built to create a new world a universal build if you will across these two very different potentially domains so I mentioned our comedy hack days and I want to show you a little bit of what one team did at comedy hack day all right cool so this is with the one of our co-founders Craig again and he's the guy that we feed the red bull on occasional sunlight he said what would happen if I took my awkward comedy friends and paired them with my awkward developer friends and what you get is something really really beautiful here is an example all right you guys doing everybody doing good thank you so much for having us here we're so happy to be at hack day we are Sly Sound I am Wes Hazard this is Trevor Burnham and we're here to tell you about an app that we feel is going to have everyday usability for almost everybody in this room want to talk a little bit about it Trevor Sly Sound works just like Shazam except without the embarrassment of everyone around you knowing that you're using Shazam when you open it up it looks just like you're checking your Twitter feed because in fact you are checking your Twitter feed it's all there but meanwhile in the background silently it's listening from music and when it identifies a track it's going to text you that information so you'll look like a cool guy who's just checking your Twitter and then getting a bunch of texts instead of using Shazam basically we've created Shazam for hipsters and what better way to do a hipster audio app than using obsolete technology for no other reason then it looks kind of cool here we go that's an amazing track who was that what you don't know Anna Tijoux that's one of her best tracks 1977 no I never heard what's your deal she's a french Chilean emcee she used to be in maquiza come on man oh wow is she like big in america now not especially but that song was using an episode of Breaking Bad I think it was season four episode five wow which is how we all talk obviously I also love that his definition of a cool guy is someone who gets lots of texts just all the time that's how you know you're cool which in some ways is how we define it so that's one example the other which I'll show you I think I will show you yes so the winning team from that last event that was at the MIT media lab they built a website which builds websites dynamically I think it's probably going to take a lot of work from some of the people in this room it's a great party game in fact you put in a preferably a proper noun maybe a person of some kind of note and it will generate a crazy looking conspiracy website like the kind of your uncle forward you it's talking about building seven and like the Illuminati and somebody listening to Alec Jones a bit too much so I will put in ruby on rails and let's see what the truth about ruby on rails is I have signed document from biologists confirming evolution of third son humanoid in conjunction with ruby on rails Jewish God Christian God Muslim God all sanctioned ruby on rails in holy writs sex was meant to include ruby on rails H stripped away five return plus six redeems only by ruby on rails wake up ruby on rails is a gift and the sheep are keeping it hidden now this page just goes and goes and goes like there's gifts going on here and if you refresh it it's going to generate a whole new website God is the only true ruby on rails ruby on rails is the only true God and it sort of tiles these images and does really I think really sort of handcrafted web art that we're looking at here so that was a lot of fun you should put your friends through the truth for humanity dot com generator and the the last thing that I'll share with you magic story makers this is the second to last thing if you have kids you know how annoying they can be and how useless the combination that's the Venn diagram is very painful for economic growth at least and so when kids want you to read to them they often pick the same book over and over and it gets very frustrating because you're getting dumber every time what these developers and comedians built was magic story maker let you choose a news story that you like and then apply themed children's design theme on top of that so the real news looks like a children's book and you can actually know what's going on in the grown-up world and your kid can see a monkey sliding up and down a tree and everybody wins the the most recent thing I just actually came in from MIT on this trip is looking at Google Glass and performance Google Glass and improv comedy Google Glass is a very creepy thing in some ways it's very interesting and others it's very expensive no matter how you look at it and so working with two teams there an improv team in Boston and these developers who've created something called WearScript that lets anybody build on Glass as a platform we came up with a show concept let's do improv comedy right here in Chicago is a huge font of all that and let's have the players wearing Glass and let's think about the interaction with the audience differently there's often games and improv where players will pick a word out of a hat that's been submitted this takes the friction out of that and they just get it on their display we also said let the audience see what the players know but not have the players see what each other sees so what you're seeing on this grid here are the heads up of everybody's different screens there were six players at various times so I'm actually going to skip that example due to time but the more interesting one let's play this present their product present their pitch and we're going to decide which one we want to fund our next pitch please folks I've spent the last 18 months and several hundred thousand dollars developing a product that I know you're going to love now how many times a day do you have ideas that you need to write down multiply that by how many times a day you need to get something to eat wouldn't it be convenient if the surface on which you wrote things down i.e. paper were also something that you could fold into a delicious sandwich I've been studying it in Tokyo and I've formed what I call the origami sandwich a foldable sandwich in the shape of a goose that you can use to not only eat but enjoy its beauty and all of its forms thank you very much this is hers next pitch please fear passion headaches right so it's got its PowerPoint karaoke feel but the real timeness of it just changes the speed and dynamic of the creativity this last one and this truly is the last so they are there's a game called jump genre and you're kind of in the real world the director might call out switch to the genre but because of the speed of audience input it happens mid-motion this is the last clip and then I will try to respect your time what we're going to do is called jump genre and I'm going to have Will and Christine begin a scene that is going to take place in a location which we'll see in just a second here and there we go look at that and periodically throughout the scene they're going to get some styles or genre on their glass that they are going to use to shift where they are and what they're doing oh that's yeah it's a clue and a monster no save me no I'm sorry I can only save one of us and I'm going to have to save myself wait no no no yes I made that monster now I the way now I am that monster the way you hold that knife is so romantic I'm going to make love to you and then I'm going to murder you so look yeah clap for them clap for them I didn't I wasn't on stage there I talked to the people behind the engineering on the glass side like they have a custom serve you can remote control six heads up at the same time and what we're trying to look at now is like who changes more like sometimes these performers are not used to the abruptness of that interruption obviously the technologies never been used this way and so they're both editing each other and we're going to be creating new types of apps they I'm going to advise from a great distance through smart emails and the performers are going to have to adjust in some other interesting way but that's the super overlap that I hope for and as you guys do the things you do you're building a whole new world for us I just love you to keep the fun the creative the collaborative in mind push from where you're going already and think about this escalating level of creation it's the future it's awesome and thank you for having me enjoy your conference rails for life