Thursday, December 9, 2010

I'm Back

Hello blog readers!
I have been away having numerous exciting adventures and am now back in improv land. Among my travels, I got to attend the AIN International conference in Amsterdam in September, which was a wonderful experience. The speakers were fantastic, the energy was incredible, and the aura of sheer utopian functionalness that came from having so many applied improvisers in the room at the same time needed to be experienced to be believed.

I was lucky enough to give a talk, and got to share some of the ‘science of improv’ content I’ve mentioned on this site previously. For those who’re interested, the slides can be found here.

Tomorrow, I’ll be giving the same talk at the Bay Area AIN mini-conference in San Francisco, which should also be a lot of fun.

Since getting back from Europe, I’ve been thinking hard about how to close the gap between improv training and the behavioral sciences and things are starting to come together in an interesting way. So, it’s with great pleasure that I’d like to announce the opening of a brand new website, the SF Behavior Lab:
http://www.sfbehaviorlab.com/

This site is intended as a local rallying point for those people in the Bay Area who’d like to get involved in collaborative events aimed at understanding human interaction through play. The site will include results from software simulations as well as live workshops (more about that in later posts), and hopefully also interactive virtual improv games.

If it sounds like fun, you’re right. I hope to see you all virtually there.