In addition to a growing list of clients through RPG.LLC, RPG Therapeutics LLC, Dev 2 Dev Portal LLC, and working as Executive Director for RPG Research, and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Manufacturing Power, I have a huge backlog of documentation, and even books, that _must_ get resolved in the coming days, weeks, and between now and various deadlines up until mid-to-late April. Then hopefully I can come up for air again.
As some of you know, I have significant lung damage from an autoimmune disorder that took years for the doctors to track down between 2012 to 2018, and during that time my lung function dropped below 20%. When I am doing "well" it is at best 30-40% what it should be. "Smoke Season" and the cold severely exacerbate this, and if I have to start taking regular breathing treatments during these times, the medications significantly impair my functioning for quite some time.
Due to this, I am going to have to reduce my current client work load significantly.
I have some loose ends I must try to tie up in the next few days, but then I am likely not going to be taking on any new therapeutic or technology clients between now and April. We should be able to resume the Workshops, because my employees can run those without me, so that area should hopefully be increasing soon, but they are dependent on my finishing the current 5 books in the queue.
My publishing deadlines are fast approaching, and I can't push the deadlines any more, or I will be blacklisted by the publisher from publishing for 1 year if I miss any of the upcoming deadlines between February and May.
Additionally, money is running out at the non-profit RPG Community Center, we need to get donations up to $4,000/month just to break even at current operating costs, and we're currently only about 1/10th of that from current donations. This needs to be rectified by April or we'll have to (temporarily) close the doors to the public until the funds are there to cover the utilities, insurance, etc. that allows us to allow public access.
On top of all of this, my wife recently sustained an occipital TBI and I need to be there constantly to help for the next 2-4 weeks minimum. So I am going to be reducing my regular client load in the next few days/weeks so I can stay home as much as possible during her recovery period.
I am also once again weeks behind in my voicemails, emails, social media responses, text messages, etc. Please bear with me as I try to catch up in the coming weeks.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Regards,
-Hawke
PS, Deadlines:
I am juggling several companies daily:
ManufacturingPower is combination of mobile app and enterprise web platform helping address supply chain sourcing issues.
RPG Therapeutics using role-playing games as therapeutic intervention modalities using in-person and technology solutions.
RPG Research 501(c)3 non-profit charity providing a wide range of research and evidence-in-practice music and role-playing game programs across multiple modalities for a very wide range of populations from ages 2 years old through senior adults, and everyone in between, including many populations with special requirements. Including the new RPG Community Center facilities and RPG Museum.
Among many endeavors, including years-long continuing progress of an opensource development of brain-computer interface controlled online cooperative multiplayer turn-based role-playing games (BCI-RPG) and artificial intelligence (AI) Game Master (AI-GM) and RPG (AI-RPG) technologies for tabletop, live-action, electronic, and hybrid role-playing games (RPGs).
I am also trying to find time to finish the following:
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I'm still bogged down wrapping up the production Ansible automated build scripts for scalable Jitsi (for 20k+ users), but looking forward, once finished and handed back to DevOps team, to resuming my work from the previous years, on the education-focused [matrix] federated platform, with various custom and community matrix bots implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Deep Neural Networks (DNN).
]]>I am still catching up on a several months backlog of messages, emails, voicemails, SMS, etc.
Though work my hours are starting to come down to something more reasonable than the 120+ per week since late January, I still have a huge backlog of messages that will take me many days to catch up.
My apologies for the long delay. If you are trying to get a whole of me right now, please be patient.
It will probably be several more weeks before I even consider trying to login and go through any social media backlog. I very much enjoyed not dealing with social media, so I am debating whether I will even get back on there, we'll see.
I hope to be caught up in the next week or so and will get back to you as soon as I am able.
]]>After one of many appearances on GenCon TV's TableTakes, I was contacted by people working for PBS, asking if I would be interested in helping provide more information on recreation therapy, games, accessibility, brain-computer interface and robotics technologies for accessibility, and other areas as training webinar sessions for the people responsible for creating programming content for PBS online, community programs, and broadcasting.
I was honored to be asked and gladly accepted a contract, part-time, to train PBS staff on recreation therapy concepts, use of games to achieve therapeutic goals, including role-playing games. Populations include children 2-8+ years old, gifted & talented, ADHD, learning disabilities (LD's), accessibility, Autism Spectrum (ASD / PDD) and other neurodiverse).
The scope has undergone a number of changes, in some areas narrowing, and in other areas widening, as needed.
