Donald Harris

Just a quick update about whats going on. I have been even more busy than when I was running Marveloper. Like I said before I joined the team at CerebralFix, a creative and extremely passionate bunch of kiwis from New Zealand. The last half of last month the core executive team flew over and took me along for the ride. Like the title says in 2 weeks we went to Seattle for Casual Connect, San Diego for Comic-Con, and then Vegas for rest and planning. When we finally hit Vegas we were exhausted and basically running on fumes. You can check out the pics I took here

Since it was my first time meeting the team and seeing how the internal workings of the company took place it was a real eye opener. And I started analyzing what I was seeing. When I was hired I was told that I could run my portion of the company like it was my own and that I was basically being empowered by the rest of the group to go and make partnerships for the company. When you first hear something like that, you think to yourself, “Oh there has to be a limit somewhere.” or “Well yeah but you will shoot down my ideas”. Not only is that not the case here but it would seem like all of the executives have that same amount of empowerment. And from that comes a heck of a lot of passion and ownership. I have been slowly reading this book: From Good to Great and what I got it from it so far is that titles don’t matter. What matters is that you run your business as if you, yourself are the CEO. Even if your are not. That sense of ownership and loyalty will surly bring you from Good to Great. (Yes, I know there is more to the book than that) I notice myself saying over and over “My company…” and “My guys back at the office…” Once things slowed down, I thought about it and how I felt personally responsible to everything I said and did on the companies behalf. My ego stepped aside and the company’s ego stepped in its place.  Which is a surprise to me, because I love my ego, but it would seem that the company is more important. I know I got side tracked into business talk but let me sum up the business talk with this:

I think every company should look at its executive leadership team (or any leaders) and foster an environment where they are empowered to treat the company as though it was their own.

Now back to the fun stuff. I had a blast at Casual Connect mostly because I love Seattle and would love to live there. My new friends and I not only got a lot of learning done but we socialized as well… socialized is another word for partied hard If you have ever been to Casual Connect and been to the aquarium party you know what I mean by parting hard. As far as work is concerned, there was a large number of chats going on and some very successful talks being had. If you are in the business of making casual or social games and you don’t attend this conference, you are not in the business of making casual or social games.

My next stop was Comic-Con, it was my first time and it was amazing. From a business stand point I didn’t get as much as I wanted done there. Not because of lack of effort mostly just because I didn’t know where to go to get the work done. So this time, it was a learning experience. Next time, it will be better. Yes, of course I took pics with the cos players Check the link above for them

The last stop was Vegas. Yeah, I know what you are thinking and let me set the record straight – it was all work. It was a company retreat. Here we took a breather and focused on all the business we acquired at  Casual Connect and Comic-Con. We then started planning for the up coming year. Obviously, there is not much I can say about what was spoken there. But, it was fun and challenging at the same time.

Anyways, thats the update from my travels. Hopefully the next update will be back to business strategies and social media trends. Thanks for reading!!