A Lunch Tale of Yoga Knees, Yellow Cars, and the Mayor’s Ongoing War Against Forgotten Laundry Some Lunch meetings begin with philosophy. Others begin with technical difficulties. This one began with The Mayor accidentally announcing his own old age before breakfast. “Sorry, I forgot,” he said halfway through the conversation. “You see, I’m so old.”…
From Points for Brushing Teeth to the State of Democracy We began, as we often do, with something apparently small and slightly ridiculous. The topic was gamification: the modern habit of turning ordinary tasks into games, points, badges, rewards, leaderboards, and little digital pats on the back. I had prepared the topic because Ismar and…
When Work Becomes a Game, Someone Is Always Keeping Score When The Mayor asked Ismar about gamification, I was already smiling a little inside, because I could imagine where Ismar would go with it. For him, this idea itself sounds like one of those modern things where people take a simple responsibility and make it…
The Strange Game of Being Good When The Mayor asked me what I thought about “gamification of tasks,” I had to stop a little. Not because the word is difficult, but because the idea itself is strange to me. I suppose gamification means trying to make something hard become less hard, or maybe more attractive….
There are business lunches. There are strategy meetings. And then there are the strange little intellectual expeditions that happen when Professor Fruitloop decides to open the doors of “Fruitloop University” and drag me through higher education whether I consent or not. Which, apparently, I did not. The lunch began innocently enough. Just the two of…
Coming back home after four months away felt unreal. The second I walked into my room at my parents’ house in Alsace, I finally breathed properly again. Everything smelled familiar, even if the room itself looked like a storage war zone because I had dumped half my apartment into it. Between unpacking, reorganizing everything, and…