Initially focused on ways to enhance programming for PBS Kids Online, community, and broadcast programming to add recreation therapy approaches to games, including various tabletop, live-action, and electronic games.
In February, thee of my employees (John Welker, Danielle Whitworth, and David Griffith, and I provided a live introduction to role-playing games (RPG) (tabletop, live-action, electronic, & hybrids), accessibility in gaming, brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies for accessibility & games, & BCI + robotics solutions for accessibility & games.
Last week I was asked to expand the scope to address internal corporate-wide accessibility issues with synchronous online meetings presenting challenges for people with various disabilities.
As an avid accessibility advocate, I am once again honored to be asked to help them as a consultant to help them with improving accessibility internally corporate-wide (expanding beyond the original scope of online, community, and television programming).
We will be adjusting training sessions to become asynchronous, providing extensive examples of accessibility solutions built into delivery of the training, addressing people with visual impairments & blindness, hearing impairments & deafness. & people with various cognitive differences & neurodiversity challenges. Not just in the content of training, but in delivery as well.
There is some NDA stuff I can discuss about initiatives, projects, and technologies PBS is working on, so I will stick with roughly listing only with what I have been doing openly through our training programs via RPG Research and RPG Therapeutics (I also can't discuss much of my current work at Learning Mate either).
Utilized extensive range of methodologies, technologies, & customization:
* Recreation Therapy & Therapeutic Recreation
* Cognitive neuropsychology of learning in educational and other settings
* Zoom
* Jitsi
* Matrix-Synapse
* Vector / Riot / Element
* Moodle
* Odoo
* Video recording / editing
* Closed captioning for HoH / Deaf
* Transcriptions for VI / Blind
* Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technologies
* Robotics controlled BCI
* Python
* NodeJS
* Nginx
* SQLite
* Postgres
* Firebase
* Firestore
This is exciting news. It is a lot of work to make these adjustments, but I am working feverishly to try to get all these pieces in place as quickly as possible to help move this initiative forward.
More updates will probably be available in April or May as they indicated wishing to continue evaluating this approach to meetings and educational services.
]]>I have been working feverishly all week/months/years on the Workbook.
ISBN for Amazon Preview Print edition: 979-8-5705530-4-0
At long last the Amazon edition of the Role-Playing Game Professionals Level 1 Training Workbook has been submitted to Amazon for Print on Demand and Kindle publication.
The site indicates it may take up to 72 hours to hear back about approval, or if they will be kicked back for any corrections.
If all goes well, in about 72 hours the workbook will be available for purchase.
Unfortunately I couldn't get the lower price point I wanted due to the 300 page count. After Amazon's charges for international distribution, I had to set the physical Print on Demand version of the workbook price to $19.99.
However, for the e-book I was able to set to just $2.89.
This isn't about royalties, it is about ease of access and maximal distribution to set standards.
Though, if there are any profits, 20% will be donated directly to the non-profit RPG Research, and the rest will remain with the company RPG.LLC to help cover future projects. I don't expect there to be enough in sales to ever pay myself for this book, but that is okay if it helps support the larger picture.
Of course, it is the physical book that is needed, but the ebook version could at least help address curiosity for people.
I did _not_ enable DRM on the eBook version, and I _did_ allow for purchases to have permission for temporary sharing with friends, family, co-workers, in the hopes it helps with viral marketing.
The eBook edition states very clearly on the first (title) page that the printed edition is recommended.
I'll send out announcements all over once the book is finally actually available for purchase.
Remember this is an Amazon preview release, not quite the final First Edition. I'm still waiting for the Library of Congress to get back to me (could be weeks) for their authorization codes. Meanwhile we can use feedback from the Amazon Preview Edition to help make the First Edition that must better.
I have also decided to try and put some of the key diagrams into the Workbook for the final First Edition (with empty spaces to write in the text for each diagram).
So, still more to do, but a major milestone reached at last!
Cheers!
--
-Hawke Robinson
STATUS UPDATE 16:15 PST8PDT 20201128
Though I still show "2 pending approval", and no link for the printed
version, I was able to go through and complete the purchase process for
the Kindle eBook at this URL:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08P93TY4W
This eBook version has Text-to-Speech and other features enabled.
I recommend disabling multi-coloumn mode and reading it in
horizontal (landscape) mode with the reader. While some of the lines
still break format it is less broken than in portrait view.
More updates as they happen.
STATUS UPDATE 18:17 PST8PDT 20201128
The ebook is now "Live". The Printed book still "In Review".
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