A Very Late APOC Wrap-Up

For readers who haven’t been following along — or those I lost during the hiatus — I spent January through June teaching at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. More specifically, I co-taught the APOC cmgt 534 course with Professor Karen North and Clint Schaff. In addition, I gave a bi-monthly faculty lecture series on virtual worlds. It proved to be more fun — but substantially more work — than I expected. For a recap, you can follow APOC label.

The faculty lectures were the hardest to prep for. I generally had a solid turnout of Annenberg faculty, so it was a room of very smart people with lots of great questions. I decided before the first one to create entirely new presentations for each of lectures, which often require a bit of last minute scrambling. I managed to pull it off and the process really helped me to coalesce my own thoughts around virtual worlds, innovation, education, and the future.

The class was work but I really enjoyed learning from my fellow teachers and students. The APOC program brings together an amazing group and I expect we’ll be hearing from all of them in the future.

Finally, my copious free time at Annenberg was spent with the Network Culture Project, led by Doug Thomas. The project brings together a great collection of research and ideas around virtual worlds. Going forward I’ll remain an adjunct professor connected to the project and depending on where I’m spending my time over the next year, I’m sure I’ll be spending at least some time at Annenberg. My thanks to Doug, Larry Gross, and Annenberg dean Ernie Wilson who all worked hard to allow me to spend the semester teaching at USC.